innovator launches new start-up
17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
One of Scotland's most effective innovation teams is starting once again with a brand-new company - and has secured the biggest preliminary investment of any British start-up business.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded fantasy sports betting wagering site FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
The brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.
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It aims to launch a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting, in the first half of next year.
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The business is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.
FanDuel was offered to Flutter - previously called Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.
However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders remain in legal disagreement with FanDuel's later phase financiers over the method in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the increasing appraisal.
Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to pick investors carefully.
He told BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the value of who we pick as investors in this new company, to guarantee their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities responsibly, which they're the best partners for us."
The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation firms, consisting of two big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in investing in business running with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting market charges high prices for bad items and limitations trades by its most successful users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will successfully compete against incumbents with a noticeably superior product and low fees, which is now possible with the advent 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 skill'
However, he says that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting firms will be able to innovate and produce a larger variety of wagering items.
He stated the common share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX should enable that to fall listed below 1%.
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The company will establish its own wagering apps to run on the platform.
Mr Eccles said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the way they are marketed to safeguard those who have problem with problem gaming.
He said the group of around 500 software application engineers who assisted construct FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the location to develop a firm. BetDEX has the same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely competent, extremely gifted engineering team, that constructed this item that might process countless bets and countless users.
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"There's a genuine skill swimming pool of experienced engineers who helped us develop our item which's what we want to take advantage of for BetDEX as well."
Related topics
Edinburgh
sports betting wagering
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More on this story
Paddy Power buys fantasy sports betting website
23 May 2018
FanDuel creator leaves business
Published
20 November 2017
1
Sports Betting Innovator Launches Brand new Start up
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