Recently, officials from Bodog announced the formation of the Bodog Network, a family of poker sites encompassing the various Bodog brands around the world with expansion to non-Bodog domains expected in 2010. Poker News Daily sat down with Jonas Odman, Vice President of the Network, to review the company’s plans to take on new sites.
Poker News Daily: Thanks for joining us. Can you give us an update on the Bodog Network? When can we expect more sites to be added?
Odman: We’re talking to potential partners now and will hopefully get someone on board. We have a target list, but we’re looking for someone who is technologically savvy to be the first partner. Ideally, we would like to find someone with a big European base of players.
PND: Are American-facing sites more attractive than those that do not accept U.S. players?
Odman: It’s possible that we would not want or require the customer database of our partners. So, if our partners take American players, it’s fine. They can take players from anywhere they want. It’s a big project. We will have to develop things on the business-to-business side. It’s new to us and will be a big project. We want to move up in player liquidity.
PND: Explain the importance of seeking out European-focused online poker sites to join the Bodog Network.
Odman: We want to cover all limits at all hours so you always have a game when you log in. If you’re a high-limit player and log on during European hours, you might have trouble right now. Also, we will be able to offer better tournaments.
PND: What will happen to Bodog.com’s team of sponsored pros, which includes Evelyn Ng, David Williams, and Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo after the departure of Jean-Robert Bellande?
Odman: Team Bodog will represent Bodog.com and continue to do that. Our operators on the network will have their own teams of players.
PND: Are you planning to offer payment services and other ancillary features as well or only focus on online poker?
Odman: Initially, it will just be poker. The sites will have to do payments themselves. Our target partners are bigger and they won’t need to have those types of services provided to them anyway.
PND: What are the benefits of potential partners moving to the Bodog Network?
Odman: There are some unhappy operators on other networks. On Bodog, the operators can keep their customer databases. That will differentiate us from some networks. We also have a unique solution to rakeback where operators that bring in net depositing players will earn more money than they would on other networks.
The players that the network wants are net depositing players, but with the way the rake is split now, the winning players get too large of a proportion of revenue. We don’t think that’s fair. We want to reward operators who bring in net depositing players.
We will take the players’ deposits as a factor before we split the rake between the operators. The typical rakeback player will be worth much less. The winning players will come anyway because we will have good players for them to play against. By focusing on net depositing players, it will benefit the whole ecosystem.
PND: What is the long-term focus of the Bodog Network?
Odman: Our long-term goal is to be in the top three and it depends on which partners we get. We have a good liquidity now, but we want to move up the ladder.
I’ve heard about this “unique solution to rakeback” a few times now, but they don’t seem to be declaring how they plan to work with affiliates. If anybody has any info on that i’d be very grateful.