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
I called I. Nelson Rose, one of the preeminent experts on gaming law, who has advised Ayre in the past, and floated a theory: Maybe Ayre was taking one for the proverbial team, allowing Bodog to move forward in the U.K. and beyond by sacrificing himself.
"That's very, very possible," Rose said. "And probably makes more sense than any other theory."
Regulatory change is gaining momentum in the United States. California is moving toward approving intrastate online poker, which would set a powerful precedent. And on April 26, Representatives Ron Paul and Barney Frank proposed a bill to roll back enforcement of the UIGEA and eventually institute a national policy of regulated online gaming. "Although I personally believe gambling to be a dumb waste of money," Paul said, "American citizens should be just as free to spend their money playing online poker as they should be to buy a used car."
If Bodog were ever to hope to participate freely in a regulated U.S. market, it would almost certainly have to do so without Ayre in the picture. Two comparable sites, PartyGaming and 888.com, are known to be negotiating with the United States, the idea being that they will pay huge fines to clear their names. In those cases, the founders have already stepped away.
The industry's market size has grown from zero in 1990 to somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 billion in annual revenue. By 2010, says Martin Owens Jr., another prominent industry lawyer, it will be "at least $20 billion, and that's not including cell phones," which could be i-gaming's killer app. Internet gaming is legal in the U.K. and Australia and chunks of Asia. The E.U. and the WTO both support widespread regulation. The United States, eventually, will get in line, which would open the doors to not only the casino giants -- your MGMs and Harrahs -- but also the giants of the Web.
I thought back to something Ayre had said -- in jest, I thought -- in Macau: "Can you imagine how much money Microsoft would make if they rolled out their industry-leading suite of casino games? Or Google? You wanna give me a nightmare? Just tell me that's going to happen. I will retire tomorrow. I'll be a full-time partyer. I'm gonna go pro."
Maybe he is partying full time, or really will resurface soon to focus on his foundation, building schools and combating bear-bile farming from his Caribbean compound. Whatever the case, he's doing it quietly for now. Peter Gold, the general manager of the handicapping site VegasInsider.com and a close friend of Ayre, relayed a message to Ayre in mid-May that I had been asking around. Ayre's blithe reply: that he had been planning to leave "for years" and that he was just "hanging out, chilling." And that he'd be back -- but "not for a couple of years."
Sue Schneider, of Interactive Gaming News, who has known Ayre since the mid-1990s, sees a grimmer future. "The DOJ continues to go after founders, even those who are out of the business," she told me. Leaving the picture "is not going to insulate him -- at all." (A DOJ spokesperson wouldn't confirm that or comment on Ayre, except to point me to existing case law.)
I reminded Schneider that until the end, Ayre was swearing he'd broken no laws, and that he was living happily ever after.
"That attitude is a little passé. He can think he's safe," she said. "But he's not."
Josh Dean is a freelance writer and infrequent gambler based in New York. This is his first Fast Company feature.
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