Tag: "calvin ayre"
Slots.net redirects to Slots.com, Did Calvin Ayre’s Bodog Brand buy it?
2010 was an expensive year for Calvin Ayre when it came to buying domain names.
In June 2010, Calvin Ayre’s Bodog Brand purchased the domain name slots.com for a reported $5.5 million, which grabbed headlines for weeks. A month later in July, Bodog Brand acquired the Canadian top level country code domain, slots.ca, for $206,906 at Moniker.
It now looks like Calvin Ayre has continued his buying spree for more “slots” domains.
If you hadn’t noticed, the web address slots.net now re-directs to the slots.com website. Re-directing the name, was the same technique used for the slots.ca domain after its purchase.
It’s not confirmed yet whether Bodog Brand was the actual buyer of slots.net, but if I were a gambling man, I’d put my money on Calvin Ayre as the new owner. At the time of this story, the sale has gone unreported.
If a deal was cut, one can only guess that the price may have been in the seven figures. Last year, Poker.org sold for $1,000,000.
Calvin Ayre looking for feedback on $3.5 million domain name Slots.com
On Wednesday, Calvin Ayre’s Bodog issued a press release. The company is looking for feedback on its Slots.com web site which recently launched into beta.
“In this early launch period, Slots.com, is seeking feedback and giving customers the chance to be part of the growth plan by shaping the future of the site. The initial slots offering will see significant additions over the months as Slots.com reacts to the directives of its players,” reads the opening of the release.
Shortly after the press release went online, Jamie Hinks a writer for Calvin Ayre’s Tablog posted a story that talks more about the domain, and less about the website, entitled: Slots.com needs you!
“For a site that generates 35.1million hits on Google for “Slots” it’s little wonder that the amount paid was the most in 2010 and one of the top ten ever. Only second to Casino.com, Slots.com’s European Head of Marketing, Charlie Goodenough, believes that Slots.com is the best gaming domain in the world, better than even Poker.com because there are no strong brands in the space.”
Gambling domain names are an exciting space. As I wrote earlier in the week, the deal for gambling.com is expected to complete in the second quarter, and Calvin Ayre has been rumored to be a possible buyer. Also, later today, Governor Chris Christie is expected to make a decision on New Jersey’s internet gambling bill.
UPDATE: Governor Chris Christie has conditionally vetoed the bill. Hope isn’t lost though, as Bill Beaty reports over at CalvinAyre.com.
Best sales year possible for domains in 2011? Another big gambling domain goes up for sale
2011 could be the year gambling domain names hit the mega millions jackpot with properties like gambling.com already up for sale, which some expect could fetch as much as $20 million (its previous sale price back in 2005).
What looked like a good year in 2010 with the sale of Slots.com for $5.5 Million, could only be getting better in 2011, as online gambling developments take place in the United States with New Jersey being the first state to license and regulate online gambling.
Billionaire Calvin Ayre, the buyer of Slots.com, still hasn’t commented on whether he’ll bid on gambling.com.
But with more options on the market, Bodog Brand could have its sights set on a number of properties.
Tournament.com up for sale by Mandalay Media Group
Today, Eric Bianchi of Calvin Ayre’s Tablog is reporting that Costa Bingo and Casino Choice (Mandalay Media Group), have put the domain name Tournament.com up for sale.
Tournament.com is the latest name to come on the market, after creators of Costa Bingo and Casino Choice, Mandalay Media Group, put the domain up for sale.
Owners of Mandalay, Richard Skelhorn (pictured) and Alex Holt, said: “The word ‘tournament’ is very descriptive and generates over five million Google searches per month. It could be developed into a very powerful brand in the right hands.”
As far as what it was used for before, the site hosted pay-to-enter video game tournaments for games such as CounterStrike, but Skelhorn and Holt explained that is no longer a viable option.
“We believe that unless a content owner like EA approach it themselves and therefore remove the license fee element we will not see a third party operator again on the scale Tournament.com achieved.”
If you pay a visit to Tournament.com, you’ll be asked to fill out a short form asking for your name, company, email and a message.
Read more about the sale of Tournament.com.
Calvin Ayre has no comment on whether he’ll bid on Gambling.com
Calvin Ayre had no comment on whether he’ll bid on the domain name Gambling.com, which sold for nearly $20 million in 2005.
That’s according to a story published by Steven Stradbrooke on CalvinAyre.com on Wednesday, after a BlackJack Champ story speculated that the billionaire who purchased Slots.com for $5.5 Million in 2010 would own the domain by the end of the month.
It’s not big news that Calvin Ayre could be a potential buyer of Gambling.com as many could have guessed. But this is the first time since Gambling.com went up for sale that Calvin Ayre has made some type of public comment on whether he’ll bid.
Here’s what Steven Stradbrooke had to say about the possibility of Bodog Brand buying the name.
The domain’s owners, MediaCorp, have set a reserve bid of $9m. Is L’Atelier about to witness another multi-million deal done with mobile phones in one hand and beers in the other?
Sadly for L’Atelier staff hoping that the Bodog Brand bigwigs would make it rain again, the odds are against it. While Calvin will tell anyone who’ll listen that the Slots.com purchase was the best deal he’d ever made, the best we could get out of him about these gambling.com rumors was ‘no comment’.
Bottom line, none of us here at CalvinAyre.com has, as of yet, received any invitation to L’Atelier on the day of the auction. So, as far as we’re concerned, the whole ‘Bodog Brand to bid for gambling.com domain’ thing just isn’t happening.
Steven injects a bit of humor into the story and sacrcasm saying that when Calvin Ayre said no comment, “at the time he was still hung over from his New Year’s excesses, so while we’re sure we said ‘domain sales,’ he may have thought we said ‘no grain ales’ and he was trying to be ironic or something.”
Yes, Bodog Brand seems like a pretty good bet to be the new owner of Gambling.com.
Time to double down on gambling domains? NJ passes legislation to license, regulate online gambling
It might be time to start looking over those gambling domains in your portfolio.
Today, New Jersey approved online gambling legislation in what PokerNews calls, “…an historic day for online poker”.
New Jersey became the first state to pass legislation to license and regulate online poker Monday as the State Assembly voted 63-11 to approve a bill that would permit Internet wagering for New Jersey residents through hubs based at Atlantic City casinos. The State Senate had passed the bill 29-5 in November.
The legislation now will go to the desk of Gov. Chris Christie. He has 45 days to sign it into law, conditionally veto it (returning it to the legislature for changes) or veto it absolutely. If no action is taken during the 45 days, the bill automatically becomes law. Gov. Christie hasn’t taken a public stance on this bill but he has made it a priority to improve the revenue stream for Atlantic City, so it is not believed he would veto it.
If 2010 was any indication of the demand for gambling domains with Slots.com selling for $5.5 million, 2011 might be even better.
Gambling.com is up for sale, and positive news like this can only help its chances of selling for a record-breaking price of $20 million or more.
And it’s not just online Poker that was approved, as PokerNews points out, “The bill allows not only for poker to be offered online but also casino games and other forms of gambling.”
It looks as if one of Calvin Ayre’s 2011 predictions has already happened, but what it means for instituting online gambling at the federal level, won’t be known anytime soon.
Over at Calvin Ayre, a large “Victory” image is gracing the home page of the website. Peter Amsel writes, “How ironic is it that New Jersey, the butt of so many jokes as a backwater bastion of big hair and unrefined tastes, especially when compared to their supposedly cutting edge neighbors in New York City, would prove to be the trendsetters here?”. In the comments section, Calvin Ayre left a note saying, “…so far my predictions from last year and this are all unfolding as outlined”
eGaming Review tells story of how online gambling domains have advantage over offline addresses
The most recent ”domain name” story on Calvin Ayre which discussed the sale of Poker.com.au for $100,000, pointed to an article over at eGaming Review that described how online gambling websites have the definite advantage over offline destinations like Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
All things being equal, when you look at a gambling website with content and games, what gives one online gambling site the advantage over another?
Having the right web adress.
The story titled “It’s all in the name” opens by noting the big-ticket sales in 2010 of Slots.com and Poker.org. Slots.com sold for $5.5 million, while Poker.org sold for $1 million.
Nora Nanayakkara, the author of the eGaming Review story, digs into gambling.com (which is up for sale at Sedo) and other gambling domains, and makes a number of good points.
From the SEO perspective, she writes: “Our own research shows that one-in-six searches come from direct navigation and that when it comes to Gambling.com the domain offers great SEO benefits. It currently sits at the number one and two spots in Google’s own rankings and since the term “gambling” is searched around 1.1 million times a month, the potential for this to scale even further could be much greater.”
She brings up branding, development, domain sales, visibility, advertising revenues, lead generation, recognition, and several other ways companies are benefiting from going online with category-killing names.
Unlike some stories riddled with errors that are written by people outside of the domain industry, the eGaming Review story is a good, quick read.
Read more about the rewards of investing in a premium domain name.
Calvin Ayre offers up 8 predictions for the gambling industry in 2011
If you’re a gambling domain investor and are curious about what Calvin Ayre has to say about the gambling industry, today he offered up 8 predictions for what’s to come in 2011.
The buyer behind Slots.com and Slots.ca in 2010, Calvin Ayre didn’t hint at the sale price of Gambling.com, or specifically anything about domain names, but maybe that’s because he’s eyeing the category-killing domain for himself.
He certainly has the cash to do so.
In July, the self-made billionaire behind Bodog, purchased Slots.ca for $206,906. Shortly before that, he purchased Slots.com for a deal totalling $5.85 million.
Calvin Ayre’s 2011 Predictions
Calvin Ayre opens his article on the less serious side with predictions like “Harry Reid will attempt (and fail) to slip a 1,900 page online bingo bill into a Senate roll call” and “At least one major poker company is killed by the cruel hand of the marketplace; two others commit ritual suicide after being bullied once too often on CalvinAyre.com.”
But if you scroll to the bottom of the story, Calvin Ayre offers up several serious predictions:
The launch by (at least) one US state of its own online gambling operation will set in motion a process that ultimately undermines any attempt at instituting online gambling at the federal level
2011 will see a continued increase in global stature for privately-held, London-based online gaming companies like Bet365 at the expense of publicly-traded companies and private companies based in less professional jurisdictions (where it’s much harder to build world-class teams).
Europe will continue its Balkanization trend, with each country having its own set of rules (also referred to as walled gardens in some reports).
Read Calvin Ayre’s full list of serious and not-so-serious gambling predictions for 2011.
Calvin Ayre coined the term “Tablog”, now it’s up for Best iGaming Community
While you’ve probably visited CalvinAyre.com, you may not have realized it before, but the web site is also referred to as Tablog.com. The term was coined by Calvin Ayre in 2009 in order to describe a new breed of blog - a tablog – “tabloid” + “blog”. Typing in the web address tablog.com will also take you to CalvinAyre.com.
While the search volume for the term “tablog” isn’t big, Calvin Ayre has managed to get it listed in Wikipedia.
“Tablog”‘ is a neologism (a portmanteau word conjoining “tabloid” and “blog”) and refers to a specific form of blog, usually maintained by an individual or organization, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, graphics, video, and with links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The element that distinguishes a tablog from other forms of blogs is the selection of material or means of presentation, which tends to sensationalize, emphasize or exaggerate for effect, and which often focuses on scandalous information relating to the personal lives of celebrities or of members of their target industry.
In addition to Wikipedia, Calvin Ayre’s tablog as he calls it, which launched in the fall of 2009, is up for an award.
Jamie Hinks, a writer for CalvinAyre.com, announced the blog is up for Best iGaming Community. The competition includes BingoPort, CasinoMeister, CasinoAffiliatePrograms, Coinflip, EquipoAzartia, Global Gaming Events, GPWA, PokerStrategy, and SportyTrader.
Though being the first to register a popular term is rewarding, imagine coining your own term. In August 2009, Calvin Ayre did an interview with CasinoCity where he talked about the launch of his tablog and the term. The interview was re-published by GPWA.
When asked what his plans are for CalvinAyre.com, he replies, laughing: “Well, as you know, I’m not a big fan of a ‘me too’ approach to anything. CalvinAyre.com will be something new, something entirely fresh in the online gaming space. I’ve coined the term “tablog” for the site – a “tabloid blog” – because it will be a site focused on developments in the online gaming world globally, and my perspectives on it, but done in a completely fresh and entertaining way that doesn’t take itself too seriously. People will agree or disagree with me and they may love it or hate it, but I can guarantee it won’t be boring and it’ll be entertaining.”
Calvin is no stranger to fame, respect, and envy, but he also knows how to handle inevitable criticism from those who read about him virtually. This is a great talent to have mastered in executive blogging world as one of the keys to executive blog success is being able to make fun of yourself and admit to your mistakes. Another key to executive blog success is providing a doorway into the personal life, hobbies, and opinions of the executive, also something that Calvin has mastered and is happy to share. Combine this vision with online gambling industry news and gossip, cool videos, exotic girls, conference and event reporting, and additional “famous” recurring characters and you’ve got yourself an online gambling industry…tablog.
Though Calvin Ayre gets credit for coining the term, he wasn’t the first to register the domain. The first owner (dating back to 2000), had a blog online long before blogs became mainstream.
Slots.com buyer Calvin Ayre: Not for nothing do people say ‘content is king’
On CalvinAyre.com today Billionaire Calvin Ayre wrote an article about the Adweek Media and Harris Interactive survey that indicates: “almost two-thirds (63%) of Americans claim to ignore internet advertising”. Calvin Ayre’s article centers around the same survey that Robin Wauters discussed over at TechCrunch earlier this month.
While Robin discussed the results of the survey, little insight into how companies trying to build their brand should go about it online was offered.
However, Calvin Ayre did.
The data in this survey highlights the folly of any company attempting to build brand value predominantly via online advertising. Seriously, the only people getting rich off this arrangement are the companies who get paid to host the ads. Not for nothing do people say ‘content is king’. The branded content I’ve created over the years for the Bodog Brand and its associated entertainment properties – BodogFight, BodogMusic, Calvin Ayre WildCard Poker — not only made a significantly greater impression on viewers than a plain old banner or pop-up ad, it continues to resonate years after its initial release, and will continue to do so for however long digital media exists.
Calvin Ayre knows a thing or two about building an online brand. As the public face of Bodog, he launched the company with little more than $10,000 in 1994. He is now a billionaire.
Will the sale of Gambling.com even come close to $20MM (its previous sale price)?
Fusible.com was the first blog in the Domain industry to report about the auction of Gambling.com, shortly after reading a tweet sent through Calvin Ayre’s web site announcing Media Corp had retained Sedo to sell Gambling.com.
Hours earlier, Media Corp had issued a press release through BusinessWire: ‘Whilst the Group has received a number of very significant indicative offers for www.gambling.com, the Board believes that a formal auction process with the World’s leading domain name broker will achieve the best possible outcome and valuation as Sedo is uniquely positioned to present the domain to global gambling brands and other qualified buyers.’
Purely a Domain Sale?
Gambling.com, if you recall, sold for nearly $20 million in 2005. However, the sale wasn’t purely a domain sale.
According to Sedo back in 2005: ‘The sale of Gambling.com turned heads when it hit the multi-million dollar mark and sold for 20 million dollars. Also included in the sale were benefits of a direct mail database and affiliate program connections.’
In 2010, will Gambling.com even close to its multi-million dollar sales price from 2005?
Back in 2005, Casinomeister wrote about the sale.
“Gambling.com is the number 1 listing on google.com for “Gambling” search and has over 500 other internet and affiliate sites linking to Gambling.com globally. It also has extensive expertise in direct mailing and has built a double opt-in database of over 200,000 members.”
Times have changed. Gambling.com is no longer the number 1 listing. Though type in traffic is always a nice perk, long term businesses want to own the search engines.
What are people saying?
Over at Gambling Portal Webmasters Association, the site that was originally tapped to auction Slots.com, members are a bit skeptical that Gambling.com will get anywhere near that $20 million price tag. Here’s a look at some of the comments:
Graham says, “20 million?? I just don’t see this as good of a domain as something like onlinecasinos.com, sportsbetting.com, casinos.com, etc. where the people are coming to the site knowing exactly what they want to do. Gambling is too broad and I don’t think would convert that great, nor have the player value that some other terms might carry.”
