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

Among Scotland's most effective innovation teams is starting once again with a new firm - and has secured the biggest preliminary investment of any British start-up business.

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

The new company has seed financing 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 company is recruiting personnel 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 dispute with FanDuel's later stage financiers over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the .

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

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, among which was the importance of who we choose as financiers in this new company, to guarantee their worths are aligned with ours, that they take their fiduciary tasks properly, and that they're the best partners for us."

The $21m seed funding for BetDEX includes stakes taken by seven backers of US technology firms, including two big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying business operating with crypto-currencies.

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

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this approach. We will effectively compete against incumbents with a significantly remarkable item and low fees, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain innovation."

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

'Pool of talent'

However, he states that those who utilize its platform to run their own sports betting companies will have the ability to innovate and develop a broader variety of wagering items.

He stated the common share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX must permit that to fall listed below 1%.

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

Mr Eccles said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the way they are marketed to safeguard those who fight with problem sports betting.

He stated the group of around 500 software application engineers who helped develop FanDuel from Scotland revealed that it remains the location to develop a firm. BetDEX has the same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was developed on a highly skilled, really skilled engineering team, that built this item that might process countless bets and millions of users.

"There's a real talent pool of knowledgeable engineers who assisted us build our item and that's what we want to leverage for BetDEX also."

Related topics

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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