I saw the Forbes piece on self-made "billionaire" Calvin Ayre. Somebody please explain to me how he's a billionaire? While Bodog has been extremely successful the past couple of years, and Calvin has worked extremely hard to get where he's at, I still don't understand how he's a billionaire.
From the information in the article, which Forbe's facts came directly from Calvin himself, he has $25 million is Canadian and Costa Rican real estate and $40 million hidden away in Swiss banks. That's great...but where's the billion?
In the article it says that Bodog's 2005 gross income was $210 million and that 26% was profit, or $54.6 million. That's what Ayre reports, although bookmakers have a tendacy to overstate the bottom line sometimes. The article goes on to naively suggest that the online sportsbook is worthy of a price at least 18 times earnings because that's what 2 similar publicly traded European ventures go for. 18 times earnings...Disney and Bank of America don't even trade at a P/E that high. That's where they fly off the tracks, in my opinion. 95% of Bodog's income comes from the U.S., which is constantly threatening to pass anti-gambling legislation. Things can change very quickly in the offshore gambling world. From what I've heard, sportsbooks in CR frequently sell in the 2 to 4 times earnings range because of the very high risk involved.
By no means am I slamming Calvin, who deserves everything he has earned, but going by the data supplied by Calvin himself, I would place his net worth at 150 to 300 million. That's still an extremely exclusive net worth, but nowhere near a billion. I think that some gambling magazine said it was worth a billion and Calvin, being the marketing genious that he is, ran with it and kept saying it so often that it became accepted as fact.
Does anyone agree with this, or am I the only one that thinks Forbes got duped and Ayre got some priceless publicity free of charge in this publicity coop?
From the information in the article, which Forbe's facts came directly from Calvin himself, he has $25 million is Canadian and Costa Rican real estate and $40 million hidden away in Swiss banks. That's great...but where's the billion?
In the article it says that Bodog's 2005 gross income was $210 million and that 26% was profit, or $54.6 million. That's what Ayre reports, although bookmakers have a tendacy to overstate the bottom line sometimes. The article goes on to naively suggest that the online sportsbook is worthy of a price at least 18 times earnings because that's what 2 similar publicly traded European ventures go for. 18 times earnings...Disney and Bank of America don't even trade at a P/E that high. That's where they fly off the tracks, in my opinion. 95% of Bodog's income comes from the U.S., which is constantly threatening to pass anti-gambling legislation. Things can change very quickly in the offshore gambling world. From what I've heard, sportsbooks in CR frequently sell in the 2 to 4 times earnings range because of the very high risk involved.
By no means am I slamming Calvin, who deserves everything he has earned, but going by the data supplied by Calvin himself, I would place his net worth at 150 to 300 million. That's still an extremely exclusive net worth, but nowhere near a billion. I think that some gambling magazine said it was worth a billion and Calvin, being the marketing genious that he is, ran with it and kept saying it so often that it became accepted as fact.
Does anyone agree with this, or am I the only one that thinks Forbes got duped and Ayre got some priceless publicity free of charge in this publicity coop?
