The WSOP Seems Like It’s Thriving, But Look Below The Surface.
September 14th, 2011The WSOP had one more record breaking year and stays the market standard, In 2011, there was a record 75,672 entries in comparison with last year’s record of 72,966. This year was up 3.7 percent of last year. Also, the prize pool set a record in 2011 with a whooping $191,999,010 dollars compared to last year’s previous high of $187,109,850. This was an increase of 2.6 percent. These numbers cause you to think everything is good inside the poker world.
By taking a look a little deeper you can see most predictions of the turn out for this years tournament were deeply understated. In fact they broke records as outlined above. So Black Friday did not have the impact some thought it could. Despite thousands of players angry after three of the four sites failed to reimburse them even after the government cleared the way to do so. Many thought players might not be able to afford WSOP buy-ins because of the online poker crackdown. We believe the predictions were a year early. With sponsorship down and less fish playing online poker these days the sharks are not likely to make much cash for buy ins. It could just have not been long enough for the losses to kick in.
The tv portion of the tournament has definitely taken a commercial hit. It’s no surprise because the people who own these sites were huge sponsors specially Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. If you have been watching the tournament on television you will see their logos are not on the players either. Even the UFC events don’t have these sponsors anymore. If ratings are down this year they can lose much more sponsors. A good thing is Godaddy has signed on this year to become a sponsor and perhaps that is a good sign.
Tha harsh truth is next year is the year to worry about. If poker players cant find online poker sites that accept players in the US, then they could lose interest and take up different hobbies. Even if their desire is to play, but there’s no place online, they may get frustrated. In either case the lack of US poker Sites is an issue and the fact these players have never had there funds returned to them is another. The environment over the next year can really get bad.
So how can we fix it and keep the greatest tournament in the world? That won’t be an easy one. Here are several thoughts. First, if the government is prosecuting the operators of these poker sites criminally, then they should also pursue the funds being returned to the players just as vigorously. The poker players were not breaking any laws and their funds should be returned. Second, there should be a law that legalizes online poker at the very least if not all of gambling. The law makers should not play politics with this situation. It’s time to get past the Indian gaming lobby and help the players. Until we get US poker sites again the sport is in trouble and so is the WSOP.












