What does the GGPoker acquisition mean for the WSOP?

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Barry Carter gives some initial musings on how the World Series of Poker may change after GGPoker bought it last week.

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Perhaps the biggest story of the year broke last week, as GGPoker bought the World Series of Poker for $500 million

If you work in the industry, you would have heard this rumour every few months for the last three years. It was no secret the GG and WSOP were essentially ‘engaged’ and now it is official, they are married.  

This is probably good news for online players in the USA. The story of GGPoker’s meteoric rise in online poker surprised everyone at a time when it looked impossible to overcome PokerStars. They are by no means perfect but GGPoker has innovated at a pace like we have not seen in poker for years. If this deal with the WSOP is their way of getting into the US market, that is good overall for US players. 

I’m not sure what it will do for GGPoker the online site itself, but I have some initial musings about what it might mean for the WSOP. 

WSOP goes global

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Will there be more bracelet festivals in other parts of the world?

First of all, GGPoker has pledged to take the WSOP global. This surely means the WSOP will become a rival to the EPT and WPT and host more festivals with bracelets to be won. They have already started with WSOP Paradise alongside the WSOPE. I made a prediction this year we would see bracelets awarded before May and it seems I was a year too early. 

If there are no additional bracelet festivals in Europe, I really hope they change the venue of the WSOPE at least, because we are about to have our 7th year at Rozvadov, and it’s time for a change. Could we also see the return of WSOP APAC, which happened just once in 2014? 

The big thing on my GG/WSOP wishlist would be to change the way the WSOP is broadcast. PokerGo do an amazing job and I’d want to keep them to produce the shows, but hiding the Main Event behind a paywall is not good for the game. If GGPoker could get the broadcast back to free or, even better, on mainstream TV, it would be a huge boost for poker. 

I expect we will see a swift decision about the ongoing ‘laptops on the rail’ debate in time for next year’s WSOP, which would be an outright ban. 

A tiny thing, but I would hope they are able to change the eligibility of the Poker Hall of Fame so that more than one player can be inducted a year. The players of the modern era are about to turn 40 and there will be a backlog of worthy players who will never get in, if it continues the way it does. 

Could the GG WSOP get too big?

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What will this mean for the Main Event?

This will no doubt be good for the Main Event numbers as GGPoker has the liquidity to send a lot of players via satellites. It would be remiss of me not to say I would be concerned about them tinkering too much with the Main Event, in particular, its status as a freezeout. I’d also hate to see it ever have an online day 1. GGPoker are so growth-minded that I would be worried that they may lose sight of the purity of that event. 

Finally, my other main concern is the same as I would have for any major acquisition. Some things can get too big. The biggest online operator having autonomy over the biggest event in live poker is not something I relish, in the same way that I wouldn’t like PokerStars to buy the WSOP either. I wouldn’t want any individual player to have that much power, but it seems that Daniel Negreanu is now a major influence on both GG and the WSOP. When any operator has a monopoly, it’s easy to stop listening to their customers. Just ask PokerStars back in the Amaya acquisition days. 

We are fortunate that we are in a boom time for live poker and the World Poker Tour is proving a very healthy rival to the World Series of Poker. This should alleviate some of my concerns about any one operator having too much power, because right now the WPT has become so strong that we are genuinely talking about whether their Championship event is bigger than the WSOP Main Event for prestige. This period of healthy competition means GGPoker can not get complacent, even if they are the biggest operator live and online now. 

Will this be good for the game? Let us know in the comments:


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