Five times Calvin Ayre bucked the system and won

Steven Stradbrooke
May 10, 2011
1 Comment

Calvin Ayre believes in taking the road less traveled. There’s fewer traffic jams, for one thing. As we continue our countdown to his 50th birthday on May 25, we examine five moments where Calvin broke with the herd and blazed his own trail… to success.

CALVIN CARES
When Bodog debuted, the online gambling sector had become crowded. Calvin needed a brand differentiator; a way to make his fledgling company stand out from the pack. Most of Calvin’s competition consisted of guys who’d been credit street bookies up north; guys who’d literally never thought about customer service. Back home, pre-internet, they’d been the only game in town. Just by taking your bet, they were doing you a favor. Fuck you, and you’re welcome.

Calvin felt if he could use customer service as a selling point, he could turn Bodog’s customers into goodwill ambassadors. That could transform a perceived cost-center into a revenue-generator. So Calvin developed a strategy, brought in some good people and went the extra mile. It worked so well, Calvin ultimately instituted a policy whereby every employee, regardless of level, had to spend a week handling customer service. Eventually, the other companies that had scoffed at such a ‘waste of resources’ were compelled to follow suit.

calvin-ayre-rabbit-hatBUILT FOR COMFORT AND SPEED
While still in university, Calvin developed a curiosity about tax havens. Over the next few years, he took holidays in a dozen different jurisdictions, from Switzerland to Vanautu, quizzing any banker willing to speak with him. Along the way, Calvin discovered Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions.

Fast forward to 2001, when the major credit card companies suddenly blocked all gambling transactions. Credit cards were by far the preferred payment method and sportsbetting handle fell off as much as 80%. The industry had a collective conniption. In those days, outside of the actual bookmaking, most online gambling companies farmed out every aspect of their business to a smorgasbord of companies. Wanting more control than that business model could offer, Calvin had brought everything in-house. This vertically integrated model would now prove its worth.

Bodog had been the first online gambling outfit to offer the ACH option, but on a limited basis. If they wanted to take full advantage of this crisis/opportunity, they’d need to ramp up the ACH ASAP. Calvin convened the team, made sure everyone understood their specific department’s role. The network guys started installing ‘big pipes’ to handle the expected increase in traffic. Promotion people got the word out to affiliates. Software designers made sure the option was displayed front and center where bettors could see it. Customer service’s role was to educate bettors that ACH didn’t require them to give Bodog any more information than was printed on one of their bank checks. Actually, Bodog didn’t call it ACH, they renamed it Direct Bank Transfer and claimed it was a proprietary service. It wasn’t true, but it confused the competition just long enough to ensure Bodog was the only game in town for a critical period.

As a result, while the other companies were running about like headless chickens, Bodog was open for business, and business soon tripled. Eventually, the other companies caught on that they too could use the ACH option, but the four- or five-month window of exclusivity put Bodog on the map.

calvin-greed-good-2(LONG TERM) GREED IS GOOD
As a new millennium dawned, the Caribbean/Central American online gambling industry had sufficiently matured to where the monies being earned caught the attention of pinstriped investors in the UK. Whoops of joy were soon heard across the region as one operator after another saw his name on a fat check drawn on a UK bank. Calvin could have cashed out along with them; he certainly received enough offers. But he hadn’t spent so much time building something up just to turn it over to someone else, especially not just as the fun was beginning. As time has demonstrated (and as this site often points out), giving public markets a wide berth can do wonders for a company’s sense of self-determination.

DON’T FENCE HIM IN
Unlike his competitors, who saw themselves strictly as being in the gambling business, Calvin saw online gambling as a form of digital entertainment, which meant Calvin was in the entertainment business. One of the reasons Calvin chose the Bodog name was that it didn’t have anything specific to do with gambling. Calvin would soon give Bodog all sorts of different associations, including a music label, a television production house and a mixed martial arts league. Some of these were more successful than others, but all of them helped drive awareness of Bodog’s core gambling product better than any mere marketing campaign.

Calvin-Ayre-Shannon-ElizabethNATURE ABHORS A MEDIA VACUUM
Because most of the early gambling companies consisted of former US credit bookies with a tradition of staying off the radar, almost all of the names the online gambling public saw were pseudonyms. Calvin himself used a rather famous alias back in the day. Eventually, he realized that this collective eagerness to keep one’s head down had created a tremendous business opportunity. With that, Calvin decided he would become the face of a faceless industry.

In preparation for this role, Calvin underwent the usual ‘media training,’ but ultimately realized he was better off being himself. If he could manage to rein in his profanity, he’d do just fucking fine. He hired a camera crew to follow him 24/7, which allowed him to get comfortable having a lens stuck in his face, even while he was on the bog.

For about 18 whirlwind months, Calvin appeared in commercials, walked red carpets and hosted everything from celebrity parties to a concert & poker weekend in Hawaii for US troops. He did buttoned-down interviews for the business press and backflips off a boat for VH1. Calvin shook a lot of hands, kissed a lot of babes and threw a lot of gun signs. It was a lot harder than it looked. (So he says.) But by the time he decided he needed a break, he’d significantly boosted the Bodog brand’s profile and that of the entire online gambling sector. So if you see Calvin at his 50th birthday/Seven Deadly Sins party in Dublin on May 25 during the iGaming Super Show, be sure to say ‘happy birthday’… and thanks.

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Tags: Article, Bodog, Calvin Ayre, iGaming Super Show, seven deadly sins
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  • http://www.facebook.com/calvinayre Calvin Ayre

    Funny thing is that Pilar Catala has been running around telling the industry that she pioneered ACH for online gaming in the US. I was the one that first did this back in the 90's, then I taught my first eCom person and eventually a number of years later I taught Pilar when I promoted her. She learnt a bit too well as she was quickly double dipping. So she not only steals money from me, but now steals my history. Maybe she can steal my relationship with the DoJ also now that she is such a famous eCom processor :-)