bet9ja.com
Sports betting innovator launches brand-new start-up
bet9ja.com
17 November 2021
bit.ly
Share

close panel

Share page

Copy link

About sharing

By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

Among Scotland's most effective innovation teams is beginning once again with a new company - and has secured the greatest preliminary financial investment of any British start-up company.

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 financing of $21m.

It aims to introduce a new open source software application platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting wagering, in the first half of next year.

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 dispute with FanDuel's later phase financiers over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the group without a share of the increasing evaluation.

Mr Eccles stated that one thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to pick investors thoroughly.

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 new organization, to guarantee their values are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties properly, and that they're the right partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation companies, including 2 big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing business running with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting industry charges high costs for bad products and limits trades by its most successful users.
bet9ja.com
"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will effectively compete versus incumbents with a considerably superior item and low charges, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain innovation."
bit.ly
As chairman of the brand-new company, Mr Eccles said it might look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.

'Pool of skill'

However, he states that those who utilize its platform to run their own wagering companies will be able to innovate and produce a larger series of wagering products.

He stated the normal share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, however BetDEX needs to allow for that to fall listed below 1%.

The company will develop its own sports betting apps to run on the platform.

Mr Eccles said these would take an "smart, thoughtful" technique to the way they are marketed to secure those who deal with problem gaming.

He said the team of around 500 software engineers who helped build FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the location to construct a firm. BetDEX has the exact same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.
bit.ly
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely competent, really gifted engineering group, that developed this product that could process millions of bets and millions of users.

"There's a genuine skill swimming pool of skilled engineers who helped us develop our product which's what we want to take advantage of for BetDEX also."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

Sports betting

More on this story

Paddy Power buys dream sports betting site

23 May 2018

FanDuel creator leaves company

Published

20 November 2017
bet9ja.com