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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 once again with a new company - and has protected the greatest 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 brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.

It aims to release 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 staff from a base in Scotland.

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 Edinburgh team without a share of the rising evaluation.
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Mr that one thing he learned from the FanDuel experience was to pick investors thoroughly.

He told BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, one of which was the importance of who we select as investors in this brand-new organization, to ensure their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks responsibly, which they're the ideal partners for us."

The $21m seed funding for BetDEX includes stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation companies, including 2 big 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 market charges high prices for bad products and limitations trades by its most effective users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will successfully contend against incumbents with a considerably superior product and low costs, which is now possible with the arrival of the blockchain innovation."

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

'Pool of talent'

However, he says that those who use its platform to run their own wagering companies will have the ability to innovate and develop a wider variety of sports betting products.
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He stated the typical share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX needs to permit that to fall listed below 1%.

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

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" technique to the method they are marketed to protect those who battle with problem gaming.

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

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely knowledgeable, very talented engineering team, that built this item that could process countless bets and countless users.

"There's a real skill pool of experienced engineers who helped us develop our item which's what we wish to utilize for BetDEX too."

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Edinburgh

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More on this story

Paddy Power purchases fantasy sports betting site
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23 May 2018

FanDuel creator leaves company

Published

20 November 2017
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