The Lodge's $2m main event has a $416k overlay

1000% not dying

All my data is massively trending up

I think the state of poker marketing is pretty bad on many fronts for 2024 best practices - most of the poker world is still going off ESPN and poker sites of yestertear marketing efforts.

There is also more events, game shows, players, vloggers, winners, losers than ever before being thrown at you constantly that it's hard to make sense of it all so I think that it is interesting to the people who consume that specific show or game play - if you are a triton fan, you probably find it interesting for the players that go to the events, play big buyins, all the shiny lights/cameras etc. but they also have a great brand package, marketing, the biggest names involved and many years on it's side now to build that up.

It takes a long time to build interesting narratives and story lines.

WSOP production has stayed basically the same for as long as I can remember but they are in a perfect position to take it to another level whenever they get the right investor. I still think the production itself is at a high level and looks beautiful.

I think the last 2 years you had a lot of people amped off for it after they went 3 years between WSOPs.

The 2021 October series wasn't normal at all. You still needed masks everywhere but the Rio and turnout was understandably way down.

I hadn't even thought about this much but I haven't had anyone at my tables going to the wsop this year either. The last 2 years in May I heard a lot about it.

I'm sure they still put up good numbers but I expect a dip after last year.

That's interesting to hear. Fragmentation of media is well-documented as it pertains to movies, cable, etc. For example, you're not going to see a TV show in 2024 get the same audience share that Seinfeld, ER, and Friends were getting. Not only are there more TV channels now, but there's also stuff like Netflix, Twitch, online gaming, social media. Entertainment products face a lot more competition to win the audience's time and attention.

My feeling with the WSOP specifically is that they shot themselves in the foot. That brand blew up unexpectedly in 2003, so ESPN ordered more episodes and put more poker on TV. They oversaturated their audience and diluted their own content. People lost interest. Gradually the audience shrunk to the point where ESPN decided that they didn't want to be in the poker business anymore. Now the rights are with CBS/PokerGO, and I'm guessing there wasn't much of a bidding war involved to secure them. It's small potatoes now, not like the NBA or NFL where TV execs will fight to the death for the rights.

Poker felt biggest when it was getting heavy rotation on ESPN and Travel Channel. Those days are over. The cable landscape is totally fragmented. Even if ESPN still held the rights, ESPN itself is not the cultural force that it once was. However when you add up all the people engaging with poker on PokerGO, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok; it's probably still a healthy audience. It's just not as centralized as it once was. Maybe the content is not as optimized as it could be, but there's an audience.

People love the game and I don't see that going away.

I think there was a mini boom after Covid that is starting to die down for live poker. I also think there are new markets that constantly are getting introduced/expanded for poker and are booming and some where poker has become stale and are declining.

Poker 100000% not dying. Record numbers pretty much everywhere, the Lodge overlaying 1 tournament isnt at all indicative of the overall poker economy.

Last years main was the biggest of all time by some margin.

Here in UK, the main tour is getting record numbers and they are running events alongside side events pretty much every week now all around the country, sometimes 4 events in the same weekend in different locations and still smashing guarantee's.

There are always going to be peaks and lulls, however im sure this WSOP will show again that poker is alive and well in 2024

That’s an interesting take and you’re probably right. Most of my perspective is looking at the WSOP as that, typically, is considered the pinnacle of poker. So maybe my perception is skewed because I’m looking at the lack of excitement for the WSOP rather than considering the possibility that there are just so many other venues and maybe it’s all getting confusing and diluted, especially for people new to the game.

Cheer up, Dr. Meh! You still love poker, and so do we.

Never said anything about record lows or comparing it to such. I am comparing it to the last 20-25 years. Other than the peak right before the crash of 2006, it is the highest it has been this century. We will never see the likes of 2020 and 2021 again, for many reasons, nor will we see 1980 or even 1990 again either.

Aria been dead all year since the series died down and it went soo quick last year. Got this gut feeling this year after the series is over will be worse

Aria's poker room has declined in quality over the years. Some other room is always stepping up their game to steal market share. So this 1 anecdote is irrelevant to overall poker health.

One would need to combine activity across all of the top tier poker rooms to discover an industry trend.

In a 3 year period where we have had 30%+ real inflation(food, energy, medical, housing) "record" numbers need to occur every year to be breakeven in real dollars. Think you will find if measured in purchasing power dollars the results are not as rosy as you portray.

People are talking about record numbers in participation. Dollar numbers are pretty meaningless since so much of the high stakes action has moved to private games.

Did anyone watch the final table (sorry haven't followed the thread).. the guy Mike that won.. He played like such a pussy for 99% of the FT.. once they got heads up, he did seem to open up a tad.

never rooted against someone so much just based on the way they played.

I didn't watch it, but what you described is pretty much exactly how ICM tells you you're supposed to play on the final table. Once you're heads up ICM no longer effects the strategy.

Final tables are a lot more exciting when people just ignore ICM.

Thats why small field progressive knockout tournaments are so nice. If you can easily get up to thrice the amount of second place if you win them, you are not incentiviced to nit it up so hard, regarding ICM.

For those of you who were around this game pre-boom, was it such that the WSOP was really the only sizable tournament series and all others were pretty small in scale? I wonder if we're seeing poker contract back in that direction. Perhaps the size of the WSOP ME field is not a good indicator of poker's overall health – it might mean that players generally save up for that one month and largely blow off poker at all other times of the year.

On the other hand, this is a site where we so often take a "lol samplesizements" stance. Maybe we're all reading too much into a handful of overlays.

3k buyin is a bad price point for locals... most people can justify 1-2k as a splurge but 3-5k is usually too much for an average person to risk. Without a ton of satellites or a ton of people traveling in it's going to be really hard to get a big field in that size. Main event is different it's a bucket list type item for a lot of people or a tradition at this point for others.

Also Round Rock is a pretty bad place to travel to. It's far from the airport and the hotels are either motel like or really expensive. There's not much to do in the area either.

I haven't gotten into the PKOs, but it sounds like a fun format. I might have to take the time to study up a little and give them a shot. I recently started playing a few mystery bounties and regular bounties.

The mystery bounties are a lot of fun! Adds a fun gambly element, and takes the sting away a little when you get eliminated if you get to draw for any bounties

I can't speak about the poker tourney scene pre Moneymaker, but it seems to me like right now live tournament poker is overall doing very well.

The way I see it there's likely just an element of the overall economy that gets reflected in poker too. All the extra government money circulating during the pandemic likely contributed to the mini poker boom we experienced.

I think you might be right about the sample size comment though. Right after we were discussing all those overlays the next tournament I entered had more entries than last year and tripled the guarantee.

Still, I feel a subtle shift that I'm attributing mainly to the FED tightening. Like just today I saw a headline that Target is dropping prices on thousands of items to compete with Walmart. A few months ago the question was how much retailers were going to raise prices.

If recreational players are feeling the squeeze with inflation and expensive debt, it stands to reason that they'll have less disposable income to spend on poker.

Maybe not though. I could be misreading things. People were sure firing in this last tournament!

there were no high rollers at all and less tournament series. but wpts had 10k main events all over the place. I remember borgata's main was 10k during the boom and the last time they had a wpt there it was 3500 or so in 2020.

Wsop circuit stops also had 10k main events for a few years, which then became 5ks and these days might be a 2500 or even 1500 main.

Aria leads the pack w regards to customer service, rake, comps, and availablity to get seated. Sure there are lulls in demand, but Friday and Saturday's are packed full of tourists. They've taken their PLO offerings to the next level. It is the go to for PLO in LV.

Big brands like the WSOP should partner with young social media influencer etc and sponsor them to the WSOP. The return on investment for sponsoring a bunch of streamers into the main event is easily recouped. Or just start with sponsoring people who arent comfortable in the main into some smaller 1ks. Its baffling the marketing department for stuff like WSOP is still relying on people like DNegs for their main exposure. The guy is great for his segment of the population, but there are a ton of people who wont see Daniel Negreanu as interesting simply because hes 50 years old. It doesnt matter how sociable or likeable he is. Young people wont follow some "boomer" poker player on social media.

Just sponsor people like MrBeast etc into the main. And even younger influencers that I havent heard about who are popular with even younger adults. Even if they dont tell their followers (and they will...) word of mouth would be enough to recoup expenses extremely fast. Why arent athletes and influencers actively approached and bought into big tournament series by the organizers?

The only reason poker isnt at risk of becoming some "old guy activity" like bridge which is completely irrelevant for young people, is that poker has that unique mixture of skill, luck and possibility to win money that no other games have. Poker could easily be even bigger than it is if the marketing departments did more to get new demographics into the game. Why isnt there a "Young Players Bracelet" for people 25 or younger? So many things you could do to make poker more attractive and accessible to new players.

I got a lot of stick for suggesting this in another thread. Dont understand why as its a no-brainer for me..

Wait this actually ran with a 416k overlay?

I know it's Daniel Negreanu's money, but still.

If you're talking about WPT and WSOPC events, then I think we're talking about a different era of the game. I was thinking pre-boom, which would be 2000 at the latest.

At the height of World Poker Tour's smash TV ratings and instant celebrity status of degens just because they made a final table lol, all the tours were at $10K Main Events. Even a WSOP circuit event at Harrahs Rincon was $10K Main Event. Obviously times have changed and the lesser or tertiary tours are substantially less for Main buyins now.

Sorry misread. You'll have to find out from someone older than me !