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 effective innovation teams is beginning again with a brand-new firm - and has actually protected the biggest preliminary financial investment of any British start-up business.

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

The new company has seed financing of $21m.

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

The company 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 are in legal conflict with FanDuel's later phase financiers over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the .

Mr Eccles said that a person thing he found out from the FanDuel experience was to choose financiers carefully.
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He told BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, one of which was the importance of who we pick as investors in this brand-new service, to guarantee their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks properly, and that they're the ideal partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation companies, consisting of two big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying business running with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high rates for poor products and limitations trades by its most successful users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will effectively complete versus incumbents with a markedly exceptional item and low fees, which is now possible with the advent of the blockchain innovation."

As chairman of the brand-new company, Mr Eccles stated it could look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.
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'Pool of skill'

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

He said the typical share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, however BetDEX must permit for that to fall below 1%.

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

Mr Eccles said these would take an "smart, thoughtful" technique to the method they are marketed to protect those who battle with issue gaming.

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

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely proficient, really talented engineering group, that built this item that might process countless bets and millions of users.

"There's a genuine skill pool of experienced engineers who helped us construct our item and that's what we desire to utilize for BetDEX also."

Related topics

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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Published

20 November 2017