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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 innovation groups is beginning once again with a brand-new firm - and has actually protected the greatest initial financial investment of any British start-up company.

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

The brand-new company has seed funding of $21m.

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

The business is recruiting staff from a base in Scotland.

FanDuel was sold 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 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 rising appraisal.
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Mr Eccles said that one thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers carefully.

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, one of which was the value of who we pick as financiers in this brand-new organization, to guarantee their values are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties properly, which they're the ideal partners for us."

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

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

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

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 utilize its platform to run their own sports betting companies will have the ability to innovate and create a wider range of sports betting products.

He stated the common share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX ought to permit that to fall below 1%.
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The business will develop its own wagering apps to run on the platform.

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

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

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was built on an extremely competent, really gifted engineering group, that built this item that might process countless bets and countless users.

"There's a genuine talent swimming pool of skilled engineers who helped us build our product and that's what we wish to leverage for BetDEX too."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

Sports betting

More on this story

Paddy Power purchases fantasy sports betting site

23 May 2018

FanDuel creator leaves business
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Published

20 November 2017
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