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 effective technology groups is starting once again with a brand-new firm - and has protected the biggest preliminary investment of any British start-up company.

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

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

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

The business is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.

FanDuel was offered to Flutter - previously called Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.

However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders remain in legal disagreement with FanDuel's later phase investors over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising valuation.

Mr Eccles stated that one thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to choose investors thoroughly.

He told BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, one of which was the importance of who we select as financiers in this brand-new organization, to guarantee their values are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities responsibly, and that they're the ideal partners for us."

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

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting market charges high costs for bad products and limitations trades by its most effective users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will effectively contend versus incumbents with a noticeably remarkable item and low costs, which is now possible with the development of the ."

As chairman of the brand-new company, Mr Eccles said it might look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.

'Pool of skill'

However, he states that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting companies will have the ability to innovate and produce a larger variety of sports betting products.

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

The business will develop 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 safeguard those who deal with problem gambling.

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 exact same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on a highly competent, really skilled engineering team, that built this product that could process countless bets and millions of users.

"There's a genuine skill pool of knowledgeable engineers who helped us develop our product and that's what we wish to utilize for BetDEX also."

Related topics

Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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