WPT main event
overlay £100,000
450 entrants x £200 reg fee =£90,000 plus rake on cash games , profit on house games and food etc
minus additional overheads on extra dealers
The maths looks that bad on a losing event ?
Exactly for players turning up paying in cash £2200 to play the event with 450 runners there isn't any added money/overlay. They just get to play a £2200 mtt without any rake. There is no added value (other than the fact they get to play a £2200 mtt against a field of mainly micro staked sat players who have won their seats in overlaid sats and/or been forced to play the event because they binked in a £300 deepstack and have no choice but to donate 20% of their prize in that to an mtt way out of their bankroll where they have a huge ev edge against them).
The added value is in all the donk offs in the sats for the micro staked players. dtd do a great job of selling overlays to last minute cash buy in players which (after rake) are not overlays. If a cash player turns up to 'help dtd' out and they make the 500 runners then they have a 10% edge against them in rake before they even begin with 5 days worth of exs/food/drinks/hotels etc etc. More often than not dtd through this hard sell make the gtd over the years. It comes through the build it and they will turn up business model.
Unless things have changed in hosting a renowned poker brand like the " WPT " there are far more costs than drafting in a few extra poker dealers for the week.
The WPT used to charge you for a license to host any of there events which are not cheap, some brands also want a profit sharing in the rake you generate during the festival, sometimes this can go a day either side of the festival starting also.
So there are many hidden costs to the poker room which joe public doesnt know about which can nullify the generated rake on tournaments helpiing to cover the overlay
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