Nigel Eccles has announced the launch of BetDEX Labs, a decentralised sports betting exchange built on the blockchain rails of Solana. Eccles’ co-founders in BetDEX are former FanDuel senior engineers Varun Sudhakar, who will serve as CEO and Stuart Tonner, who will be CTO. Also joining the BetDEX team will be FanDuel Director of Talent Acquisition Andy Murray, plus the engineering team of Pawel Witek, Drew Alexander, Baird Spencer and Ewan Meldrum. BetDEX aims to deliver a decentralised betting exchange, enabling users to benefit from low transaction costs while eliminating counterparty risk.
Nigel Eccles co-founded FanDuel in 2009 with his wife, Lesley. It was US market’s first daily fantasy sports (DFS) business in the US and soon expanded across the US, thanks largely to VC backing of over $400m. Eccles left the company in 2017, prior to the Supreme Court’s repeal of federal PASPA laws that allowed states to liberalise sports betting markets, and resulted in the $470m takeover of FanDuel by what Paddy Power Betfair was then and is now Flutter Entertainment.
