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The WSOP Risks Brand-Suicide If It Fails To Payout The Millionaire Maker Champion And Runner-Up
Disruptor
A legacy brand is a brand that endures and thrives across product cycles and management tenures, its values rooted in consistency and a commitment to excellence that resonates with its customers. A disruptor brand challenges the status quo, offering something new and different, changing the way that the consumer engages with a product, undercutting the industry leaders and deploying subversive marketing strategies.
The World Poker Tour is both. For a quarter of a century, it has been a tried and trusted operator that helped to shape the game, both as a competitive mind-sport and a TV product. It is also a firebrand that, under new management, has tried to make trouble for its competition. WPT, WPT Global and ClubWPT Gold are all separate entities and they all have slightly different identities but they are interconnected, like three siblings; related but with slightly different modus operandi.
Various campaigns have made big splashes. The WPT World Poker Championship in 2022 had the largest guarantee in poker history. The record-breaking $40M guarantee WPT World Poker Championship in 2023 had the biggest overlay in poker history, not including the enormous overlays enjoyed by players who qualified on WPT Global. The ClubWPT Gold $5M Freeroll at the 2024 WPT World Poker Championship was the biggest freeroll in poker history.
This week, a tsunami crashed to shore in the form of ClubWPT Gold’s latest campaign - the $1M Gold Rush ticket promotion. Did it go beyond cheeky trolling and into the realm of corporate guerrilla warfare? Absolutely. Did it cross the line, corrupting the integrity of the game in ways that should be disparaged? I don’t think so. Was it one of the most ingenious poker promotions ever concocted? Certainly.
Nacho (Not yo’) Chips
On Wednesday night, Jesse Yaginuma made a surprise comeback versus James Carroll, overturning a 10:1 chip deficit to win the 11,996-runner $1500 Millionaire Maker for a first prize of $1,255,180. As a result, Yaginuma also claimed a bonus $1,000,000 via ClubWPT Gold’s Gold Rush promotion. He won his Gold Rush ticket for speedily eating this monstrous pile of nacho chips.
Since the victory, there has been speculation that Carroll dumped an altogether different kind of chips to Yaginuma, implying that a deal may have been struck to lock up the bonus $1,000,000. Americas Cardroom ambassador Rob Kuhn was especially vexed at the idea that something was awry during heads-up play.
As a result, WSOP have launched an investigation into the matter.
Collusion is defined by the WSOP Rules as “any agreement between or among two (2) or more Participants to engage in illegal or unethical acts against other Participants”. Suffice to say, for heads-up play, there are no other participants so one would assume that the investigation will look into earlier play to ascertain whether something collusive took place.
ClubWPT Gold ambassador Doug Polk released a video yesterday, in which he indicated that ClubWPT Gold currently had no intention of withholding the $1,000,000 prize from Yaginuma but it is nonetheless a sweaty time for him and Carroll with almost $2.3 million on the line.
Beyond the Pale
The first thing that I would say is proving collusion will be very difficult indeed because the existence of funky hands is only circumstantial evidence. When you consider that all Carroll had to do to assure victory for Yaginuma was to leave the Horseshoe, get in his car and drive away, his staying to play the tournament out is a strong data point with which to counter any accusation of chip-dumping. If I was their lawyer, I would point that out.
The second thing that I would say is that the WSOP brought this on themselves with an antiquated attitude to deal-making. It is the poker players who put up the buy-ins so it is them who should get to decide what to do with the money. To anyone who would make the argument about devaluing ‘the bracelet’, may I point to ‘Flip-Out’ bracelets, a $50 online bracelet and the sheer number of these eye-sores that are distributed annually, many via less-than-solid online sites.
The third thing that I would say is if the investigation fails to uncover any problems at an earlier juncture which disadvantaged an uninvolved party, then the WSOP are risking a public relations fiasco if they don’t pay out Yaginuma and Carroll. ClubWPT Gold have profoundly out-manoeuvred them with this promotion, Bogarting all the attention and headlines during a period of the year when their brand is supposed to be untouchable.
The WPT’s generosity is on full display as the company adds value, looking to capture the poker public’s imagination and loyalty. On the flipside, the WSOP’s corporate greed is on-show with registration fee hikes and $8 bananas. That narrative is already likely to carry far beyond a hot Summer in the desert but to scum a couple of players on spurious grounds would take negativity to another level. That would be beyond the Pale. It would also be brand-suicide.
David Lappin is an ambassador for WPT Global
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