New Site Has Users Wager on News Stories

Nigel Eccles, a news junkie and former online betting site employee, wanted to try pursuing both interests at once. Thus was born Hubdub – a new website Eccles and three colleagues in Edinburgh, Scotland, assembled – where customers will bet for fun, not money, on the outcomes of real news stories.

The site launches Monday as an influential technology conference gets under way in Palm Desert, California – where Eccles plans to try drumming up support from investors.

Here's how it will work. After signing up, you'll receive 1,000 Hubdub dollars, play money that works only on the site. You can look at stories about, say, who will win the Florida Republican primary.

Guess right, and you'll win more Hubdub dollars. Lose, and your account will draw down. In the spirit of the board game Monopoly, where simply sticking it out is rewarded, you'll also get 20 new Hubdub dollars ever day you log in.

Eccles figures most people who like to bet on events are more interested in the bragging rights of being right than in actually winning money. He lured in his three partners – Tom Griffiths, Chris Stafford and Rob Jones – from another startup called Groopit, a social networking site launched last year in Edinburgh.

Eccles, who has worked on business strategy at Johnston Press PLC, a major regional newspaper publisher in the UK, said he saw how exciting sports betting could be when he worked at Flutter, a European online betting exchange that was sold to Betfair, a wagering site.

Eccles says Hubdub may adopt a business model like that of a fantasy sports league, where participants pay a fee to join and win rewards at the end of a certain period of time based on overall performance.

As in a fantasy league, Hubdub users who make the most successful predictions will be rewarded with being listed on a board of stars.

Despite its base in Scotland, Hubdub is focused squarely on the US market, Eccles said. And, to comply with US betting rules, no money bets can be placed through Hubdub.

Eccles said he has seed money, but the project is clearly in an early phase. He claimed the inspiration came from his personal experience with a poorly performing stock portfolio. He found he was constantly checking it online, in anguish.

"What I realized was it wasn't the fact that I had lost money, but my pride and feeling of self-worth had taken a real knock," Eccles said. "I think that's the case for a lot of people – it's not so much the cash, it's being right."