WPT Logo Wearing

[Harry Demetriou]

It's absolutely heartwarming to see that the WPT is now going to allow logo wearing in their tournaments commencing with next months Borgata event in Atlantic City.

I know many players worked very hard for this along with Doug Dalton at The Bellagio and Lyle Berman to name just two and quite a few others.

I really do hope that now the internet sites will give greater support to the WPT events and make them as popular if not more popular than the WSOP events as from my personal experiences they are run much better than the WSOP events (except for The Mirage who are very amateurish).

Finally things are beginning to move forward in a direction that should enable us (the players) to benefit as perhaps now we can start going after those non gambling and internet poker site related sponsors.

This could be the dawnng of a new era for tthe players within the poker explosion and I for one am very excited about this news as I have long advocated that permitting logos in WPT events would be good for the organizers, the Travel Channel and the players themselves..

[I KNOW IT]

When ,  if ever do you think these sponsors are going to put money into the prize pool instead of select individuals?

[Harry Demetriou]

When ,  if ever do you think these sponsors are going to put money into the prize pool instead of select individuals?

Currently there are few events with added money and these tend to be the ones made for TV.

Over in the UK we had The Ladbroke Poker MIllion (+$850k) and the forthcoming William Hill tournament (+$115k) which have added money whilst in the US they are not quite so generous except for the odd freeroll or invited player made for TV events. where money has been added.

As TV audiences have grown so too has corporate interest and The WPT has already got sponsors who pay to have their name associated with the tour and have done so since its onset.

I reckon before the end of the year we will have some tournaments with zero entry fees/commission in the USA and added prizemoney and within a year we will get something like a Mercedes Classic or Kia/Coca Cola Open. In fact some of these have already taken place on both sides of the pond but these have been TV specials or PR exercises by various sites.

Additionally I also feel that we are going to get more player sponsorship in the form of non internet logo wearing in this same time frame and Erick Lindgren already has a Bourbon company logo on his shirts and has done for some time.

It all takes time but this logo move by the Travel Channel and the WPT will certianly help to accelerate things along the right way.