You can be the nicest and most successful guy in the world, but if the US government decides it doesn’t like you then you could have a problem.
That’s pretty much the current position for Calvin Ayre, the Canadian gambling tycoon who founded a six billion dollar a year business through his online brand Bodog.
The difficulty for Mr Ayre is that US authorities allege he funded part of it by taking bets from American residents, in defiance of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act
When AGI saw Mr Ayre in Macau a year ago, he didn’t stay for cocktails, glancing sceptically at our digital voice recorder as if it were some kind of FBI listening device. Does that make us an alleged accessory?
Now the indefatigable Mr Ayre has taken on a new challenge—and a potentially equally robust jurisdictional power—in the form of the People’s Republic of China.
He is said to be trying to crack the challenging China online market. The plan appears to be to promote play for fun games that should in theory be under the radar of China’s Internet censors, then use the customer database to market an online sports wagering service to them. Getting the money is always the hardest part in China, and he may be hard pressed to find affiliate partners.
As one Europe-based online gaming executive told AGI at a recent conference in Macau: “Calvin is a great guy, but if you want to do business in the States, you just can’t go anywhere near him.”
