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 technology groups is beginning once again with a brand-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 dream sports betting wagering site FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.

The new company has seed funding of $21m.

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

The business is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.

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

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

Mr Eccles said that one thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to select investors carefully.

He told BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the significance of who we pick as investors in this brand-new business, to ensure their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities responsibly, which they're the ideal partners for us."
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The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US technology firms, including two big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing business running with crypto-currencies.

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

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will successfully complete against incumbents with a noticeably remarkable product and low fees, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain innovation."

As chairman of the new company, Mr Eccles said it could look familiar to retail punters used to existing online companies.

'Pool of skill'

However, he states that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting firms will be able to innovate and develop a larger variety of wagering products.

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

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

Mr Eccles said these would take an "smart, thoughtful" technique to the way they are marketed to safeguard those who have problem with problem sports betting.
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He said the team of around 500 software application engineers who assisted develop FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it stays the place to build a company. BetDEX has the exact same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] was constructed on a highly experienced, extremely gifted engineering group, that constructed this item that might process countless bets and countless users.

"There's a real skill pool of experienced engineers who helped us develop our item which's what we desire to utilize for BetDEX also."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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FanDuel creator leaves company
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20 November 2017
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