Sports betting innovator launches new start-up
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17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
One of Scotland's most successful technology teams is beginning again with a new company - and has protected the most significant initial financial 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 company has seed of $21m.
It intends to launch 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 - formerly 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 rising evaluation.
Mr Eccles stated that one 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, one of which was the importance of who we select as financiers in this new organization, to ensure their values are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks responsibly, which they're the right partners for us."
The $21m seed funding for BetDEX includes stakes taken by 7 backers of US technology companies, consisting of two large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in investing in business running with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting market charges high costs for poor items and limitations trades by its most successful users.
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will successfully complete against incumbents with a considerably remarkable item and low costs, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain technology."
As chairman of the new firm, Mr Eccles stated it could look familiar to retail punters used to existing online firms.
'Pool of skill'
However, he states that those who utilize its platform to run their own wagering firms will be able to innovate and produce a larger variety of wagering products.
He stated the common share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX needs to enable that to fall listed below 1%.
The business will establish its own sports betting apps to operate on the platform.
Mr Eccles said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the method they are marketed to safeguard those who have problem with problem gaming.
He said the team of around 500 software engineers who helped develop FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it stays the location to develop a firm. BetDEX has the very same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely knowledgeable, extremely skilled engineering group, that developed this item that could process millions of bets and countless users.
"There's a real talent swimming pool of experienced engineers who helped us develop our product and that's what we wish to utilize for BetDEX too."
Related subjects
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Sports betting
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Sports Betting Innovator Launches Brand-new Start-up
linakarpinski5 edited this page 2025-01-02 00:13:58 +00:00