In breaking news on Thursday, the World Poker Tour announced that it had signed an agreement with FullTiltPoker.net, the educational site owned and operated by Full Tilt Poker. The online poker room will receive title sponsorship to the 26 episodes that will air on Fox Sports Net as part of the WPT’s seventh season.
In addition to receiving the title sponsorship to WPT programming, Full Tilt Poker will receive the rights to air “in-show educational gaming brand integration,” according to a press release distributed by the California-based company on Thursday. Steve Lipscomb, WPT Founder, President, and CEO, told Poker News Daily, “The interaction between Full Tilt Poker and the World Poker Tour has existed for a while, but it’s just never been formalized. We, along with Disney, General Electric, and other publicly traded companies have been able to integrate our programming with sites like Full Tilt.” Disney, which owns cable channel ESPN, has worked to secure sponsors including Everest Poker for its World Series of Poker telecasts. General Electric owns television network NBC, which airs the “National Heads-Up Poker Championship” and “Poker After Dark.”
PartyPoker, PokerStars, and Ultimate Bet each aired tournaments during past seasons of the WPT. The PartyPoker Million, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), and Ultimate Bet Aruba Poker Classic all played host to Mike Sexton, Vince Van Patten, and the rest of the WPT cast in years past. However, the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in the United States seemed to put an end to those tournaments airing on television. The PCA is now a stop on the European Poker Tour.
PartyPoker grew tremendously as a result of the exposure it received on WPT programming on The Travel Channel. Lipscomb told Poker News Daily about Full Tilt Poker’s rise to the top of the online poker world: “Full Tilt Poker came into the online poker market at a hard time, which is when the industry was already established. You look at what Bob Wolf, Head of Marketing at Full Tilt Poker, was able to accomplish: They’ve been able to create a campaign that rivals iPod’s in terms of its visibility and impact on the market.”
Full Tilt Poker invites players to “play with the pros.” It is fronted by a star-studded cast of the world’s top poker pros, including Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Jennifer Harman, Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, and Erik Seidel. Many players who travel to some of the largest tournaments in the world either represent Full Tilt directly or have won a satellite on the virtual felts of the online poker room. Lipscomb noted that the agreement is one of the first sponsorship arrangements orchestrated by the WPT, which has overtaken licensing as a key component of revenue.
The attendance at the WPT’s World Poker Finals was 412 players, down from last year’s total of 575. Lipscomb noted that this is partly due to the downturn in the economy, which has had a global impact. He revealed, “When you see that the actual number of people going into casinos is going down as much as it has in the past two quarters, which is between 25% and 40%, I assume that there would be an impact on $10,000 buy-in tournaments as well.”
No formal air date for Season VII of the WPT has been given, but it is scheduled to begin showing before the end of the 2008 calendar year.
