Sports betting innovator launches brand-new start-up
17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
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One of Scotland's most effective technology teams is beginning once again with a brand-new company - and has actually 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.
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The brand-new company has seed financing of $21m.
It aims to introduce a brand-new open source software application platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting, in the first half of next year.
The business is hiring personnel from a base in Scotland.
FanDuel was sold to Flutter - formerly called Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.
However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are 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 rising valuation.
Mr Eccles said that one thing he learned from the FanDuel experience was to choose investors thoroughly.
He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, one of which was the importance of who we pick as investors in this new company, to ensure their values are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties properly, which they're the right partners for us."
The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by seven backers of US technology firms, including two big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing companies operating with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting market charges high costs for bad items and limits trades by its most successful users.
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"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will effectively compete against incumbents with a significantly superior product and low costs, which is now possible with the introduction of the blockchain innovation."
As chairman of the new firm, Mr Eccles said it might look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.
'Pool of talent'
However, he says that those who utilize its platform to run their own wagering companies will be able to innovate and create a broader variety of wagering products.
He said the normal share taken by online bookmakers 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 said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the method they are marketed to protect those who struggle with problem gambling.
He said the team of around 500 software engineers who assisted develop FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the location to construct a company. BetDEX has the same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was developed on a highly knowledgeable, extremely skilled engineering group, that constructed this product that might process millions of bets and countless users.
"There's a real talent pool of knowledgeable engineers who assisted us build our product which's what we want to take advantage of for BetDEX too."
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Sports Betting Innovator Launches new Start up
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