Online Gambling Kingpin Seeks British License

Ayre relishes in his exotic, jet-setting lifestyle; he is frequently seen at lsland paradises, partying with his Bodog Girls, drinking and laughing.

Online gambling is not the first industry rejected against all common sense by the United States government; rather, the country has long history of prohibition, from alcohol in the twenties to the ongoing war on drugs. The effect has largely been the same: large amounts of taxpayer money wasted, the inability to control neither the product nor the public desire for it (creating a scofflaw effect), and the rise of colorful yet unsavory characters viewed as Robin Hoods, a group which includes Al Capone.

Online gambling may have found its Capone in Bodog founder and owner Calvin Ayre. Ayre relishes in his exotic, jet-setting lifestyle; he is frequently seen at lsland paradises, partying with his Bodog Girls, drinking and laughing. He is no skulking criminal. Instead, he openly defies the U.S. government while using all technicalities at his disposal to keep his business running.

Still, as with Capone, when a business is made illegitimate, only the slipperiest and most questionable of characters find a way to keep operating. When the U.S. passed the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act, the aboveboard, publicly held, well-capitalized companies were forced to abandon the industry. Ayre, circling like a shark in the water, grew off the market demand that still existed, undeterred by the banking provisions that sealed payment methods off.

Ayre has a history of shady deals. His father, a Saskatchewan pig farmer, was convicted in 1989 of conspiracy to smuggle marijuana and went to prison.. Calvin was not charged, and denies involvement, but the circumstances remain murky. In 1996, Ayre was forced to settle with the British Columbia Securities Commission on charges that his management of his company, Bicer Medical Systems, Limited, had led to insider trading issues. Ayre is suspended from directorship of any public companies in British Columbia.

Although Bodog currently is licensed in Antigua, Ayre is attempting to establish Bodog as a legal operator in the United Kingdom. He has applied for a license, something much of the competition is avoiding due to Prime Minister Brown's exorbitant tax on remote gambling. The license has a requirement that the operator be "fit and proper". Ayre sees this as no problem, adding that he doesn't operate in the U.S. and thus is not answerable to American law.

Ayre continues to make a fortune dealing in gray areas and shady deals, a folk hero to some, a villain to others. Like Capone, the man might be brought down but the problem can only be corrected by removal of prohibition.  Would not the people of the United States be better served to have reputable, highly transparent companies operating under regulation and taxation, than to unintendedly enrich fly-by-night pirates like Calvin Ayre?