Sports Betting Innovator Launches Brand-new Start-up
sports betting wagering innovator launches new start-up
17 November 2021
Share
close panel
Share page
Copy link
About sharing
By Douglas Fraser
Business and economy editor, Scotland
One of Scotland’s most successful innovation groups is starting once again with a brand-new firm – and has actually protected the greatest preliminary investment of any British start-up business.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded dream sports betting wagering website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
The brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.
It intends to release a new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting wagering, in the first half of next year.
The company is recruiting staff from a base in Scotland.
FanDuel was sold to Flutter – previously called Paddy Power Betfair – in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.
However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are in legal disagreement with FanDuel’s later stage investors over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh group without a share of the increasing assessment.
Mr Eccles said that one thing he learned from the FanDuel experience was to select financiers thoroughly.
He informed BBC Scotland: “We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the importance of who we pick as investors in this brand-new company, to guarantee their values are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks properly, and that they’re the right partners for us.”
The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by seven backers of US technology companies, including two big funds – Paradigm and FTX – which specialise in purchasing companies operating with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: “The sports betting industry charges high prices for bad products and limitations trades by its most effective users.
“BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will successfully complete versus incumbents with a markedly superior product and low charges, which is now possible with the advent of the blockchain technology.”
As chairman of the brand-new firm, Mr Eccles stated it might look familiar to retail punters used to existing online firms.
‘Pool of skill’
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 series of sports betting items.
He stated the common share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, however BetDEX needs to permit that to fall below 1%.
The company will develop its own sports betting apps to operate on the platform.
Mr Eccles stated these would take an “intelligent, thoughtful” technique to the way they are marketed to secure those who have problem with problem sports betting.
He said the group of around 500 software application engineers who assisted build FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the place to develop a firm. BetDEX has the exact same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.
“A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely skilled, really gifted engineering team, that constructed this product that could process millions of bets and users.
“There’s a real skill pool of knowledgeable engineers who helped us construct our item and that’s what we want to take advantage of for BetDEX too.”
Related subjects
Edinburgh
sports betting wagering
Paddy Power purchases dream sports betting website
23 May 2018
FanDuel creator leaves company
Published
20 November 2017
