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sports betting wagering 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 groups is beginning once again with a new company - and has secured the biggest initial financial investment of any British start-up company.

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

The brand-new firm has seed financing of $21m.

It intends to release a 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 - previously named Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.

However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are in legal conflict with FanDuel's later stage financiers over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising valuation.

Mr Eccles stated that one thing he discovered from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers carefully.

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the significance of who we select as financiers in this new business, to guarantee their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties responsibly, which they're the right partners for us."

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

Varun Sudhakar, primary executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high costs for poor products and limitations trades by its most effective users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will effectively contend against incumbents with a noticeably superior item and low costs, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain innovation."

As chairman of the brand-new company, Mr Eccles stated it might look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.

'Pool of talent'

However, he says that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting companies will be able to innovate and create a broader range of sports betting items.

He said the typical share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX needs to enable that to fall below 1%.

The business will establish its own wagering apps to operate on the platform.

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" approach to the way they are marketed to safeguard those who deal with issue gaming.

He stated the team of around 500 software engineers who helped construct FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it remains the place to construct a company. BetDEX has the same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was constructed on an extremely proficient, very skilled engineering group, that constructed this item that could process millions of bets and millions of users.

"There's a real skill pool of skilled engineers who helped us construct our product which's what we want to utilize for BetDEX too."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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bet9ja.com
Published

20 November 2017