Bodog Announces Central and South America Market Expansion
Betting Partners, the affiliate marketing partner of Bodog and its related family of online brands, announced today that Bodog will soon feature a Latin American presence, with the Bodog brand soon to become available to online gamblers in 16 different Central America and South America nations.
The move marks a sharp reversal from the slowly dwindling lineup of countries where Bodog has offered its services in recent years. Prior to the upcoming expansion, which goes into effect on February 15th, Bodog-related sites have only been available in four countries — the United States, Canada, China, and Vietnam.
The newly announced expansion will quintuple the number of countries officially reached by Bodog or its related brands to 20. Here’s the full but brief text of the e-mail that Betting Partners sent out to its existing affiliates, who will likely be expected to market to the newly-targeted countries:
We are excited to announce that, as of February 15, our partnered brands Bovada and Bodog will be launching their product offerings in Latin America.
Bovada Sports and Casino will be available in Mexico only while Bodog Poker, Casino, and Sports will launch in the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.
Bovada Sports and Casino’s entry into Mexico means that that country will join the United States as the only two nations serviced by that brand. Mexicans already have access to the online poker services at Ignition Casino, should they so desire, along with literally hundreds of global brands.
It’s the expansion of Bodog elsewhere in Latin America that’s the larger story. As of today, the Bodog brand itself is in active promotion in only three countries — Canada, China, and Vietnam — and in two of those, China and Vietnam, the marketing is done via Bodog’s “Bodog88” skin. While player pooling is irrelevant for sports betting and casino games, the addition of the 15 Latin American countries to Bodog’s poker player base should boost liquidity in a significant way.
It’ll be significant, but likely not publicly known. Bodog prides itself on blocking its exact player numbers and its “recreational” (anonymous) player model serves as a deterrent to third-party dataminers and trackers. Bodog has been embroiled in a years-long feud with poker-traffic tracking site, PokerScout. That feud came to a head back in 2014, when Bodog publicly accused PokerScout founder Dan Stewart of demanding $1 million for Bodog’s numbers (which were made up anyway) — to -not- be listed on the PokerScout site, in what a CalvinAyre.com story at the time decried as an extortion demand.
The long and short of it is that PokerScout doesn’t even have a listing for Bodog these days, an omission the site also doesn’t mention. The Scout does show a listing for Ignition Casino’s poker tables, since the old Bovada poker traffic was sold off to the Kahnawake-based Morris Mohawk Gaming Group (MMGG) a couple of years back. Maybe the Kahnawakes aren’t quite as fussy about the ownership of proprietary data… just sayin’.
It all adds up to just another day in the life of Bodog, the site and network that consistently zigs when everyone else zags. Despite its long history (founded way back in 1994 as a phone-based sports book) and a generally solid record of customer service, Bodog is still targeted by many in the biz, not to mention by law-enforcement agencies in select countries.
It’s never even for sure where exactly Bodog operates all its various services and entities, and that’s much the way Bodog likes it. A good chunk of the current Bodog operation appears based in the Philippines, though no Bodog brands or services are offered in that country. At various times, Bodog services and customer support have also been linked to such locales as Costa Rica, Canada, Antigua, and even South Korea.
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