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
bet9ja.com
One of Scotland’s most successful technology teams is starting once again with a new firm - and has actually secured the most significant preliminary financial investment of any British start-up company.

BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded dream sports betting wagering website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.

The brand-new company has seed funding 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.
bet9ja.com
The business is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.

FanDuel was offered to Flutter - previously called Paddy - 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 Edinburgh team without a share of the increasing evaluation.

Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he gained from the FanDuel experience was to choose investors carefully.

He told BBC Scotland: “We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the significance of who we choose as investors in this new company, to ensure their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities properly, which they’re the ideal partners for us.”

The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation companies, consisting of 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing companies running with crypto-currencies.
bet9ja.com
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: “The sports betting market charges high prices for poor products and limitations trades by its most effective users.

“BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will effectively complete versus incumbents with a noticeably superior item and low costs, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain technology.”

As chairman of the new firm, Mr Eccles said it might look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online companies.

‘Pool of talent’

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

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

The business will establish its own sports betting apps to run on the platform.

Mr Eccles said these would take an “smart, thoughtful” method to the way they are marketed to protect those who battle with problem gambling.

He said the team of around 500 software application engineers who assisted construct FanDuel from Scotland showed that it remains the place to construct a company. BetDEX has the exact same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

“A lot of that [FanDuel] success was developed on a highly competent, really talented engineering group, that built this item that might process countless bets and millions of users.

“There’s a genuine talent swimming pool of skilled engineers who helped us develop our product and that’s what we wish to utilize for BetDEX too.”

Related topics

Edinburgh
bit.ly
sports betting wagering

More on this story

Paddy Power purchases dream sports betting website

23 May 2018

FanDuel founder leaves business

Published

20 November 2017