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sports betting wagering launches brand-new start-up

17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

Among Scotland's most effective innovation groups is starting once again with a new company - and has secured the biggest preliminary investment of any British start-up company.

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

The brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.

It aims 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 company is recruiting personnel from a base in Scotland.

FanDuel was offered 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 stage financiers over the method in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the increasing evaluation.

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

He told BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, among which was the value of who we pick as financiers in this new business, to ensure their values are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities properly, which they're the ideal partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation 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 industry charges high rates for bad products and limits trades by its most successful users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will successfully contend versus incumbents with a noticeably remarkable item and low fees, which is now possible with the introduction of the blockchain technology."

As chairman of the new firm, Mr Eccles stated it might 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 wagering companies will be able to innovate and create a wider variety of sports betting items.

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

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

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" approach to the method they are marketed to protect those who battle with issue gaming.

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

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was developed on a highly competent, extremely gifted engineering team, that developed this item that could process millions of bets and countless users.

"There's a genuine talent pool of knowledgeable engineers who helped us build our product which's what we want to leverage for BetDEX also."
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Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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Published

20 November 2017
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