1 Sports Betting Innovator Launches new Start-up
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sports betting wagering innovator launches brand-new start-up
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17 November 2021

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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

Among Scotland's most successful innovation groups is starting again with a new firm - and has secured the greatest initial investment of any British start-up business.

BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded fantasy sports betting site FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.

The new firm has seed funding of $21m.

It intends to launch a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting, in the first half of next year.

The company is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.

FanDuel was offered to Flutter - previously called Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.
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However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are in legal disagreement with FanDuel's later stage financiers over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh group without a share of the increasing appraisal.

Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he found out from the FanDuel experience was to pick investors thoroughly.

He told BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the importance of who we pick as financiers in this new company, to ensure their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks responsibly, which they're the ideal partners for us."

The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation companies, including 2 big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing business operating with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, chief executive of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting industry charges high prices for bad products and limitations trades by its most successful users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will successfully contend versus incumbents with a noticeably superior product and low costs, which is now possible with the arrival of the blockchain innovation."
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As chairman of the new firm, Mr Eccles said it might look familiar to retail punters used to existing online companies.
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'Pool of talent'

However, he says that those who utilize its platform to run their own wagering firms will be able to innovate and create a larger series of wagering products.

He stated the normal share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX should permit that to fall below 1%.

The company will develop its own wagering apps to operate on the platform.

Mr Eccles said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the method they are marketed to safeguard those who have a hard time with issue sports betting.

He said the group of around 500 software application engineers who helped construct FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the location to develop a firm. BetDEX has the exact same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

"A lot of that [FanDuel] was built on a highly knowledgeable, extremely gifted engineering group, that constructed this item that might process millions of bets and millions of users.

"There's a genuine skill swimming pool of skilled engineers who assisted us develop our product which's what we want to utilize for BetDEX too."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

Sports betting

More on this story

Paddy Power purchases dream sports betting website

23 May 2018

FanDuel founder leaves business
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Published

20 November 2017