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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
One of Scotland's most successful technology teams is starting again with a new firm - and has actually secured the greatest preliminary investment of any British start-up company.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded fantasy sports betting wagering website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
The new firm has seed financing of $21m.
It intends to introduce a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting wagering, in the very first half of next year.
The business is recruiting personnel 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 remain in legal conflict with FanDuel's later stage investors over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising valuation.
Mr Eccles said that one thing he found out from the FanDuel experience was to choose financiers thoroughly.
He told BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the value of who we select as investors in this new organization, to ensure their values 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 consists of stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation companies, consisting of 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying business running with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high prices for bad items and limitations trades by its most effective users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will successfully contend versus incumbents with a significantly superior product and low charges, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain innovation."
As chairman of the brand-new firm, Mr Eccles said 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 sports betting companies will have the ability to innovate and develop a broader variety of sports betting products.
He said the normal share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, however BetDEX must enable that to fall listed below 1%.
The business will develop its own sports betting apps to run on the platform.
Mr Eccles stated these would take an "smart, thoughtful" approach to the way they are marketed to secure those who battle with problem gaming.
He said the group of around 500 software application 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 great deal of that [FanDuel] success was developed on a highly knowledgeable, extremely skilled engineering group, that built this product that could process countless bets and millions of users.
"There's a genuine skill swimming pool of skilled engineers who helped us construct our product and that's what we wish to leverage for BetDEX too."
Related topics
Edinburgh
Sports betting
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Paddy Power purchases dream sports betting site
23 May 2018
FanDuel creator leaves business
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Published
20 November 2017
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Sports Betting Innovator Launches new Start up
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