Wednesday, August 06, 2008

No Licensing Fees For World Poker Tour Season 7

WPT Enterprises released their second quarter results today and held a conference call (call, transcript). CEO Steve Lipscomb talked about the change from licensing fees to sponsorship revenue with WPT season 7 on Fox Sports Net (see also 1, 2), and said "$7 million from GSN... is a paltry sum compared to the amount of money that is being spent to sponsor poker shows in the marketplace." WPT Enterprises will also get four 30-second ads per episode for the first two runs of each show. Season 7 is expected to start airing in December, 2008. Lipscomb also said that the three pillars of the company's plan to become profitable were sponsorship fees, Club WPT, and China. It sounds like they may exit the real-money online poker business and focus on getting sponsorship money from the companies that are successful in the field.

If High Stakes Poker returns to TV I expect it to be sponsored as well.
Posted by Self Made at Wednesday, August 06, 2008
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5 comments:

  1. Their 10-Q (quarterly financial statement) indicates that the Club WPT show is a profit-sharing arrangement with FSN.
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  2. WPT Enterprises is shutting down its real-money online poker room on November 14. The subscription one (Club WPT) will continue. Hopefully this will make it easier to get major online poker sites to sponsor their shows.
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  3. In what's probably a cost-saving move, Mike and Vince are reportedly no longer present at WPT tapings. Most of their work was done in post-production anyway. As previously mentioned, it doesn't look like they'll hire a hostess for this season either.
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  4. January's Borgata Poker Classic will no longer be a WPT event. The WPT will make two shows out of September's Borgata Poker Open instead. Was it a great final table or is it a cost cutting move?
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  5. Mike and Vince were reportedly at the Legends of Poker taping. Perhaps they're only going to the local ones now.
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