Bodog's Ayre is King of Bling

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The Guardian of the United Kingdom did a feature article in the business section on Calvin Ayre, the founder of the Bodog Brand. In the article The Guardian described Ayre as "web gambling's king of bling". This is a most appropriate description because the high profile online gambling entrepreneur recently purchased Slots.com for a phenomenal sum and hosted a, "anything goes" party for his 50th birthday in Dublin. "I invited 50 girls to my birthday party in Dublin, one for each year," he told The Guardian.

Ayre's father was a pig-farmer who was convicted of smuggling marijuana. Ayre was involved in a share-trading scandal in the 1990s. It was then that he created the Bodog brand and nurtured it to be one of the largest online gambling brands in the world. As the profits from the business grew so did Ayre's lavish lifestyle. He judged televised lingerie contests during the Super Bowl and appeared in Playboy, though fully clothed. He claims to have bought 3,000 copies of the issue for himself. Ayre owns two homes in Vancouver and three in Antigua. He also owns pads in Costa Rica, Thailand and the Philippines, where he hosts parties for big-spending gamblers, rap artists, armed bodyguards and bikini-clad Bodog Girls.

With the world at his feet the online gambling's king of bling says that there are three places he will never go. The first is the United States. Bodog made its name and Ayre made his fortune in the United States. But the passing of the UIGEA in 2006 changed the future for Ayre. He told The Guardian that his net worth was the highest in 2005. He was forced to leave the United States and remodel his business from an online gambling operator to the franchiser of the Bodog brand. Ayre will never return to his home province of Saskatchewan in Canada, where the remoteness bores him. The third no go spot is Poland, where he got mugged. The story is so clichéd that one wonders how a smart operator like Ayre fell for it. Two young women tricked him into entering a bar, where a waiting group of men robbed him of £220. That is less than small change for Ayre but it is the ignominy that hurt him.

Coming to the business end of the feature Ayre said, "If you ask me what's going on in the United States, it's clear that the United States is gearing itself up to enter the industry." Though the Bodog brand was mentioned in the aftermath of Black Friday, Ayre says that there is no way that it can be dragged into the case. He is personally focusing on the Asian online gambling market. He also sponsors two football clubs, West Bromwich Albion and Ayre United.

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