Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 07 January 2011 / Leave a Comment

Quite a lot happening in the poker world at the moment. Interestingly, a number of the headlines during this first week of the year have concerned the issue of player sponsorships in online poker. These many stories have not only incited our curiosity, but such a convergence perhaps also encourages us to reflect on the significance and value of player sponsorships in poker.

Sponsorships frequently capture a lot of attention, which only makes sense as they primarily exist as part of the sites' public relations efforts. New signings or other happenings involving sponsored players tend to create "buzz," thereby furthering the sites' reach by increasing the familiarity and/or appeal of their "brand."

Sponsorships also help create a lot of soap opera-like intrigue, too, some of which may or may not contribute so positively to the promotion of the sites. And if one can step back and look at the way these sponsorships actually affect the playing of the game, one can readily see how they sometimes create obstacles that could be said to have a negative effect on poker, generally speaking.

That is to say, online sponsorships may well be necessary to poker, but they aren't necessarily always good for poker.

What are Sponsorships?

From the very beginning, online poker sites employed players to endorse their product. Not long after Planet Poker became the first site to offer real money games back in 1998, the prominent poker writer and "mad genius of poker" Mike Caro became a spokesperson for the site. (Planet Poker suspended real money games in 2007, and Caro is now associated with another site, DoylesRoom.)

Today most online poker sites -- including all of the largest ones -- sponsor "team pros" as part of their marketing efforts. These players' images are usually prominently displayed on the sites themselves while also turning up in advertisements, including in print magazines, on the web, or in some cases on television. Sponsored players also sometimes take on additional "spokesperson"-like responsibilities for the sites, helping promote special events and the like in the effort to support the site's brand.

In return, sponsored players receive varying degrees of recompense for lending their names and images to the sites. Most receive some sort of rakeback and/or additional compensation for playing on the sites that sponsor them. Some have entry fees into tournaments paid for along with other associated costs (traveling, accommodations, etc.). And a select few even earn some sort of salary or other benefits from the sites.

Departures and Signings

As mentioned, many of the big stories in poker this week have involved player sponsorships in one way or another.

Just over a week ago, two of poker's most prominent personalities, Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth, both ended their relationships with UltimateBet (or "UB"). Duke had been associated with the site for over nine years, while Hellmuth had been there since the site was founded in 2001, reportedly having contributed to the creation of the site's original software.

Speculation about the reasons for both players' departures quickly reached a fever pitch, with many trying to guess which sites Hellmuth and Duke may next join. Those conjectures only waned a little when the rumor quickly surfaced that UB planned to announce Prahlad Friedman would be joining its team of sponsored players. Just yesterday that rumor was confirmed, as the announcement was finally made official.

A somewhat polarizing figure already thanks to a couple of prominently-featured controversies on WSOP Main Event broadcasts, there were a couple of other reasons why UB's signing of Friedman caught many by surprise. For one, he'd long opposed the idea of becoming a sponsored player -- "I'll guarantee you'll never see with a poker site or casino logo" he told Poker Player Newspaper in October 2009.

Secondly, Friedman had been victimized significantly by the massive insider cheating scandal that occurred over the course of several years at UltimateBet. While Friedman had received a large refund from the site after being cheated, many remained confounded at his decision to join the site as a sponsored pro. Even Annie Duke alluded to Friedman's signing as a bit of a "head-scratcher" this week in an interview on Dennis Phillips' podcast, The Final Table.

More Stories Involving Sponsorships

Meanwhile, still other events from the past week in poker have caused us to think specifically about player sponsorships. The new season of "Poker After Dark" debuted this week, a popular poker show sponsored by Full Tilt Poker. Thus can one see many of that site's pros playing on the show (such as Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan), but no pros from PokerStars who announced back in 2009 that it would no longer allow its players to appear on the show.

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure kicked off this week down in the Bahamas, with a $100,000 buy-in "Super High Roller" event beginning yesterday. Again, while a number of PokerStars-sponsored pros could be found among the star-studded field of 38, none of the prominent pros who are members of "Team Full Tilt" entered. While it could be a coincidence, one assumes sponsorships have again played a role in affecting who gets to play and who doesn't.

One other story from the week touched on the issue of sponsorships, the much-hyped "SuperStar Showdown" match between Tony G and Isildur1 on PokerStars. Near the end of their match, Tony G noted how his sponsoring site -- PartyPoker -- had allowed him to play an "away" match on another site. He commented further on the issue on this week's Two Plus Two Pokercast, arguing that in his view sites needed to allow their "team pros" the freedom to play on other sites as well as to participate on other sites' sponsored shows and in their events.

The Give and Take of Sponsorships

These latter stories concern the way sponsorships sometimes force a kind of voluntary "segregation" of players. Obviously such a situation is less than desirable, and indeed some of the players involved -- like Tony G -- have voiced displeasure at not being allowed the freedom to play in events because of sponsorship-related restrictions.

The situation is quite peculiar, creating some odd circumstances that could be said to hurt the overall competitiveness of the game. Imagine players in the National Basketball Association, most of whom are sponsored by shoe companies to wear their product while they play, being unable to compete in games that involve players wearing competitors' shoes. If such were the case, the result would be rival leagues -- the "Nike Basketball League," the "Adidas League," etc. -- and a situation in which the best players would not be able to challenge themselves against one another.

That analogy isn't perfect, by the way. Whereas shoe companies sell products that are of use and directly relevant to the game of basketball, online poker sites are -- in a way -- selling the game itself. Thus it is a lot easier to imagine the sites dictating when and where their players play than for a shoe company (or other advertiser) to wield such power over the players it sponsors.

That said, for a variety of reasons sponsorships appear necessary. They obviously benefit the players involved, many of whom are in truth able to play more (not less) thanks to their deals. And given how much attention the recent machinations at UB managed to draw, sponsorships most certainly appear beneficial for the sites in their attempt to attract attention and thus more players to their sites.

One can hope for a world in which the need for sponsorships in professional poker would not unduly affect how the game is played. But that may be asking for too much, especially given the current contexts -- economic, legal, cultural -- in which poker finds itself at present. The fact is, there are lots of restrictions on poker, anyway, never mind the ones the industry creates for itself.

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