A Dog's Life: Ayre in Macau with his friends, before he "retired." | Photograph by Mark Leong
Work, Work, Work: Ayre builds his with Zara Taylor and a gaggle of Chinese models, at the Macau club Cubic. | Photograph by Mark Leong
At 11:30, they arrived -- a line of Chinese models.
"Hello, sexy girls!"
Ayre told me that he had instructed Labrie, who passed the buck to a local contact, to find models who spoke English, because at the last party he threw here -- two nights earlier -- it was hard to do much more than smile in awkward silence. I told him that before I'd arrived, his publicist had told me, via email, that one of Labrie's skills was the ability "to pull hot girls out of her ass anywhere in the world."
"Fawn gets it," he said. "It isn't sexist. Guys will be guys. How much would this party suck without girls?"
Then, for the better part of four hours, Ayre smiled, danced, smoked the occasional cigarette, and drank champagne. He was in his element, building the Bodog brand. Was he having fun or acting? Is there even a difference?
And that was the last time I saw Calvin Ayre, an apparently happy man about to jet off for Thailand and planning to invade Cannes for the film festival in May with a string of flashy publicity stunts. Two months later, I received the following email from Susan Mainzer, his publicist:
As of 5 p.m. today, I am no longer with Bodog. Be psyched, you probably got the last ever Calvin Ayre interview, see attached.
The accompanying press release, dated April 18, read like a sample letter from the Textbook of Lawyerly Obfuscation:
Calvin Ayre, the internationally noted billionaire playboy founder of Bodog, will be retiring from his largely ceremonial role as the face of Bodog. Additionally, he will no longer be involved in Bodog operationally. In mid-2007, he successfully transferred ownership of the Bodog brand in North America to the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group... . Ayre will be taking some time to himself in his home in Antigua and will continue to support charitable opportunities through the Calvin Ayre Foundation.
One thing that stood out was the phrasing of Bodog's ownership change. Up to this point, Ayre had always explained the association with Morris Mohawk as a "licensing" arrangement, but his farewell missive stated that he had "transferred ownership."
When I checked back with Bodog's Web site, the links to Ayre's blog and foundation had vanished from the top of the home page. But if you backdoor your way in -- by typing calvinayrelife.com -- you can still see his final blog post: "You've likely heard the rumblings and rumors...I'm packing it in!"
It's an appealing exit story, especially if you're a member of the cult of Ayre. You go, bro! Take the money and run! Yet only a few weeks prior, for April Fools', Ayre had put up a trailer for his "upcoming" reality show, Calvin's Heir (in which nine women supposedly impregnated by the mogul compete to deliver his successor). Why continue to pull stunts like that if his retirement was imminent? And why would he have dragged me to Macau to create a story about him leading Bodog's charge abroad? Surely he would have preferred to exit in grand style. A bungee jump from the Eiffel Tower, say, followed by a party at which 8,000 naked Brazilian girls assemble to form the Bodog logo, visible from space.
I dialed Mainzer's cell phone, and it forwarded to the desk of Greg Godden, the director of PR for Morris Mohawk, in Kahnawake. "All I know is what's in the press release," he said. Ayre would be unreachable from this moment forward, he added, and Alwyn Morris was also unavailable.
When I finally reached Mainzer, Bodog's publicist confirmed that this was no hoax -- even she'd been blindsided. "We were planning our next adventures in Cannes," she said.
Mainzer suggested the abrupt change might have been related to some difficulties Bodog had been having with its English gaming license. The implication: Ayre's high profile was giving the British Gaming Commission pause in the application process.
Christopher Costigan of Gambling911.com, Ayre's coconspirator in the days of Cole Turner, was equally surprised. Ayre had called him from Cuba, Costigan said, to break the "retirement" news. Bodog's marketing department, too, had called -- in the middle of the night -- with a demand that he remove a section of his site devoted to Ayre because it gave the appearance that Ayre wasn't really quitting. "I don't know what to think of it," Costigan told me. "Something must have happened. I didn't see this coming. I'm not buying it." Costigan said that he could only speculate, that maybe Ayre "got tipped off" that some sort of legal action was afoot. He explained that industry insiders were reeling over a recent incident that did not make the news: A well-known i-gaming bookmaker named Rick -- there is only a first name -- had gotten arrested in Panama while attempting to renew his U.S. passport. Costigan said that Ayre mentioned that it had "nothing to do with Rick," which of course made him think that maybe it had a lot to do with Rick. "I think there's a concern that they can get you just about anywhere," Costigan told me.
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
