1. TK has hit the nail on the head - for the dtd Model to continue past the medium term (and no other model like it exists in the UK) it has to be has be sustainable. The model does not include having roulette and blackjack tables, dtd is about being "dedicated to poker".
2. No - the dtd online business has lost £370k so far in 2007 in terms of running costs, not including capital expenditure and set up costs, but we are not alone, many other more established online businesses are losing money every month (but prefer not to admit it), it is now a highly competitive industry with very high direct costs such as rakeback, software fees and banking. Players assume that when they rake $1, the site gets all of that, it's more like 25cc, thats a fact. This 25cc then has to pay for marketing and adminsitration costs, of which sponsorship fees are part of "marketing".
3. To give you an example, in 2008, to sponsor a "name" professional player for the GUPT, EPT, EWSOP and WSOP events plus travel and hotels, you are looking at $250 - $300k. So, as a site, you would need to generate $1m - $1.5m of rake to even breakeven. If dtd had been open 12 months ago, I am sure we would be in a totally different financial postion and able to have a much higher marketing budget in 2008, but unfortunatley, we have to be responsible, and ensure that all of the hard work setting the club up and getting the licence does result in a fantastic place for poker players.
4. My "open the club at all costs" attitude has been described by to me as "financially irresponsible" (in a nice way by people whose opinion I respect) but the live club fight became very personal for me over the last 18 months, and common sense business accumen went totally out of the window - I refused to cut running costs or stop the momentum ( I even ordered the poker chips with no licence!) as I did not want to give my opposers any smell of victory whatsever, now I have to make sure that we are here to stay, and reverse the cashflows at dtd. Of course I would like to have unlimited financial resources - but I do not.
In fact, maybe foolishly, I still take the whole dtd V Casino legal battle very personally, even though we won the case in the end. For example, Grovsvenor have now offered to lift my ban from their casinos, but after a few seconds thought, I know I am never stepping foot in one of their casinos again, even if there was a nuclear war in Luton and the Grovesnor Luton Casino was the only place safe to shelter. Even though they were not one of the 3 official dtd objectors - I know that they would have been if they had a casino in Nottingham by their actions in banning me from their venues.
Hey - we all have our weaknesses, if we were all the same life would be so boring......but at least now poker players will have the option to play poker in a dedicated poker environment, but the costs of delivering this have hurt me substancially and I need to put my "steady the ship" hat on.
