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sports betting wagering innovator launches new start-up
17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
Among Scotland's most effective technology teams is beginning once again with a new company - and has protected the most significant preliminary investment of any British start-up business.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded fantasy sports betting site FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
The brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.
It aims to introduce a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting, in the first half of next year.
The business is recruiting personnel 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 dispute with FanDuel's later stage financiers over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising assessment.
Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to pick investors carefully.
He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, among which was the importance of who we choose as investors in this new service, to ensure their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks responsibly, which they're the best partners for us."
The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation companies, including 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying companies operating with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high costs for poor products and limitations trades by its most successful users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will successfully complete versus incumbents with a noticeably exceptional product and low charges, which is now possible with the advent of the blockchain technology."
As chairman of the new company, Mr Eccles said it might look familiar to retail punters used to existing online firms.
'Pool of talent'
However, he says that those who utilize its platform to run their own sports betting firms will have the ability to innovate and develop a larger variety of sports betting items.
He said the typical share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX should enable that to fall listed below 1%.
The company will establish its own sports betting apps to operate on the platform.
Mr Eccles said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" technique to the method they are marketed to protect those who battle with issue gambling.
He said the group of around 500 software application engineers who helped build FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it stays the place to construct a firm. BetDEX has the same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.
"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was built on a highly competent, extremely talented engineering team, that constructed this item that might process countless bets and millions of users.
"There's a real talent pool of knowledgeable engineers who assisted us develop our item which's what we want to take advantage of for BetDEX too."
Related topics
Edinburgh
sports betting wagering
More on this story
Paddy Power buys fantasy sports betting site
23 May 2018
FanDuel founder leaves business
Published
20 November 2017 |
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