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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 innovation groups is starting once again with a brand-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 fantasy sports betting site in 2009 in Edinburgh.

The new company has seed funding of $21m.

It aims to release 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 sold 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 method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the increasing evaluation.

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

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the importance of who we pick as investors in this brand-new company, to guarantee their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks properly, which they're the right partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation firms, consisting of 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing companies operating with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting industry charges high rates for poor items and limitations trades by its most successful users.

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

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

'Pool of talent'

However, he states that those who utilize its platform to run their own wagering companies will be able to innovate and develop a larger variety of sports betting products.

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

The business will develop its own wagering apps to operate on the platform.

Mr Eccles said these would take an "smart, thoughtful" approach to the way they are marketed to safeguard those who deal with problem gaming.

He said the team of around 500 software engineers who helped develop FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it remains the location to construct a firm. BetDEX has the very same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.

"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was developed on an extremely competent, extremely talented engineering group, that constructed this item that might process millions of bets and countless users.

"There's a real talent swimming pool of experienced engineers who helped us build our product which's what we want to take advantage of for BetDEX too."

Related topics

Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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Paddy Power buys fantasy sports betting site

23 May 2018

FanDuel creator leaves company

Published

20 November 2017
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