WSOP Event Cancelled - Low Turnout

Folks at the WSOP running something like live satellites for entry into another event are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

If they want to avoid looking bad, like this, try running online qualifier satellites at a lower lower buy ins for a esat in the live event. The satelite juice could either be 0% or go to the Event prize pool.

Anyone with online experience would have suggested this, not that the live event folks even saw a possible problem.

Alternatively, and this would be best, RUN IT ANYWAY and chalk up the overlay to marketing and experience....

Grow a pair, you're the WSOP

I’m surprised there aren’t more comments. Does nobody find this concerning?

It’s a $5k WSOP bracelet event that had four people register. If this doesn’t set off alarm bells about either the state of tournament poker or GG’s inability to properly market/host/run an online WSOP tournament, I don’t know what will.

It seems like there is a WSOP bracelet tourn registering everyday online or live. People don't care.

LOL you guys. OP himself thinks this is a WSOP bracelet event on GG and first commenter thinks it's a live event. This is literally the first sentence of OP's article:

This is like stars cancelling a WCOOP event. Nothingburger.

You can only water down the prestige of a bracelet so much before it becomes completely meaningless.

Is anyone buying that someone is joining some elite "bracelet club" if they buy in for a $5300 event online and beat seven people?

I'm just sad I never won a bracelet before they became completely meaningless.

At least I'm part of the "gold ring" club.

You realize GG owns WSOP, right?

I hear they’re gold-plated tin.

I agree that it’s all watered down and meaningless now, but what could resolve that?

If they were to reign in it and maybe offer only a dozen bracelets a year or something for top notch events, would that make the bracelets more prestigious again or is it already too far gone?

Given the issue is saturation reducing the number of them would obviously help at that.

They could just give more rings out instead if they're really intent on basing advertising around the concept of winning something other than the tourney itself

Is this a problem. I have no clue. I don't really follow WSOP.

But even not following WSOP, it seems like it runs all the time on many sites.
Like it runs all year round or something how is it still going?

So it seems like the WSOP is oversaturated.

I feel like it's already too far gone. I remember about 10 years ago having someone point out a bracelet winner in the local poker room and I was kind of in awe.

I don't think I would have the same reaction today, even if I was a newer player. Bracelets were already getting watered down with how many events were being held in Vegas, but now with bracelets being given out in the Bahamas, LA, random online tournaments outside of the regular WSOP, it's just turning into a joke.

I agree with what someone else said that they should have just given out more rings. A bracelet was supposed to be something special.

Bracelets have always been a marketing gimmick to lure in bad players. It's literally how the wsop started.

Expecting them to be anything other than that is silly.

They diluted the brand to the point bracelets are meaningless. It definitely was a calculated decision by them to promote underperforming events (pca and online always struggles for them) but cost them their brand. They also had the issue where events used to be financially meaningful to enter (10k in the 80s vs 300$ today is not the same barrier of entry)

Surprised to see nobody has mentioned how badly their online product has gone downhill since they changed software at the start of summer:
-the mobile app doesn't work. If you switch apps (to send a text for example) while playing, you will fail the geolocation check when you come back until restarting the phone. This is a terrible user experience and drives away many recs.
-they basically ended rakeback for tournaments, while still charging the same rake including 900+100 for bracelets. The max you can receive now is $4 from any tournament (even the $300 rake on the 5300). If someone were to play 10 bracelet events over the course of a month and nothing else, they'd receive $2.50 in rakeback, despite paying $500-1000+ in rake.
-notes don't work and the software crashes with more than 3 tables. This hurts regs and is a big reason I'm playing less and lower stakes. I've heard about some regs not having these issues, but most do, and those that have don't know why their works vs others.
-they slowpay withdrawals to an insane degree. Weeks to months to get paid when offshore operators pay out in hours. A friend called to complain about his long withdrawal time and was explicitly told that they were delaying it to "give him the opportunity to reverse it."
-customer service takes 3+ days to respond to any request and typically respond with a link to something totally irrelevant

Despite adding Michigan and nearly doubling the pool of eligible players, they continue to miss and reduce guarantees that they had no problem meeting on the old software with a smaller player pool. The 1k 50k gtds are now 30k gtd, $100 100k gtd is now 75. There was a $50 5k gtd freezeout daily that now overlays as a $50 4k gtd rebuy, and many other such cases. I'm sure the dilution of bracelets isn't helping, but the massive downgrade of software and terrible treatment of players is the primary reason they're a disaster right now.

Of course bracelets are a marketing gimmick. But the route they went is like if Gucci started selling $50 handbags. Sure they'd sell a lot of bags for a minute, but pretty soon no one would want their $10k bags. What made the WSOP special was the prestige attached to it.

Now they've morphed into something else entirely.

I was the first commentator. I missed ENTIRELY that this was an online event. That GG could not fill this ONLINE never entered my mind.

Sorry, that makes this situation an even worse look for WSOP brand and GG.

.... GG could not pull together some cheap online satellites fthem an online event, they could start with a $1.00, no juice entry level satellite, any run them 24/7 turbo speed for 5 days, until they got 8 players entered.

Online satellites can be stacked, or GG could even give away some seats to avoid something like this.

OR, they could run it with 4 payers and eat the overlay as a marketing cost.

and yet turnouts have never been bigger in live events.

when they had this "prestige" they were getting 100 player fields.

Suffice to say the wsop is way more successful today than 30 years ago.

Your analogy is pretty terrible btw. Rake is way up. A better analogy would be Gucci raising the prices of their handbags by a lot and then selling tons more of them. If Gucci could figure out a way to do that they would.

I’m interested in your theory for what happened with this specific cancelled tournament.

be honest how many people in this thread are just mad that they didn't know about the event or wouldn't have been able to play in it.
if I was able to register for it and saw the event going on I would have snap registered and played pure chipEV for first trying to take it down in a sit n go for the bracelet.
you can hate on it online but if you won that bracelet you'd be talking it up all the time like yeah I won a wsop bracelet in a $5k.

It’s a $5300 open to players from only 3 U.S. states. The only people that are gonna be regging this are American pros in LV with relatively high net worth (dpeters17, prolly). Nobody grinding PA or NJ is rolled for this. And euros that came to WSOP are gone by now (they provided some additional liquidity to the online events that ran in summer).
I don’t think WSOP understands that for online MTTs, anything >$500 is effectively a high roller. $5300 is astronomical. Where’s the money coming from?

if they are so successful I dont think did they would have decided to sell the WSOP brand to GG.

It seems the only "successful" part of the WSOP brand was WSOP Circuit which led the largest WSOP main event record in 2024 hence the clause of the WSOP being held in Caesars for the next 20 years (which is probably a revenue sharing agreement between Caesar's and GG's parent company for that rake...just an assumption though)

You really think they couldn’t find five people willing to play for a WSOP bracelet for $5k in all of Nevada, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey?

My theory is not many people registered for it.
If you wanna cherry pick one 5k tournament as proof of anything feel free.

How about we look at tournaments in totality. Obviously what they're doing is working overall.

So you don’t have a theory and just want to criticize others. Got it.

if the floor announced 8 player $5k sit n go for a wsop bracelet at the aria on on a wednesday it would fill up.