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Sports betting innovator launches new start-up
17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
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Business and economy editor, Scotland
One of Scotland's most successful innovation groups is starting again with a new firm - and has actually secured the biggest initial investment of any British start-up company.
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BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded fantasy sports betting wagering website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
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The new firm has seed financing of $21m.
It intends to introduce a new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting wagering, in the very first half of next year.
The company is hiring personnel from a base in Scotland.
FanDuel was sold to Flutter - formerly named Paddy Power - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.
However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are in legal dispute with FanDuel's later phase financiers over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh group without a share of the increasing appraisal.
Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he found out from the FanDuel experience was to select financiers carefully.
He told BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, one of which was the significance of who we select as investors in this new service, to ensure their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks properly, which they're the right partners for us."
The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by seven backers of US technology firms, consisting of two big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying business operating with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, primary executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting market charges high costs for poor products and limitations trades by its most effective users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will effectively compete against incumbents with a significantly remarkable item and low charges, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain technology."
As chairman of the brand-new firm, Mr Eccles said it might look familiar to retail punters used to existing online companies.
'Pool of talent'
However, he says that those who use its platform to run their own wagering firms will have the ability to innovate and develop a larger series of wagering products.
He said the normal share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, however BetDEX should permit that to fall below 1%.
The business will develop its own sports betting apps to run on the platform.
Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" approach to the way they are marketed to protect those who have problem with problem gambling.
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He said the group of around 500 software engineers who helped build FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it remains the place to construct a company. BetDEX has the same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was built on a highly skilled, very gifted engineering team, that developed this product that could process millions of bets and countless users.
"There's a real skill swimming pool of skilled engineers who helped us develop our product which's what we desire to utilize for BetDEX too."
Related topics
Edinburgh
Sports betting
More on this story
Paddy Power purchases dream sports betting site
23 May 2018
FanDuel creator leaves company
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Published
20 November 2017
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Sports Betting Innovator Launches new Start-up
kiarawestover9 edited this page 2025-01-02 10:46:01 +00:00