sports betting wagering 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 effective technology groups is starting again with a new company - and has protected the most significant initial investment of any British start-up business.

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

The new firm has seed financing of $21m.

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

The company is recruiting 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 phase financiers 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 a person thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to select financiers thoroughly.

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 brand-new business, to ensure their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities responsibly, and that they’re the right partners for us.”

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US technology companies, including 2 big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing companies operating with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, said: “The sports betting wagering industry charges high costs for bad products and limitations trades by its most successful users.
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“BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will effectively complete versus incumbents with a significantly exceptional item and low charges, which is now possible with the arrival of the blockchain technology.”

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

‘Pool of talent’

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

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

The company will develop its own wagering apps to run on the platform.

Mr Eccles said these would take an “intelligent, thoughtful” approach to the method they are marketed to safeguard those who have problem with issue gaming.

He stated the group of around 500 software engineers who assisted construct FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the location to build a company. BetDEX has the very same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

“A great deal of that [FanDuel] was built on a highly experienced, extremely skilled engineering group, that constructed this item that might process millions of bets and millions of users.
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“There’s a genuine talent pool of knowledgeable engineers who assisted us develop our item and that’s what we desire to take advantage of for BetDEX also.”

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Published

20 November 2017
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