Sports Betting Innovator Launches new Start-up

Sports betting innovator launches new start-up

17 November 2021

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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

Among Scotland’s most successful innovation teams is beginning again with a new company – and has actually secured the greatest initial financial investment of any British start-up business.

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

The 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 wagering, in the very first half of next year.

The business is hiring personnel from a base in Scotland.

FanDuel was offered 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 conflict with FanDuel’s later phase investors over the method in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh group without a share of the rising assessment.

Mr Eccles stated that one thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to select financiers thoroughly.

He informed BBC Scotland: “We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the value of who we choose as financiers in this brand-new company, to ensure their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties properly, and that they’re the ideal partners for us.”

The $21m seed funding for BetDEX includes stakes taken by seven backers of US technology firms, including two large funds – Paradigm and FTX – which specialise in buying companies running with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: “The sports betting wagering market charges high rates for poor items and limits trades by its most successful users.

“BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will effectively complete versus incumbents with a noticeably superior product and low charges, which is now possible with the advent of the blockchain innovation.”

As chairman of the brand-new company, Mr Eccles said it could look familiar to retail punters used to existing online companies.

‘Pool of skill’

However, he states that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting companies will be able to innovate and produce a wider range of sports betting products.

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

The company will establish its own sports betting apps to run on the platform.

Mr Eccles stated these would take an “smart, thoughtful” method to the way they are marketed to protect those who have a hard time with issue gambling.

He stated the team of around 500 software application engineers who helped construct FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the location to construct a firm. BetDEX has the exact same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.

“A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on a highly competent, very skilled engineering team, that built this item that could process millions of bets and millions of users.

“There’s a genuine talent pool of experienced engineers who assisted us develop our item which’s what we desire to leverage for BetDEX also.”

Related subjects

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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