It’s hard to think of two more stylistically opposite online gambling news sites than eGamingReview and CalvinAyre.com. The former is very reserved, traditional, dignified… proper. The latter is, er, not. Yet there they were, sharing a table, plenty of champagne and the occasional furtive glance at the International Gaming Awards on Monday night.
As CalvinAyre.com was the official video media sponsor of the IGA’s, its staff were given the premier table at the event, and they thought, hey, who better to share this with than their second favorite online gaming news site. The evening itself was a rousing success, raising over £18k to benefit two deserving organizations, Care International and Children with Leukemia, with the Calvin Ayre Foundation contributing £3200 to that total.
But back to that dinner table and the meeting of media minds. The 400-odd IGA attendees could scarcely stop talking about it. Not since Walt Disney’s Lady & The Tramp has there been such a pairing. The only thing that would have made the illusion more complete would have been if musical guests The String Divas had played Bella Notte. I heard Calvin even nudged the last meatball over to EGR’s side of the table with his nose.
Frankly, we could have predicted this night would come. So might anyone who saw The Smoking Gun Calendar of the Year, a 12-part collection of “the best shots ever sent to eGamingReview.” The number of months that are Bodog-related suggests the editors may be considering renaming their operation EGAyre. Of course, there’s the Bodog brand founder himself, Calvin Ayre, as Mr. April. (His birthday is in May, actually. The party’s in Dublin. Consider yourself invited.) The honor of kicking off the year went to Ed Pownall, the Bodog brand’s global PR head.
So yeah, two months out of eight. Pretty compelling evidence of a serious bromance, we’d say. What? Yes, yes, we’re aware that there are twelve months in a year. But the lower third of our TSG Calendar was missing when we got it, thus the last four months were missing. So we had to guess whom – based on the model EGR had followed up to that point — might have filled those September through December months. We think we got it right…
Check out the IGA 2011 winners, picture gallery, last year’s and this year’s IGA highlights video here.
