CEO Interview: Calvin Ayre, Bodog
"Bodog has an edgy, street image, and anything we could reproduce in that line could work. But clearly we're not going to start selling girl-guide cookies." eGaming Review's Jon Parker meets Bodog boss Calvin Ayre to discuss franchises, online poker, media venutures and the coffee business.
“WE DID A survey when I first came up with the name that showed that half of the people surveyed thought the word ‘Bodog’ was something to do with sex,” Bodog founder, “orignal egaming billionaire” and fugitive from the US authorities Calvin Ayre tells eGaming Review, “and 90% of them associated the word with fun. I said to myself ‘is this a winner, or is this a winner?'”
The remark is typical of Ayre, the Canadian maverick who embodies the first wave of online gambling success stories. The kind of industry representative that gives people like PartyGaming’s Jim Ryan nightmares. However, Ayre is openly unrepentant for his company’s illegal activity offering online betting and gaming to Americans, and is back in the limelight as he seeks publicity for the launch of his new online poker network, two new media ventures and coffee business.
“Over the last couple of years I have stepped back and asked myself where I could add most value to the Bodog brand,” he explains. “But I have a lot of good ideas I want to get out there and test, and the proof is always in the pudding. My wakeboarding has improved immensely in the last couple of years but now I want to get back into it.”
A continued irritant to the US authorities, Ayre has never faced prosecution for the massive profit Bodog has made from Americans gambling online. He moved Bodog to the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda in December 2006, many say because the company’s former Costa Rica headquarters, where he also lived at the time, was uncomfortbaly close to the US. Up til then, Ayre had featured on the cover of Forbes magazine to promote Bodog and gloat over his millions while others were trying to keep their heads down.
The second generation of ‘respectable’ egaming businesses, embodied by PartyGaming spending US$105m making its peace with America’s law enforcers earlier this year, fear that his return could endanger the respectability the industry has tried to build. But Ayre isn’t bothered.
“We want to be non-corporate,” he says. “I think the industry had got too corporate and that misses the market. People do business with entertainment companies because they want to have fun. If you don’t want to have fun with your money then you just open a bank account with it. Although come to think of it, these days your money is probably safer with Bodog…”
Brand strength is the principle behind Bodog’s franchise model, rolled out since 2006, post-Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which includes the Bodog Asia brand launched in May 2009 with Haydock Sports, Bodog’s US-facing brand licensed to Alwyn Morris, chief executive of the Mohawk Morris Gaming Group, in 2007, and the Bodog Europe brand run by Keith McDonnell that is currently ramping up marketing ahead of the start of the 2009-10 football season.
“I think the strongest business model you can put in place is the franchise,” Ayre says. “If you look at it from a brand perspective, there is no other brand that is in every market in the way that we are.”
FRANCHISE BODOG
As reported on EGRmagazine.com earlier this summer, the brand franchise is to be extended to a new Bodog poker network that will pool the liqudity of the existing Bodog poker franchises while allowing other operators to join it on a white label basis.
The network will be based in Kahnawake, the native American gambling centre of Canada, with a business development team operating from London. “The centre of gravity in the Bodog world is shifting to London, which is the centre of the gaming universe right now, and we’re taking advantage of it,” Ayre says.
“The UK is the most gaming friendly jurisdiction on the planet. You can stand in the middle of the street and shout ‘I run an online gambling company!’ and the only reaction will be ‘so what? Please stop shouting.’ The UK has completely opened up to the global network, and London has the infrastructure to support it.”
Also planned are two new media properties, both set for launch before Christmas. One, Bodog Life, is a retail targeted venture featuring lifestyle content, while the other, the relaunched CalvinAyre.com, will be a ‘tablog’, a tabloid-style blog covering egaming news. “Bodog Life is aimed at growing the Bodog brand globally,” Ayre explains. “The tablog is just for my own enjoyment.”
Bodog’s improbable-sounding coffee venture could be a Starbucks-like model combining Bodog-branded kiosks and shop fronts, Ayre says, or simply a line of Bodog-branded coffee. Ayre has already purchased the rights to the Illy coffee brand in a South American country he will not yet disclose, and is “immersing myself in the coffee industry and learning everything else I need to know about it, fast”.
Bodog is also seeking a franchise partner in Latin America. “I think the Bodog brand will really work there,” he says. “South Africa, New Zealand and Australia are good markets and one of the big franchises will look at those at some point, but they aren’t big markets. The place where we are really looking to sell a franchise is South America.”
However Ayre’s plans for the franchise don’t stop there. “The word ‘Bodog’ could be applied to anything associated with entertainment: gambling, coffee, sport – even a clothing line,” he says. “Bodog has an edgy, street image, and anything we could reproduce in that line could work. But clearly we’re not going to start selling girl-guide cookies.”
FACE TIME
Yet while Ayre concedes that both he and the Bodog brand have “a certain notoriety”, he denies that his personal reputation could present an obstacle to his business partners. This is in reference to his ever getting a licence to operate in the massive US online gambling market should current moves to legalise egaming by Congressman Barney Frank, the Poker Voters of America and others succeed.
“The reason for my having a reputation is that I ran a company that is more ‘face of the brand’ and traditional, and everyone else was more button-down,” Ayre says. “They were focusing on trust with consumers, but I felt that I wanted to emphasise fun and personality to distinguish the brand. But – and this is the important point – there is no distinction between us in law. I have no legacy in the US that is different to any shareholder or director in a company that left the US at the same time as I did.”
Which is only true to a point. While Ayre may have pulled out along with PartyGaming, Sportingbet, 888 and the others, Bodog’s franchise tie with Morris Mohawk Group means that is has essentially outsourced its ongoing US operation.
However, Ayre is as sceptical of the merits of attempts by rivals such as PartyGaming to court respectability with US authorites as he is of his own vulnerability to law enforcement.
“I don’t know if the word ‘settlement’ should be applied to Party, because they were never charged with anything. Settlement is not the right word,” he says. “I have to ask: if the settlement was such a good idea, why hasn’t the rest of the industry done it? Party are the oddballs here.”
MAN BEHIND THE MYTH
While Ayre has no plans to hand over cash to the US authorities any time soon, he says that he does “think that people who have achieved something have a duty to give something back” “ which is the reason he set up the Calvin Ayre Foundation in 2004, a charity fund concerned with environmental, development and child and animal welfare concerns.
However, Ayre has come to terms with never achieving respectability himself. He rides a Harley Davidson motorbike with Bodog written on each fork and casino chips and diamonds on the chassis, a birthday gift from his sister. “It’s not normally my style – I’m not a jewel-encrusted guy – but it does look pretty cool,” he says.
For all that, Ayre is sanguine about his reputation, resigned to a media profile that has served him well but taken on a life of its own. “There is a story that I am supposed to have slept with 8,000 women,” Ayre says, “and most people refer to it as if it were a direct quote. Much as I might like to have done that, I haven’t, but it is an untruth that has taken on a life of its own.
“There are people who want to see me a certain way and always will no matter what I do, and there are people who are perceptive to enough to see more than one dimension – and those are the people whose opinion matters anyway. But it doesn’t hurt me anymore.”
This article first appeared in the August edition of eGaming Review.