Bodog Owes $50 Million+ To 1st Technology

Famous Bodog Entertainment is popular for all sorts of people, including poker players. Some years ago their poker platform was very popular, though it isn’t so much right now. Team Bodog player Matt McCullough finished third in WSOPE 2007 Main Event and won £381,910 ($766,674 US).

Bodog Entertainment is owned by Canadian billionaire Calvin Ayre and includes online poker at bodoglife.com. Unfortunately, they ran in serious problems and currently face fines of over $50 million with interest to 1st Technology LLC.

Basically 1st Technology sued Bodog. According to court documents, the online gaming company was illegally using a “method and system for interactively transmitting multimedia information over a network which requires a reduced bandwidth.”

First time, Bodog failed to appear in court to defense themselves, and they lost it by default. President of 1st Technology now wanted Bodog to pay them $48,937,456 March 2007, along with the confiscation of Bodog.com and Bodog.net domains. Bodog didn’t take any actions, and when March passed, the case was moved to Washington in June 2007.

Meantime, Bodog in Antigua launched their re branded version of site called BodogLife.com and launched an appeal. However, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC decided the case in 1st Technology favor, and now Bodog owes $50+ million to them.

Will this be an end to Bodog Entertainment? I highly doubt it, as even though their poker site is not so popular nowadays, they have other good sources of income, such as music for example. They even announced, that in 2008 DMX will be signing of with them, to release his two new albums. Hopefully, everything will work out well for Bodog and we won’t see their site shutdown.