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sports betting wagering innovator launches 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 once again with a new firm - and has protected the biggest initial financial investment of any British start-up company.

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

The brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.
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It intends to a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting wagering, in the first half of next year.

The business is recruiting staff from a base in Scotland.

FanDuel was offered to Flutter - previously named Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.

However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders remain in legal disagreement with FanDuel's later phase investors over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh group without a share of the increasing evaluation.

Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers carefully.

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, among which was the value of who we select as investors in this new service, to ensure their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks responsibly, and that they're the right partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US technology firms, including two large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing companies running with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, chief executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting industry charges high rates for bad items and limits trades by its most effective users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will effectively compete versus incumbents with a markedly superior item and low charges, which is now possible with the introduction of the blockchain technology."

As chairman of the brand-new firm, Mr Eccles stated it could look familiar to retail punters used to existing online firms.

'Pool of talent'

However, he says that those who utilize its platform to run their own sports betting companies will have the ability to innovate and develop a broader series of wagering products.

He said the typical share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX ought to enable that to fall listed below 1%.

The business will establish its own wagering apps to run on the platform.

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" technique to the method they are marketed to safeguard those who battle with problem sports betting.

He stated the group of around 500 software application engineers who helped construct FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it remains the place to construct a firm. BetDEX has the very same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely skilled, very gifted engineering team, that developed this item that might process countless bets and countless users.

"There's a genuine skill pool of experienced engineers who assisted us develop our item and that's what we want to utilize for BetDEX too."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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Published

20 November 2017
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