“Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”
The above quote stems from the 18th century, and it’s about the questionable logic of getting into a shouting match with someone who owns a very large soapbox (in those days, a printing press; in modern times, a digital media outlet). So, without further ado, let’s roll out the barrel and have a barrel of fun, shall we?
A few days back, we published an article on the news going around industry forums about the theft of the BetUS database by former employees who used said database as a springboard to launch a new site called Northbet.com. They cleverly intended to keep this project ‘low profile’, but as the forum threads show, this has been as much of a disaster as the rest of their ‘well thought out’ plans. Sure enough, players are receiving unsolicited mailouts and cold calls from Northbet — and ever since we went public with this story, we’ve been receiving unsolicited insults from anonymous posters, which suggests we hit something of a nerve (in media parlance, this means that we are right — but if we are wrong, we are all ears for the evidence so we can post the public mea culpa).
We’d hoped to be able to focus this discussion on the question of the stolen database, but the anonymous posters seem intent on shifting the focus away from Northbet and toward Bodog. This type of “shoot the messenger’s boss’ previous company” tactic is a classic ad hominem attack, which seeks to divert attention away from the issue by going after the character of a person or organization. As for why they’ve chosen Bodog as their weapon of mass distraction, well, we have a theory.
Our original article made note of the fact that BetUS coveted many a Bodog staffer (in the hope that these people might know the location of the secret formula of Bodog magic), but Calvin Ayre and others who worked at Bodog before it was sold to Alwyn Morris are adamant that BetUS never managed to lure away anything but very low-level Bodog employees that had already been let go for performance issues or something similar. BetUS achieved this either by significantly overpaying, or, in some cases, just hiring guys pretty much sight unseen as long as they had that magic Bodog word on their résumé. We suspect that the guys who poached the BetUS database may have been some of these low-hanging fruits. If they were in fact deemed expendable by Bodog, this would go a long way toward explaining (a) their antipathy toward Bodog, and (b) their spectacularly misinformed notions of what goes on behind the walls of the Bodog Compound. (More on this in a moment.)
Clearly, these junior staff would never have had access to the halls of power in the Bodog organization, and just as clearly, they are not qualified to understand the complex issues required to be a global powerhouse in this industry we all love. However, the real irony in this (if this theory bears itself to be true) is that in their rush to pay any price for the Bodog magic formula, BetUS have landed themselves in a very very embarrassing and painful situation. I was the writer that first broke this story here on CalvinAyre.com, and now that I see the reaction it has provoked, I intend to cover this to the fullest extent possible. Anyone who has any information on this story — including the name of the Bodog castaway that has become so upset now that his pilfering ways have been exposed — should send it to me by clicking on the Submit Breaking News button located to the right of this article.
Oh, yeah… about the Bodog Compound… For the record, the Compound is certainly spacious, but to believe (as one anonymous poster claims) that it’s large enough to “run all of [Bodog’s] wagering, linemaking and ecommerce” is downright preposterous. Still, the possibility that Northbet is conducting operations out of a washroom stall down at the Del Rey might explain their comical sense of scale. Oh, and keep an eye on your Del Rey ‘secretaries’, guys… We know for a fact that some of them work for other sportsbooks in CR. Hell, they ‘work’ for pretty much everyone in Costa Rica.
