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Sports betting innovator launches new start-up
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17 November 2021

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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

One of Scotland's most successful innovation groups is beginning once again with a brand-new company - and has protected the greatest preliminary investment of any British start-up business.

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

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

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

The business is hiring 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 stage investors over the method in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising appraisal.

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

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, among which was the value of who we choose as investors in this new organization, to guarantee their values are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties responsibly, which they're the right partners for us."

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

Varun Sudhakar, chief executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high costs for poor items and limitations trades by its most effective users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will successfully contend against incumbents with a considerably superior item and low charges, which is now possible with the advent of the blockchain technology."

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

'Pool of talent'

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

He said the common share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX needs to permit for that to fall listed below 1%.

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

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

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

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely experienced, very gifted engineering team, that built this product that could process millions of bets and users.

"There's a genuine talent swimming pool of knowledgeable engineers who assisted us develop our product and that's what we want to leverage for BetDEX as well."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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