Sports Betting Innovator Launches New Start-up
Douglas FraserBusiness and economy editor, Scotland
One of Scotland's most successful technology teams is starting once again with a brand-new firm - and has actually protected the most significant initial investment of any British start-up company.
BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded dream sports wagering website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.
The brand-new firm has seed funding of $21m.
It intends to introduce a new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports wagering, in the first half of next year.
The company is hiring staff 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 method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising assessment.
Mr that one thing he discovered from the FanDuel experience was to select financiers thoroughly.
He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the value 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 ideal partners for us."
The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation firms, including 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in investing in companies operating with crypto-currencies.
Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting market 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 versus incumbents with a noticeably remarkable product and low charges, which is now possible with the arrival of the blockchain innovation."
As chairman of the new company, Mr Eccles stated it could look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online companies.
'Pool of skill'
However, he states that those who use its platform to run their own wagering companies will have the ability to innovate and create a broader series of betting products.
He stated the normal share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX must enable that to fall listed below 1%.
The company will develop its own wagering 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 issue gaming.
He stated the group of around 500 software application engineers who helped build FanDuel from Scotland showed that it remains the place to construct a company. BetDEX has the same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.
"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was developed on a highly skilled, extremely talented engineering team, that constructed this product that might process countless bets and countless users.
"There's a genuine talent pool of knowledgeable engineers who assisted us build our item which's what we desire to leverage for BetDEX also."