World Series of Poker Losses SubstantialWith the Internet poker rooms told to stay away, exhibition space and other marketing related platforms were among the hardest hit aspects of this year's World Series of Poker.
While organizers have painted a picture of "quality verses quantity" when it comes to actual player participation in the event, the prize pool has been diminished dramatically after increases every year during the past decade. With recent trends as a gage, the 2007 World Series of Poker perhaps could have been double in size had Harrah's welcomed the online poker rooms.
StraightFlush.com - a relatively new Internet poker room on the scene - would have paid a decent amount just on WSOP marketing alone.
"StraightFlush.com would have spent anywhere between $300,000 and $500,000 on various forms of marketing, sponsoring of players and making a huge splash had it been possible (to participate in this year's WSOP)," commented Dan Ramiro of StraightFlush.com.
StraightFlush operates on the Cake Poker platform. Nearly all the major Cake properties now have key sponsorship deals with Gambling911.com, including StraightFlush.com, BetUS.com,
Sportsbook.com and Cake Poker itself.
Last year, the Sportsbook.com brand spent just over $1 million at the World Series of Poker. BetUS.com has not disclosed its spending on last year's event, but speculation is they too spent a few hundred thousand on marketing efforts despite focusing more heavily on their sportsbook than their online poker room. Cake has been splurging in recent months as well.
"Knowing both StraightFlush.com and Sportsbook.com's spending, when you throw Cake and BetUS.com into the equation it is easy to realize a good $3 million in revenue lost just from these properties alone," comments Gambling911.com Senior Editor, Payton O'Brien.
Granted Sportsbook.com's flagship brand last year was Paradise Poker, but they lost that poker room after a split from Sportingbet. Cake Poker is a relative newcomer to the field. More established brands the likes of PokerStars, PartyPoker and FullTilt have easily paid a cool couple of million each in the past.
"Any way you look at it the World Series of Poker has lost a substantial amount of money this year and may need to seriously re-evalute its policy on allowing Internet poker rooms next year," said O'Brien.
The passage of the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) last October essentially made it illegal for banks to conduct business with online poker rooms. Current attempts to have this law repealed are in the works.
Following the UIGEA becoming law, the World Series of Poker immediately embarked on Europe as the next frontier of big money poker tournaments.
"This will surely make up for a good chunk of the lost revenue but when all is said and done, the WSOP was arguably one of the hardest hit enterprises by this new US online gambling legislation whether they want to admit this fact or not," O'Brien stated.
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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com
Originally published July 10, 2007 12:55 am ET
