sports betting wagering innovator launches new start-up
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17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
bet9ja.com
Business and economy editor, Scotland
One of Scotland's most teams is starting again with a new company - and has actually protected the greatest preliminary financial investment of any British start-up business.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded fantasy sports betting website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
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The brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.
It aims to launch a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting, in the very first half of next year.
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The business is hiring 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 conflict with FanDuel's later stage financiers over the method in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising evaluation.
Mr Eccles said that one thing he learned from the FanDuel experience was to choose investors carefully.
He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the importance of who we select as financiers in this brand-new organization, to ensure their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties properly, and that they're the right partners for us."
The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation companies, including 2 big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing business operating with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high prices for bad products and limitations trades by its most successful users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will successfully compete versus incumbents with a noticeably exceptional product and low charges, which is now possible with the introduction of the blockchain technology."
As chairman of the new company, Mr Eccles stated it might look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.
'Pool of talent'
However, he states that those who utilize its platform to run their own sports betting firms will be able to innovate and create a broader variety of sports betting items.
He stated the normal share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX ought to permit that to fall below 1%.
The company will develop its own wagering apps to operate on the platform.
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Mr Eccles stated these would take an "smart, thoughtful" method to the way they are marketed to safeguard those who fight with problem sports betting.
He said the team of around 500 software application engineers who helped build FanDuel from Scotland showed that it remains the place to develop a firm. BetDEX has the exact same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was built on a highly proficient, really skilled engineering team, that built this product that could process millions of bets and countless users.
"There's a genuine skill swimming pool of skilled engineers who helped us construct our product which's what we desire to leverage for BetDEX also."
Related subjects
Edinburgh
Sports betting
More on this story
Paddy Power buys fantasy sports betting website
23 May 2018
FanDuel founder leaves business
Published
20 November 2017
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Sports Betting Innovator Launches new Start-up
kathimcdougall edited this page 2025-01-02 02:28:16 +00:00