Mike and Nick discuss the recent blockbuster news the the World Series of Poker brand is being sold to the owners of GGPoker for $500M.
From the impact the deal will have to WSOP Online in the US and GGPoker in the international online poker markets to what changes (if any) can be expected at the live WSOP festival in Las Vegas, the guys break down every aspect of the deal and use their industry experience to try to answer all of your questions.
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Full Transcript
Mike: Hello and welcome everybody to the PokerFuse podcast. I’m your host, Mike Gentile, along with my co-host, Nick Jones. Today on the podcast, we discuss the $500 million acquisition of the WSOP brand by GGPoker. Hey Nick, how’s it going?
Nick: Yes, very good. Thank you.
Mike: Obviously big news. The World Series of Poker brand has been acquired by— is it pronounced Ensys? I know there was some discussion about the pronunciation.
Nick: It’s pronounced “answers.”
Mike: Ansys.
Nick: Just “Answers.” The word “answers.” Isn’t that brilliant? Never knew that for many years.
Mike: Interesting.
Nick: Answers have acquired the World Series of Poker.
Mike: All right. Let’s try and get some answers to some of the questions that some of the listeners may have out there. Before we dive into the specifics, first impressions, what did you think of the deal?
Nick: When I first heard it, I’m like, that seems like a bargain, only $500 million for the largest poker brand in the world. The more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I feel like it’s an eye-watering amount for a brand. As big as that brand is, half a billion dollars is huge. The only thing that we’ve got to go on is, just two or three days before this was announced, and I assume this was carefully timed, like on the Caesars investors call, they were talking about selling off non-core assets of which obviously the World Series of Poker is one of them.
They said online poker basically makes nothing, a mad living. The royalty streams and the land-based casino revenue, that’s where the economics are. They may be doing 20 and 25 million a year. That’s an EBITDA figure. That’s what it’s making. They’re still going to be keeping some of that, presumably, if it carries on running in their land-based casinos. I don’t know, 500 million is a 20, 25x multiplier on that figure, which I’m not even sure is the amount they’re buying. Just from like a classic economics multiplier figure, it’s an eye-watering amount to pay for a brand which does a little bit of online poker and a little bit of live. A lot of other stuff.
Mike: Interesting. I guess when we look at that figure and try and decide, is it the right amount? Is it too much? Is it too little? It’s all going to be relative. You just provided some relativity to the financials. The other point of comparison that we have is the sale of PokerStars to Amaya, or Maya, I’m not sure how to pronounce that one. That was $4.9 billion. How many years ago, now? Six, maybe? Something in that range?
Nick: Yes. That was a company that was making a billion dollars a year from online poker.
Mike: Sure.
Nick: The only way I think this figure can ultimately be justified is GGPoker see a lot more long-term value can be unlocked from this brand, from this IP than what is being executed now by Caesars. They see a huge amount of potential here that is underutilized. Which I can get behind because it is just still an incredible brand that’s unrivaled in live poker and that has worldwide global appeal. It’s the only real thing that gets people interested in poker once a year, I think. Things that like, if I go to my local pub, people know about the World Series of Poker. If they’ve played a bit of poker with me, that’s the thing they want to do. There’s nothing else like it. Nothing else has ever come close. Yes, I think GG must see huge long-term value to be owning this brand.
Mike: All right. Why don’t we dive into some of the specifics? Obviously our forte is in the online world. Let’s start there. When you look at the acquisition of the brand, the biggest impact has the potential to be what’s happening in the US online poker market. GG is not in the US, WSOP is, and WSOP does not really exist as a brand for an online poker room outside of the US. I know they did exist in the UK for a short bit, and they may still be there, I’m not entirely sure.
Nick: No, there’s nothing else other than the four US states. That’s it for online today.
Mike: What happens there?
Nick: It’s important to say at the top that this deal is a live deal, and we’ll talk about that at the end, and we’ll talk about online because that’s our thing. This was not the motivating factor I believe from anyone’s standpoint, that this was about online poker. Ultimately, the too-long-didn’t-read version is, I think nothing. I don’t think this really has any impact. I think two things. I think this is GGPoker’s move for US online poker. I don’t think it’s going to amount to anything in the short term, and only modest things in the midterm. This is it. They said to us, Sarn Lightman, the head of global development for GGPoker, I believe, we did an interview with him two or three months ago, again, I don’t have the quote in front of me, but he said, GGPoker needs to be involved.
We need to have a voice in the US market, and you’ll have some news from us on this soon. This is that news. This is the way they see that they gain a foothold to some extent in US online poker. With that said, again, it’s very clear in the deal, and it’s obvious the reasons why that Caesars Digital will carry on running WSOP Online in the US. They hold the licenses, and they will carry on operating. They run software on 888. That’s not going to change overnight. Caesars holds the license that will carry on running, and that isn’t going to change.
However, GGPoker will own the brand WSOP, and they’re ultimately licensing that brand back to Caesars Digital to continue running online poker. That’s what’s going to happen if this deal goes through at the end of this year, and I think probably for the foreseeable is those four WSOP Online poker sites will continue running by Caesars Digital. Just GGPoker will ultimately own that brand.
Mike: Then what does that mean for shared liquidity going forward or any further US expansion? Does that mean that there’s no path to that?
Nick: The reason why I think the deal was constructed in this way is that I think— it couldn’t really be done any other way. GGPoker doesn’t have the licenses. They can’t take the WSOP assets and run online poker in three months’ time in four US states. It takes months, if not years, to get the regulatory approvals to do it, and it’s not certainty that you will do it. You need another company. They need Caesars to run these four sites, and that’s what they wanted, and that’s what will continue to happen.
What that means for the expansion of what we see today for WSOP Online, is a big question mark. In theory, there’s scope for this licensing deal to extend if Caesars Digital wanted to launch in, let’s say, West Virginia and then connect West Virginia with their existing network. It explicitly lists the four states that Caesars have permitted to run online poker, and that wasn’t one of them. It suggests to me, ultimately no one really cares to do that. It’s a tiny state. No one’s really looking at these small US states and ultimately caring about the piecemeal growth of a network.
I do think that midterm, potentially, and this is something that I tweeted that got quite a lot of attention last week, that I’m going to stick by, but I will caveat that it’s only a maybe, that I think the next entry or next development here is GGPoker look to have their software licensed, and then their licensee Caesars running online poker switches to their software in the US states. I believe that it’s an easier lift getting the regulatory approvals. We know that they’ve already received some in Pennsylvania as an interactive software provider, so their platform could be used. I believe today unless that license is lapsed, it could be used. In theory, when this deal goes through, we could see in Pennsylvania, technically, Caesars switching to GGPoker’s platform in Pennsylvania. I think it’s probably unlikely. I think they’ll, if they do it, it’ll have to be in all states at the same time, I imagine.
It also depends on the existing partnership deal between Caesars Digital and AT&T, which currently provide the software.
Mike: Yes, and that’s what I wanted to ask you about. We just saw a renewal of that deal, I believe, prior to the launch of shared liquidity with Michigan.
Nick: Yes, it’s not a new deal. They extended their partnership for another four or five years, two or three years ago. The date that we have in our heads is it expires sometime in 2026, we believe. I believe they had a five year deal that expired in 2022. They renewed for another five years or 2021, they renewed in five years. It will expire in 2026. I guess technically under an acquisition, that could trigger a clause that means that they can get out of this deal earlier, in theory, maybe they can just pay a fine to get out of it earlier. Given how long it takes to get these approvals, 18 months is already fairly rapid to get software approved and switch over in three or four years’ time. I think GGPoker probably want to go down this path.
I think they will want to be providing the platform rather than one of their competitors providing the platform. Though with that said, I think this is not a focus of the deal. I think that whilst it’s still just for small-ish states, it’s not a major motivating factor to go through these steps and the amount of effort to get things regulated therein might not be worthwhile until they see a wider expansion of the US online poker.
Mike: This deal has been in the works for quite some time. I think a lot of people in and around the industry have heard rumblings for a while. I look at the connection of Michigan by WSOP to their player pool in New Jersey and Nevada and all of the upgrading of the software that had to go along with that. If the direction of this deal was to bring the GG software into the US, I wonder if they would have gone through all that effort to make that happen.
Nick: Yes, if we think this deal has been in the works for two to three years, which is when we first heard about it, I think going back to like WSOP 2021, the thing is, I guess what you could say is there was this huge delay that nothing happened with the WSOP platform for years. We hypothesized that it was because they thought this deal was going to happen. It was actually quite a surprise when two, three years ago, they did renew with HHA because then we got the impression that like, Okay, well, maybe this deal wasn’t going to happen.
Again, though, what’s dictating this deal happening and the dollar figures we’re talking about, the $500 billion, no one’s thinking about online poker. This is not really a discussion point. Ultimately, yes, they did the upgrade. I agree that it probably means that we’re not going to see real fast the switch to GGPoker’s online poker platform, potentially never even gets to the point of anyone doing it because no one cares because it’s not a focus. Again, we were just talking earlier, we’ve seen such delays in shared equity with WSOP. It came almost 18 months after PokerStars did it. BetMGM still has not connected New Jersey and Michigan.
This has been on the table for two years and it’s just some approvals. We don’t really understand why it takes that long. It’s probably ultimately that just it’s not the focus. It doesn’t move the dial to the important metrics that these companies are looking at, which is probably casino player acquisition and sports growth and these kinds of things that no one can be bothered to do the paperwork to get it done. We live in this world where it’s everything and it’s just not. I think it’s the same that we see here. WSOP did get that upgrade across the line. There are still lights on there and they’re still thinking and that’s excellent to see. I wouldn’t expect any major changes. The earliest, I think, is two years time if it’s something that GG really care about and see long term growth in the US markets.
If this deal allows them to basically encourage or prefer their software platform over somebody else’s, because, again, Caesars Digital will be running these sites. They will ultimately get to make the call unless there’s specifics in this deal. I think that’s the only real thing that we potentially would see. I think GGPoker would like that. If their software is utilized in the US markets, it’d be a great step for them. That’s the one thing that I think we could see happen.
Mike: Yes, I think it’s important to note that in the press release announcing the acquisition. The online portion of this deal was described as being under Caesars’ control for “the foreseeable future.” That doesn’t sound like a short term proposition.
Nick: Yes, it’s an odd choice of language. Because there were some very specific numbers in this press release, like the 20-year deal to keep in Caesars’ properties in Las Vegas. This was just the foreseeable future. Again, I think the difference there between these two things is, again, this is just my gut, but it was a concession for GG to agree to 20 years in Caesars’ properties. That was obviously Caesars’ benefit from the biggest poker event of the year coming to their properties. They wanted to lock that in. That got this deal across the line. Whereas GG wants Caesars to carry on running online poker in the US. Is that or shut it down. Because they’re not going to be in a position to run online poker in Nevada in four months’ time.
Again, that might have been Caesars’ concession that they have to carry on running these online poker sites that ultimately, again, in their investors’ call three, four days ago, they were like, basically, this is trivial. The thing that matters is ultimately, royalty strings. That was a bigger deal than running online poker. Yes, foreseeable future, because I think GGPoker, that’s what they see. They don’t plan to run interactive online gaming in the US anywhere in the midterm horizon.
Mike: What would make it not be trivial? The thing that would make it not be trivial is expansion. I guess I wanted to say that and not ask that question. When it comes to expansion, we’ve heard rumblings from GG in the past that they are behind the idea of advocacy. As a result of this deal, do we see the advocacy efforts in the US, which have been basically non-existent or at least non-public since Poker Players Alliance disbanded? Do we see an uptick in that? Do we see advocacy being part of the long-term plan of GG to expand into the US?
Nick: Yes, I hope so. This is the more positive part when we look just about online poker that I hope happens is that GG now has direct interests in US online poker market expanding, and they will be in a much better position to take advantage of it if we see more states come online, if shared liquidity expands. Before, if that were to have happened, it would have just benefited PokerStars and WSOP. Now it benefits their licensee, Caesars Digital, who operates their brand WSOP. They have much more reason to be much more direct in advocating for the expansion of US online poker, and it’ll be the only advocate that advocates for poker.
This is, I think, the thing that we would have talked about in previous couple of podcasts with Dunbar and with the PA advocacy stuff is, we lack and we have lacked a poker advocate because all poker operators today have sports and they have casino, and the proliferation of sports has been so much more important than poker that everyone was happy to let it fall by the wayside if it meant we get more states for online poker. Ultimately, a lot of companies wouldn’t want just online poker if it means no online casino. Those like poker-only advocacy efforts were probably opposed to the goals of some of these large corporations.
GGPoker is today, and of course these things can change, but only seems to care about online poker the connection of global shared liquidity where possible. We know they have advocated in Italy for this. They are actively advocating in Canada for this, in Ontario and in Alberta for there to be international liquidity, not just provincial liquidity. Yes, I think this is the long-term exciting thing. This is GG’s move to be like, they’re getting in position so that if we do see multiple states and this landscape changing of much more poker-specific focus, they’ll be in a position to benefit from it.
Mike: Then let’s look beyond the US. GG, obviously the biggest online poker operator. How is this deal going to affect the international player poker or segregated markets like Ontario?
Nick: Again, this is the thing where probably we’ll see no change. They will have more options. I don’t think GG is going to take any of them. They could use the WSOP brand to launch. They could change their entire online poker business to be WSOP branded. They could dump GG and switch to WSOP. I’ve seen no indication that they’re interested in doing that. I think GG is their identity and their main brand. I think the thread that will run throughout us talking about the live section as well, is that GG want GGPoker to be their online brand and WSOP to be the live brand. That’s my opinion, but that’s everything that I see.
I think they have no interest in either switching to that brand or launching WSOP branded online poker sites alongside. Because they run a network, the GGPN, and they have different skins of different markets, Olibert in Lithuania and other Baltic states, Natural Eight in Asian markets, lots of others. They could do the same with WSOP. Maybe there is a market somewhere where WSOP has so much value and they’ve had trouble with the penetration of GG brand that they see the business opportunity. It’d be very easy for them to spin up a WSOP branded site in some markets. You just say like the UK, for example, which is, you mentioned, I think, right at the top, they used to be historically wcp.co.uk brand and it didn’t last. It just doesn’t I think consumers are too educated to be like oh they can play WCP online now like people know GGPoker is the partner of the WCP that’s where you can play online qualifiers. I don’t think that will change so obviously we’ll just see more promotion of the WCP on the GGPoker online poker sites. I don’t expect them to go further than that maybe I’ll wrong, but I wouldn’t expect them really to do more other than more tightly integrate, their live tour, which is the WSOP with their online brand, which is GG.
Mike: If I understand correctly, they’re going to, let’s say, use Ontario as a model. For the benefit of listeners, what happened in Ontario is the GG originally launched in that regulated market alongside WSOP, a co-branding situation. We’ve seen this year where they’ve scrubbed entirely the WSOP brand from their Ontario operations. It’s no longer WSOP at GG. They still have WSOP branding in the sense that you can qualify for WSOP events and we anticipate, actually, the announcement coming really soon of WSOP online bracelets in the Ontario market. The poker room itself is completely now GGPoker. If I understand what you’re saying correctly, you expect that to be the model for expansion internationally?
Nick: Yes, when they launched in Ontario, it was just straight up wsop.ca. That was domain. I think they learned from that. I think when we look at this and throughout this timeline, this deal was in talks when they launched wcp.ca in Ontario. What, maybe they were finding out, maybe they were like, maybe, if this blows up, that will be our brand. Maybe we do switch to WCP once we’ve acquired this. Yes, they quickly transitioned to like WCP at GGPoker. Then they went to ggpoker.ca domain. Now, as you say, WSOP doesn’t even get mentioned on the license. That tells me they have learned that the GGPoker brand is actually stronger than WSOP and it’s clearer for consumers and it’s clearer for the future when more regulated states come on in Canada.
Do you switch to WSOP? Why is there Canadian GGPoker in other provinces but WSOP in this province? Where’s GGPoker hanging? I think they’ve learned that we didn’t get the benefits of what that brand brings over the confusion that GGPoker brings. I think they’ve learned from that and this is going to dictate to them that they’re not going to try that again. They’re not going to launch a WSOP online poker site in another market. I say again, there’s a specific case where the WSOP brand is so strong and GGPoker has done poorly, maybe loses out to PokeStars or even WPT Global. Maybe there is a window there, but I think it will be limited.
Mike: I think that covers the online portion. Is there anything maybe that we haven’t covered before we move to the live portion of what this deal means?
Nick: No, I don’t think so. I guess like to summarize really quickly, not much is known. A lot of this is mind of Mike’s assumptions here. I think it’s safe to say that on the US we know that Caesars will carry on running WSOP online. Potentially in the future we might see a software platform switch but even that’s probably a little way off and it’s probably not, it doesn’t mean that overnight we’re going to get, online poker in California or New York or something. Hopefully we’ll have another good poker specific advocate in the US. Whether that moves the dial or not, we don’t know but it’s only a positive thing in that regard. Then, yes, with the rest of the world, probably no change. That’s my read.
Mike: On the live front, which I think that we see this as being the meat of this acquisition, what’s going to change there? We can take steps through. Let’s start with Las Vegas. We’ve already mentioned that the press release says that Caesars will continue to operate the Las Vegas World Series of Poker Festival for the next 20 years.
Nick: Yes, it’ll be in Caesars properties for the next 20 years.
Mike: It’ll be in Caesars properties for the next 20 years, which Anuj interestingly brought up in a meeting that mirrors the actual Caesars acquisition of the World Series of Poker, which I believe was in 2004.
Nick: Yes, I didn’t fact-check him, but he’s normally on the money. Yes, so 2004 was the last time that it was bought and sold, and then exactly 20 years later, it sold again with another 20-year [unintelligible 00:25:08] Maybe they were just like, what, we’ll do some copy and pasting from the last.
Mike: Perhaps.
Nick: The Caesars has been in the works for two, three years, so you’d think they’ve got time to write fresh legalese.
Mike: Do we expect anything to be different in Las Vegas in 2020?
Nick: Yes, this is definitely an area that I’m less willing to put my name on the line and say what’s going to happen. It’s not my area of expertise. There’s a lot of questions here. There’s no information whatsoever. We can only speculate what’s on the table that GGPoker will be looking at and may or may not make changes by this time in the year. They’ll want things to keep running smoothly. They’re not going to just turn it on its head. To me, things on the table straight off the bat, would be the streaming deal, PokerGO, the live reporting team, whether they carry on the same deal with PokerNews, Poker.org or other media institutions, how much they want to bring onto their own platforms in terms of coverage. Obviously tweaks to schedules, areas they see that they can change things, number of bracelets, whether they want to increase or decrease the number of bracelets given away.
I think all these things, we’ll see tweaks for sure. I personally don’t expect any major change when it comes to the last phase of this event for 2025. We know that the WTP Plus app is going to be launched for next year. I think that’s going to be a really big deal. That was brought out. We believe it’s developed by GGPoker, I think. It ran in Paradise last year. It didn’t make it into summer this year. Will be for 2025. This provides a much better experience. Directly buying in, I think, through this app. I think it would replace the Bravo app for doing registrations. You can also track who’s registered for tournaments, live details on tournaments as they run, blind levels, and that stuff.
I haven’t used it, but players really raved about it in Paradise, so that’s going to come in. I think GG will look to modernize areas like that. Yes, I’m not sure if there’s anything else that Mike, that could change that we’ll see for next year.
Mike: I think with the growth that we’ve seen in Las Vegas specifically, I anticipate that GG’s not going to want to mess with that. For as good or bad of a job that people may think Caesars does with the World Series of Poker, it’s hard to argue with back-to-back record-breaking years. In that regard, I think that they are going to let Caesars continue to drive the bus there. That being said, the details that aren’t included in the press release, which would speak to the distribution of revenue and the licensing of the brand. Where does that money get divided up? I think that could dictate a lot of what happens. As far as from the player’s perspective, I agree that the WSOP Plus app could be a very big change, or a positive change from a player’s perspective there. Other than that, I anticipate things are going to be on the same track.
Nick: Yes, and I think if this was anyone else buying the WSOP, there’ll be a lot more to talk about, but the reality is that the pair have been so intertwined the last three years that it’s like, yes, GGPoker will obviously carry on running, will be the official partner to send players over the street. The record-breaking stuff, a lot of that would have come down to just how much GGPoker are doing to send players to Las Vegas. A thousand plus on the international site, hundreds through Club GG, which they’re like a subscription club platform, so many more than what they did before.
They’ll obviously continue doing that. They obviously had— I don’t know, WSOP Paradise felt very GG powered. I think they’ve already been very instrumental in shaping quite a lot of how things are done. When we say more of the same, that’s just because I feel like GGPoker’s already all over it in a lot of these things. The Plus app was already known, I think we’d already reported that it was going to be used for 2020 before this deal was announced. All this stuff, all these wheels are already in motion.
Mike: Paradise, let’s take a look at that for second. What’s the biggest thing about Paradise? What differentiates it from any other poker festival?
Nick: The massive guaranteed dollar figure this year and the Triton partnership.
Mike: It’s the massive guarantee. To me, that’s like step one of the expansion of the WSOP. Because really, it’s taking a little bit of shine off of the Las Vegas festival, I guess, by capturing we have the biggest guarantee in live poker. I think that that’s them putting a flag in the ground. In doing so, also expanding the brand. Where that expansion will go next, I think, is probably a significant motivating factor behind GG making this deal.
Nick: Maybe I can throw that question to you then. Where do internationally this GG’s taking the WSOP brand?
Mike: The brand is already in Europe. We have WSOP Europe. I think there could be some expansion there. I think there will be some expansion there. I think that the bigger steps will be taken in what we have looked at as the emerging markets for online poker traditionally, which are Asia and South America. I think those are the regions where we can expect to see the WSOP brand used more and more live events and bigger live events, I think than we have in the past.
Nick: This is the thing, when you take a step back and we go through all the things that we think will be impacted, which is ultimately, again, online poker, not that much, not huge scope live, modernize, improve, some opportunities to expand, doesn’t to me amount to like $500 billion worth of value that you just acquired. The thing is, when you look at, let’s say, WSOP in Brazil or running live events in Asia, GG was already there. They’re already the partner. You want to qualify for WSOP Brazil, you do it through the GGPoker platform. They already had that. They were already synonymous with WSOP. They were the place you go for online qualifiers.
I wonder if there’s a bigger picture here that I don’t immediately see, or there’s a long term play here that sits behind all this. Because I feel like they’re already getting all the benefits without any of the downsides of spending 500 million dollars. [chuckles]
Mike: Think about it in terms of expansion though. What’s their current footprint in South America? There’s WSOP Brazil. Beyond that, is there any other?
Nick: No. Again, going outside my area of expertise, I think so. It must be limited for sure. I guess short. You can expand that brand. That’s going to be good for GGPoker long term. That’s more places that you can have online qualifiers. Again, like a lot of people, they want to they want to win a ticket to Las Vegas. They don’t want to play in there. Yes, you can go to your local event and then you bring it to online. It comes back to this whole question of just how much live to online value there is.
Obviously, again, GGPoker, they’ve spent a lot of money. They were in negotiations for a very long time. They see something there and I’m not questioning it. I just wonder if— maybe there will be something more drastic they’re going to do in terms of what they can do with this brand. Maybe they’ve got bigger deals struck. They get back in onto ESPN and really promote it and really try and take poker back to growing it where it was 10 plus years ago. With all that said, again, the life tour has grown. Maybe they must see some real untapped potential that they can massively expand the value.
One thing is and I’m just talking myself around to it, but like maybe really modernizing how people consume WCP live events and not just like live poker stream, but the live reporting. A lot of events on televising and watching lots of events, just making that for a more modern crowd, lots more on more modern social media platforms, short form video, maybe bringing a lot of that in-house themselves will give them massive expansion to promote the WCP brand and GGPoker long term.
Mike: I think when we look at Caesars is a big company and poker is not at the top of their priority list. Think about WSOP Brazil. Could that one day be bigger than WSOP Las Vegas? Why not? There’s expansion that can happen beyond geographically and just expand the popularity of events. Let’s say that didn’t happen, but could it be possible that we might see a WSOP Asia festival that could in the end be much bigger than what we currently have in Las Vegas? I think it’s possible.
Nick: Maybe just to bring it back to online. Maybe they have a long term vision here that they think this is perhaps me being hopeful, but they think maybe, five years we will see, four or five more states with online poker and they need this now to be positioned for an eight to 10 state US online poker network. They need that brand. They need that digital partner, because without that, they’re going to be left on the sidelines. I guess it hedges for that happening. Also, yes, it gives them the motivation to try and affect change as well.
Mike: Is there anything else on the live aspect of this that we haven’t touched on?
Nick: No, I don’t think so. As I say, like more questions, I think there’s a lot of things in the margins that can change fees, buy-ins, schedules, that whether they jump in and start making changes immediately, whether it’s going to be tweaks over time will be interesting to see. I think there’s a big one with WCP Europe, with the Rozvadov Casino being sold. I guess there’s already an open question mark there. That would be a decision for them to make what they want to do with that tour moving forward. I think there’s lots of these little things that they’re going to be now involved with and making decisions on. The next year will certainly be interesting to see how involved they get with making changes and making expansions quickly.
Mike: What does this deal mean overall? What are the things that we should be looking to as the next events to happen? Is there anything that we expect to be announced before the potential closing of this deal, which I think is sometime at the end of this year?
Nick: Yes, they hope it too/ It’d be interesting. Paradise is going to happen with this deal not closing. I think that’s very likely. Then once it does, again, I don’t think there’ll be anything changed overnight from a public perspective. I think if they can close it this year, they will have six months to prepare maybe the media side of things, what they want to do there ahead of Las Vegas. I think that’s going to be a big part of the focus is my guess. If we just pull back and look at it, is there being a bigger deal in poker? This is the biggest online poker brand, the most successful online poker company since PokerStars and Full Tilt of 10 plus years ago, buying by far the live poker brand of all time for $500 billion.
It’s a huge, huge deal. If I’m talking down and saying like, “Oh, not much is going to change.” The scale of this is really unprecedented. It’s hard really to think of something bigger happening in this industry. It’s obviously a huge vote of confidence in poker and online poker. Perhaps that’s the biggest thing. We spend our days analyzing— in the last few years has been a fairly depressing world of, you take something like Party Poker, for example, hugely declining in stature in the last three, four years. The focus in general, massively shifting away from PokerStars was a poker first company. We are poker five years ago to poker literally not getting a single mention in a quarterly or annual investor’s call or presentation.
To have a poker advocate spending this amount of money on the largest poker brand is a huge vote. If you love the WCP, I’m not going to tell you that it’s going to be better for the WCP. I don’t know what GT plans to do with it. They’re obviously a private company whose goal is to make money. Those goals can often align with poker players. Oftentimes it can go against the wishes of poker players, both live and online. I’m not going to sit and say, which way this is going to go and I think it’ll certainly piss off some people and it’ll make other people very happy, but it it’s a big deal. This is why we do special podcast editions.
Mike: You had mentioned that we might see some changes in coverage of live events and the way that GG wants to portray the live game. One of the things that came to mind for me is Game of Gold. Are we going to see a WSOP edition? Are we going to see the WSOP branding extended into that type of poker marketing?
Nick: I think that that’s a really good question. I think this is the area that’s going to be most fruitful for GGPoker to be exploring. I think this is the area where WSOP is massively underutilized. As you say, you made a very good point. Caesars is an absolutely massive company. They haven’t got time to be thinking about these things, but a poker-first company can. Do we use the WSOP brand to run our own? They delegate to PokerGO, to PokerNews, to Poker.org, to all the other, 888 to oversee what the WSOP brand is. Massive to GG the last two, three years.
It’s all been like offshored. GG can now own that band and control that whole message. I’m not saying they’re going to do all the live reporting and run their own live streaming platform overnight, but I think these are the things they’ll be thinking about. Yes, all those brands that they’ve got, all those things that are GGPoker branded, maybe some of them do become WSOP branded. Maybe Game of Gold is a WSOP thing. As you say, maybe it becomes a live event. Those synergies, to use the horrible industry term, but there’s a massive amount there. I think it’ll take them a while to get there. They’re taking on a big operation with a lot of different immediate problems to solve. This is the area where I think we’re going to see the most exploration and maybe overhaul.
Mike: Yes, I think that’s a really good point. Right now, WSOP has very specific partners that, like you point out have without knowing the inner workings, seem to have control over how the WSOP brand is presented through their channels, whether it be PokerGO or PokerNews, WSOP.com. These are all consumer-facing products that carry the WSOP brand. I think with GG stepping into that role, I would imagine that they are going to want to have more control over how that brand is presented, rather than Caesars, who admittedly poker is not their top priority and we’re looking for partners to handle certain aspects of generating interest in the live festival in Las Vegas.
I think from a branding perspective, I think we may see more concerted efforts, more control by GG, more poker-centric thoughts of growing the game.
Nick: Yes, I agree.
Mike: All right. I think we’ve covered a lot. Obviously, there’s still going to be more questions. I would encourage listeners to reach out to us. We’re pretty accessible. You can tweet at the PokerFuse account or tweet at Nick. Nick, what’s your handle?
Nick: @PokerProJones.
Mike: Yes, that is in the outro so I should have known. Send us emails, questions at pokerfuse.com, whatever it is, we’ll try and get to answer those questions either directly or in the content that we create or maybe if there’s enough questions out there we can supplement this edition of the podcast and answer some fewer questions. Anything more that you’d like to say before we wrap up here?
Nick: No, I think that’s everything. I think we’ve done this to death before now, but I’m sure you’d say there’s going to be a lot more in the coming days that can be disseminated. I think more information will hopefully come out in the coming months that we can get a better feel for what GG’s plans are for the next year.
Mike: Okay. Sounds good. Thanks everyone for joining us and look forward to visiting with you again next time.