Sports Betting Innovator Launches Brand-new Start-up
Sports betting innovator launches brand-new start-up
17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
Among Scotland's most successful technology groups is starting again with a new company - and has secured the most significant initial financial investment of any British start-up company.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded fantasy sports betting website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
The new company has seed funding of $21m.
It aims to launch a new open source software application 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.
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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 remain in legal dispute with FanDuel's later stage investors over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the without a share of the increasing valuation.
Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he learned from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers carefully.
He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the significance of who we pick as financiers in this brand-new service, to ensure their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties responsibly, which they're the right partners for us."
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The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by 7 backers of US technology companies, including two large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in investing in business running with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, chief executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high prices for poor items and limitations trades by its most effective users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will successfully compete versus incumbents with a considerably superior product and low costs, which is now possible with the advent of the blockchain technology."
As chairman of the brand-new firm, Mr Eccles said 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 wagering firms will be able to innovate and produce a larger series of sports betting items.
He stated the typical share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, however BetDEX must permit for that to fall below 1%.
The company will develop its own wagering apps to run on the platform.
Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" approach to the way they are marketed to secure those who battle with problem sports betting.
He said the team of around 500 software engineers who assisted build FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it stays the place to develop a company. BetDEX has the very same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was built on a highly competent, extremely talented engineering team, that built this product that might process millions of bets and millions of users.
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"There's a genuine talent swimming pool of experienced engineers who assisted us construct our item and that's what we want to utilize for BetDEX too."
Related subjects
Edinburgh
Sports betting
More on this story
Paddy Power buys fantasy sports betting site
23 May 2018
FanDuel creator leaves business
Published
20 November 2017