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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

Among Scotland's most successful technology groups is starting once again with a new firm - and has secured the greatest initial financial investment of any British start-up company.

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

The new firm has seed financing of $21m.
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It aims to introduce a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting, in the first half of next year.

The company is recruiting staff from a base in Scotland.

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

However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are in legal disagreement 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 assessment.

Mr Eccles said that a person thing he found out from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers thoroughly.

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

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US technology companies, consisting of 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying business running with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, primary executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting industry charges high costs for bad products and limitations trades by its most successful users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will successfully compete versus incumbents with a markedly superior product and low costs, which is now possible with the introduction of the blockchain technology."

As chairman of the new company, Mr Eccles stated it might look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online companies.

'Pool of skill'

However, he states that those who utilize its platform to run their own sports betting firms will have the ability to innovate and create a larger variety of wagering items.

He stated the normal share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX should enable that to fall below 1%.

The company will develop its own sports betting apps to operate on the platform.

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "smart, thoughtful" approach to the method they are marketed to secure those who battle with issue sports betting.

He stated the team of around 500 software engineers who assisted develop FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it stays the location to develop a company. BetDEX has the exact same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was built on an extremely knowledgeable, very skilled engineering group, that built this product that might process countless bets and millions of users.

"There's a genuine skill pool of skilled engineers who helped us build our product which's what we wish to take advantage of for BetDEX as well."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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23 May 2018

FanDuel creator leaves business

Published

20 November 2017