Doug Honegger: The Olympic ice-hockey star who was left out in the cold

Honegger thought he was all set to form a partnership with the sports betting group GVC that would play to his strengths as a pundit and columnist. But, as Jim Armitage hears, the joint venture never materialised

Sports-mad Canada drew Doug Honegger to build his gaming business there (Getty)

When injury killed off the professional ice-hockey career of Doug Honegger at the age of 27, he knew he wanted to forge another career in the world of sport.

Using the network of players, managers and club owners that he got to know during a career in which he played for Switzerland in the 1992 winter Olympics, he reinvented himself as a successful player’s agent both in Europe and Canada, where he grew up.

As well as working as an agent and adviser to sports professionals, the 6ft-hockey defender nowadays regularly stars as a TV pundit, while his chiselled features peer out of his column in Switzerland’s answer to The Sun, Blick, where he is its North American sports expert.

In person, he has something of the indefinable glow of celebrity about him that marks him out from the ageing business executives in the London hotel bar where he meets The Independent.

Sharply suited, but with the whip-like physique and intense gaze of a man used to clubbing his opponents on the ice, his post-sporting career was lucrative. He sold his agency business for a large, although undisclosed, sum in 2006, before setting up numerous other businesses in the sports rights and TV world in Canada.

In recent years, it had been the untapped potential of online betting in sports-mad Canada that had been getting him most excited. The combination of his contacts in the Canadian sports, TV and betting worlds put him in the perfect position to build the biggest gaming business in the country, he reckoned. All he needed was a serious partner.

He thought he’d found it in GVC, the London-listed company behind Sportingbet and, more recently, PartyPoker, which it bought with the takeover of Bwin.party.

Mr Honegger claims he and GVC agreed to form a 50-50 joint venture in 2014, in which he would be its man on the ground running the Canadian Sportingbet empire. Meetings were agreed, hands were shaken and, Mr Honegger says, he got to work. By August of that year, he claims in Canadian legal papers, he and his business, 37E, were managing Sportingbet in Canada, going on to run its day to day operations, redesigning and rebranding its websites, and negotiating deals with his contacts in the big TV networks. Importantly, he says, he created a French-language site for Quebec customers.

Emails said to be from GVC executives seem to show them gushing with excitement at having him on board: “I’m delighted,” exclaims GVC’s chief marketing officer.

Asked if it was full-time, 50 hour-a-week work, Mr Honegger responds with an incredulous stare: “Fifty? Double it! It was, like, 24 hours a day. When I do something, I’m 100 per cent. This was my life.”

But there was a problem.

As Mr Honegger tells it, GVC repeatedly put off signing a contract on the venture. The key terms had been agreed long before, he claims, at meetings conducted remotely and on a trip he made to London that November.

Yet GVC, despite allegedly letting him run the now thriving Canadian operation as a key partner, kept stalling, he says. Mr Honegger claims he received plenty of reassurances that final signing was imminent, but when he pushed, he got excuse after excuse. And, as his legal papers against GVC were subsequently to say: “Moreover, 37E is not getting paid a dime.”

Why would he do all this work free? Because, he says, “I wasn’t a mere contractor, I was the 50-50 shareholder in a joint venture.”

Email traffic from GVC to Mr Honegger appears to show the company giving him continual reassurance that the joint venture is all-but signed off, he claims. This comes in messages highlighted in the Canadian court documents suggesting the GVC team see him as its Canadian partner, discussing details such as the salary of a Canadian division employee, a media deal Mr Honegger was negotiating and other day-to-day issues.

Injury killed off the professional ice-hockey career of Doug Honegger at the age of 27

By March 2015, he says, he started getting seriously concerned, particularly as he was now in advanced negotiations with his contacts at Canada’s two biggest media companies over deals to market Sportingbet products with major sporting events. GVC again reassured him all was well and the delays were mere technicalities, he claims.

In June, Mr Honegger says he and his Canadian business partner flew to London and had dinner with GVC’s chief finance officer, Richard Cooper, and chief marketing officer, Adam Lewis, in a Chelsea sushi restaurant at which all sides, he claims, shook hands, congratulated each other on the deal and agreed the contract would be signed in a “couple of days”.

Yet, a few days later, when Mr Honegger was back in Canada, he says GVC’s tone had suddenly changed. Mr Lewis apparently declared in an email that he was concerned about the “strained” relationship between the two sides. Mr Cooper also had further “issues” with signing.

By now, it had emerged that GVC was in advanced talks to buy Party Poker and Bwin owner, Bwin.party in a £900m deal. Bwin’s operations would overlap with Mr Honegger’s work in Canada. The takeover was later done after a bitter battle against arch rival 888. Mr Honegger’s patience snapped. He sought legal advice, stopped working on the Canadian project and is now taking GVC to the arbitration court in London for breach of a joint venture.

Whether the arbitration finds in his favour or not, Mr Honegger’s experience with GVC raises significant questions. It seems clear from the emails allegedly coming from GVC’s top brass that he was being treated as a partner, even if all the legal documentation had not been signed. At the very best, it would seem shabby for them to have strung him along as they apparently did.

Also, it is surely questionable that if, as GVC contends, there was no joint venture agreement in place, it allegedly allowed an “outsider” like Mr Honegger to operate its business in Canada. He claims he was given access to thousands of customers’ personal data and made daily decisions on how they should be treated. Surely, Mr Honegger contends, if his arrangement with GVC was not one of a joint venture partner, GVC might have been breaching its gambling licence terms with the Canadian authorities.

Furthermore, it seems odd that there is no mention of the potential litigation from Mr Honegger in any of the small print of the prospectus GVC issued to shareholders at the time of the Bwin.party agreement. The company is legally bound to inform shareholders of any material legal disputes in such documentation.

Kenny Alexander, the GVC chief executive, said in a statement: “These are spurious and unfounded allegations. GVC would vigorously defend itself if they choose to pursue them.” The company declined to comment on any other aspects around the dispute.

But if GVC hopes Mr Honegger is going to disappear, they should think again. “I’m not going anywhere. I want my day in court. I want to show the world what these guys are like,” he says.

The look in his eyes shows why he struck such terror into his opponents on the ice. I wouldn’t like to be up against him.