These delays have cost dtd over £950k in legal fees and running costs, the online business has also made a net loss of £350k so far in 2007. Despite this financial crisis and the fact that I have been personally paying all costs , I still decided that dtd must still honour all financial committments for 2007 made with suppliers, employees and sponsored players (committments that were made with live club revenues in the financial budget).
After finally winning the fight to open the live club, we are now only 4 weeks away from opening the live club - but we are not opening a casino - we are only opening a poker club, with limited opportunity to make any instant profits.
Taking on contracts to sponsor poker players is simply not be an option in 2008, the recent escalation in EPT and EWSOP buy-ins, makes it is even more unviable. It would be wholly unfair to take on committments that we could not afford at present, and there has to be some financial consquences of the last 12-18 months. It is very unfortunate that contracts such as DC's cannot be renewed, but there is not a "bottomless pit" in dtd, and I am personally really proud that we did not make any redundancies or try and duck out of any financial promises in 2007, when things have been really tough, going forward, we have to get ourselves back on our feet financially.
I have always been open about the postion at dtd, and that remains. Okay, we took on the big boys, and we won the battle, but we have plenty of scars to show for it. I really hope people can appreicate this.
