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Sports betting innovator launches brand-new start-up

17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

One of Scotland's most successful innovation groups is starting once again with a - and has secured the biggest initial investment of any British start-up business.
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BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded dream sports betting wagering website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.

The new company has seed funding of $21m.

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

The company is recruiting personnel 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 dispute with FanDuel's later stage investors over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh group without a share of the increasing valuation.

Mr Eccles said that one thing he found out from the FanDuel experience was to choose financiers thoroughly.

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the importance of who we choose as financiers in this brand-new organization, to ensure their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks responsibly, and that they're the best partners for us."

The $21m seed funding for BetDEX includes stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation companies, including two large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing companies running with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, primary executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high rates for poor products and limits trades by its most successful users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will successfully compete versus incumbents with a significantly exceptional product and low fees, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain innovation."

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

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

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

The business will establish its own sports betting apps to run on the platform.

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" approach to the method they are marketed to safeguard those who battle with issue gaming.

He stated the team of around 500 software application engineers who helped build FanDuel from Scotland showed that it remains the place to construct a firm. BetDEX has the very same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

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

"There's a real talent pool of skilled engineers who assisted us construct our product and that's what we want to utilize for BetDEX too."

Related topics

Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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Published

20 November 2017
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