Comments on Online Poker Insiders: PartyGaming Reveals Plans For World Poker Tour

Card Player talked to some of the WPT people about the tour's future. Some highlights:

“I think you can look for more tour stops in international locations (in the years ahead), areas like France and Italy,” said Adam Pliska, the new president of the WPT. “There will be more international land-based events, both televised and non-televised.”

PartyGaming’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Welch said that the company will use PartyPoker to really bolster turnout at these new international events.

“PartyPoker is going to be fundamental to our future success (with the World Poker Tour),” said Welch. “PartyPoker will support WPT events by running satellites … but to be clear, this isn’t going to be the PartyPoker World Poker Tour. This is the WPT. It’s a brand in its own right.”

Welch stressed that other poker sites will be allowed and encouraged to satellite players into international WPT events.

“This is the first step toward us returning to the United States,” said Welch.

“We all think [the UIGEA is going to be reversed] at some point. It’s just a matter of when,” said Mike Sexton, the WPT announcer and PartyPoker spokesperson. “I’m convinced we’re going to see another poker explosion like we saw six years ago. It’ll be second to none.”

PokerNews.com talked to Lipscomb, Sexton, Pliska, and PartyGaming Chief Marketing Officer Chris Welch about the WPT's future.

Pliska said it's business as usual.

Chris Welch said "The EPT is owned, or at least majority-owned, by PokerStars, and it is requiring online business to state the PokerStars brand name in all of the satellite qualifiers that those businesses run. We won't require that. We are keen for other online brands to run satellites to WPT events both here in the U.S. and in Europe." Welch also talked more about using the acquisition to move back into the US market, which they expect to reopen.

Poker News Daily did an interview with Lipscomb, Sexton, Pliska, and PartyGaming Chief Marketing Officer Chris Welch. There's not much there, but they do talk more about their US intentions:

Welch: We are very excited by the partnership with the WPT. We are predominantly a European business, but we view this as one of the steps to coming back into the U.S. PartyPoker has 12 million members in the U.S. that we can cross-sell Club WPT to.

PND: Why is it important to be able to cross-sell to U.S. players?

Welch: We’re set up to take advantage of any U.S. developments. You can bet that when the market opens up, we’ll be at the forefront of it. The acquisition of the WPT will give us a substantial asset that we can leverage in the U.S.

Club WPT is a very successful subscription service and PartyPoker gets 2,000 to 3,000 downloads a day from the U.S. even though we don’t market there. As you would expect, we have a powerful marketing scheme that we will use to leverage the WPT brand across Europe.