David Baazov est le président de la compagnie montréalaise Amaya. Il vient d'acheter Rational Group Ltd., le plus grand fournisseur au monde de poker en ligne, pour la somme impressionnante de 4.9 milliards (U.S.)
The Globe and MailDavid Baazov doesn’t look like the card sharks you see in high-stakes poker tournaments on TV–the computer geeks or baseball-capped good ol’ boys living the Vegas dream. Nor is the polished 34-year-old CEO of Montreal-based Amaya Gaming Group Inc. a Hefner-style swinger or a reclusive mastermind, like other entrepreneurs who have hit the jackpot in the young, chancy business of online gambling.
This past June, Baazov, who speaks in bursts of Internet marketing lingo–“platform-centric perspective,” “time-based entertainment value”–showed that he’s a brand-new type of player: a numbers guy who’s positioned to rule the exploding global business of online poker. Baazov stunned the industry when his small software company announced a deal to take over Rational Group Ltd., the world’s largest online poker provider and owner of the top-ranked PokerStars and Full Tilt brands, for $4.9-billion (all currency in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted).
Talk about big bets–big cojones, even. Amaya borrowed $3-billion to do the deal, which closed in August.