Over $7 million juiced from WSOP ME. How to turn poker from a negative to a positive sum game.

but how much does it cost to run? my guess is half or more

How much does main event bracelet cost?

You're not wrong that sponsorship could offset the need to rake, but let's not pretend the WSOP is not actively pursuing corporate dollars. It's all over the place on the stream and in the playing area.

That said, even if the WSOP did manage to pick up (say) $3 million in extra corporate partnerships, it's not like they'll also say, "And we're passing those savings on to the players! The Main Event will now just rake $4 million instead of $7 million!" No, it's just that both amounts will end up in the coffers.

Suggesting adding a cap to the WSOP Main Event makes any point your trying to make null and void.

It's the dream tourney for all poker payers where your average joe has a chance to win it all, no matter how slim the chances are, that's the selling point and has been that way for 20years.

Also a good point. Look at the juice on things like horse racing, sports betting and pretty much every casino game ever rolled out. People still flock to these, with very few actually looking at the house edge.

Of course, the ultimate is stuff like the Mega Millions/PowerBall. As of this moment, the MM has an advertised jackpot of $251 million, which translates to about half that in present value. Thus, every ticket is $2 for a 1 in 302,575,350 chance to win about $120 million in PV. Yet people continue pouring money into the game, not because they're thinking about their odds, but because they're fantasizing at that off, off, off chance of winning life-changing money. The WSOP ME is pretty much the same, only on a smaller scale.

I did not suggest adding a cap to the WSOP ME. I suggested that a competing tournament could cap entries as away of keeping costs down so that sponsorship could cover the expenses.

You're right. The WSOP is getting sponsors and Caesars is keeping all that money for themselves.

I don't see any hope for the WSOP adopting a model such as what I suggested in the OP. I'm suggesting that a different tournament could succeed/survive in a way that turns poker from a negative sum to a positive sum game.

The $7 million figure includes both the entry fee (4.9%) and the dealer withholding (2.1%) fwiw. I guess both of these could be included in what is conventionally called “rake”, but I’m not sure it’s fair to include them both in the money that went to CET.

Who cares if the money goes to Caesars or to Jack Effel and his cronies? Rake is rake.

Ya cause casinos are always interested in giving back to poker players

You're comparing the main event which anyone can enter to other events where it's the best in the world with maybe a few dozen people in each event.
It's not remotely analogous.

Obviously there isn't much money from sponsors watching the best in the world in the high rollers bc they're a ****ing snooze fest that will never get ratings.

I'm no fan of Caesars as a company but they got 10k people to pay the rake on the main and you think the rake is too high. That makes less than zero sense. It's obviously not too high when that many people payed it.

Also the winner of the world's strongest man contest made like 80k last year. The winner of the main got 10 million.

How much money do you think would come from sponsors for a free roll for a bunch of GTO bots with an 80k top prize? How would they even generate 80k on such an unwatchable piece of ****?

I suggested neither a freeroll nor an event limited to top pros.

The WSM has prize money plus costs for venue, insurance, tv production etc. Whatever that total amount is, it would cover at least a substantial portion of the cost of operating a poker tournament. Poker doesn't need to be a free roll to be a positive sum game.

You're gonna be really upset when you find out how much Major League sports owners make.

Protip: you need massive interest to generate big sponsorship/ad revenue.

How much was the cornhole champion paid last year?

You're forgetting a few things. The boss wants to get paid for their time and efforts too.

They bring the space, tables, utilities, cards, vendors, cameras, and whatever else you can think of. If I were them and I set all this up I'd see it fair to charge a relatively small amount for everyone to come play too.

But you're comparing it to events (most of which have tiny top prizes) that are only the best of the best and are in fact free rolls. So you compare it to free rolls only made up of the best of the best and then say nobody is suggesting that? That makes no sense.

So Caesars is now a charity?

The only reason the prize pool is so big is because people are buying into it.

When you have a product that gets 10,000 people to pay rake you don't lower the rake.

Since as long as I've been playing poker people have suggested one form of another or rake free poker or near rake free poker and it's never made sense. Poker isn't a popular spectator sport so it can't generate a lot of revenue in that way.

There's never going to be a benevolent person or group that essentially runs a business to give a bunch of poker grinders more money. I mean seriously why would anyone set up this huge production that doesn't generate much outside money to hand money to a bunch of dirt bag poker players running sims at the final table? Never gonna happen.

The Horseshoe started the World Series of Poker without rake as a way to market their casino. Casinos sponsor all sorts of things, as do myriad other businesses. The "benevolent" people who start something like this don't have to be working for free, just like the people who run all sorts of other niche events don't work for free. These people would likely be poker players like Mori Eskandani who started a number of (unraked) poker events like High Stakes Poker. It's not inconceivable.

And I don't know why you assume the people who make a final table are dirt bags. Most people I play poker with are good people, apparently YMMV. Keeping sims away from a poker table is not a great logistical hurdle.

My hope in posting this is that someone steps up to make this happen. I understand that person is not you. That's fine, but imo it can be done.

Good luck and best wishes to you.

Nobody is asking sponsors to make up the $100m in prize pool --- only the much smaller $7m in rake.

With that said -- end of day if WSOP ME is getting 10k entrants @ 7% rake and the WPT ME is getting 5k+ at 6% rake, there is no incentive for the two biggest 10ks of the year to cut rake.

Even Triton charges pretty high rake TBH (5% area) for their series of open field high rollers. The closest thing to what you have in mind was the Epic Poker league (LOL) or maybe the ESPN heads-up challenge which was rake free. These types of made for TV events probably do work as rake-free contests if there is enough sponsorship dollars, there just hasn't been that kind of push/interest for mainsteam sponsorship dollars since pre Black Friday -- most of the sponsorship dollars would logically come from online poker sites which is still half dead in the US

Yea the horseshoe did that when it was a few dozen players who were also basically gamblers. Totally different than what we have today.

Do you think if the horseshoe could have gotten 10k people to pay this rake they wouldn't have? Assuming they could logistically run the event

Additionally let's be real- when the wsop started it was a much different Vegas. It was largely set up to induce whales to get cheated out of big money in cash games by Doyle, Puggy Pearson etc who obviously were kicking money back to Benny Binion.

You're really good at making terrible analogies.

I didn't say everyone at the final table was dirtbags but the guy who won and his little crew absolutely are.

Poker sites and poker rooms don't exist to make money for pros. That's a happy byproduct.

The whole no rake /free rake thing players want so bad is ludicrous. You have a ton of players who are torture to watch play,who don't know how to treat their own customers who also expect casinos to light money on fire , run huge events and games and just hand them piles of money. Not gonna happen.

The wsop main event is literally the last event in the world that a casino should have cheaper/free rake.

The structure is such that basically all of the people who cash for big money are pros who are just taking the money out of the economy.
Then you throw in supply and demand - 10k people are paying the rake and it makes zero sense.

If they're gonna have cheap rake in something it should be some turbo that costs them way less money to run and gives shitty players a good chance to go deep and gamble with the money in the pit.

People in the main are paying the rake for the softest 10k in existence.

This thread should actually be about the ridiculous amount they charge for food. I bet they make more with that than rake.

$5 for a banana
$15 for a basic hot dog

And those are the cheap options.

A part of me wants to agree with this.

But a part of me knows how fat and lazy so many poker players are and that they basically deserve this.

I remember when wsop was at Rio id park across the Rio in the indoor parking lot instead of the outdoor lot by the poker area so the car wouldn't be an inferno when I got inside of it.

When I woke tell people about the extremely strenuous 6-7 min walk they'd look at me like I have 3 heads.

There’s a lot of issues I have with how poker is treated but the main rake isn’t really one of them tbh… 7% is pretty low now a days. The wsopc are like 15-25% rake aren’t they?

Its no easy task to collect $10k from 10k degens and distribute it without too many issues. That alone is worth the rake imo.

The bigger issue is the money grab for food and drink. They got you by the balls in the middle of the desert so what can you do.

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Yeah they can and should cool it with food prices

They might even make more by charging less as they’d sell more of it.

And when you cash don’t they also ask you to leave a tip?