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 he Guardian Poker Column |
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| Jamie Wilson in Las
Vegas writes for the Guardian News Group |
| Saturday July 9,
2005 |
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| Email :
TheEditor on any
subject. |
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| MTV poker firm bid led by 'Texas Dolly'
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A septuagenarian poker champion, Doyle "Texas Dolly"
Brunson, is acting as a frontman for an anonymous investor consortium which
announced yesterday that it had offered $700m (£400m) for the US
television production firm World Poker Tour.
WPT pioneered the
under-table camera angle credited with transforming the popularity of televised
poker. Its show, broadcast on the Travel channel in the US on Wednesdays, now
attracts higher viewing figures than some NBA basketball matches.
The
unknown investors are set on heavily promoting the online poker site Doyles
Room.com through WPT's flagship programme.
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The approach is likely to be closely watched
by PartyGaming, the Gibraltar-based online poker firm that floated in London
last month with a £5bn valuation. For four years WPT's presenter Mike
Sexton has been the public face of PartyGaming in the US, where it makes 90% of
its revenues.
Television advertising featuring Mr Sexton, who is highly
regarded among poker fans, is credited with dramatically raising the profile of
PartyGaming's website, PartyPoker.com. The firm says this promotional
relationship explains how it overtook Paradise Poker to become the leading US
poker website.
Paradise Poker has since been acquired by Sportingbet,
the London-listed online bookmaker focused on US sports betting.
Mr
Brunson, 71, has won the World Series of Poker a record 10 times, including two
consecutive wins. A former basketball professional with the then Minneapolis
Lakers, his career was cut short by an accident, in which he broke his leg, at
a factory where he worked part-time. In 1978, Mr Brunson wrote the best-selling
Super System, a guide to Texas Hold 'em poker play. It still sells 14,000
copies a month.
In contrast to the colourful Mr Brunson, little is known
of the investors behind the online business that trades off his name or of the
consortium that has approached WPT.
WPT was founded three years ago as a
joint venture between the chief executive, Steve Lipscomb, and Lakes
Entertainment, a US resort casino operator. The company floated on the New York
stock exchange last August and had a market value of $570m before news of the
bid approach emerged.
Last week WPT was forced to reveal that Deloitte
& Touche had resigned as its auditors. It said Deloitte's decision had been
prompted by "risks" associated with WPT's attempts to launch an online gaming
business.
The US department of justice (DoJ) has made it clear that it
regards online poker and sports bets as an illegal activity under the US Wire
Act. Web-based poker businesses, including Party Gaming, claim that their poker
concerns do not contravene the act.
The DoJ has sought to clamp down on
offshore-based gambling websites through credit card companies and advertising
routes. Earlier this year it pressured a string of websites to ditch
advertisements for sports betting websites. It has not, as yet, cracked down on
online poker publicity campaigns.
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