Due to recently low returns and an all-time low stock price for the World Poker Tour’s online poker room, ClubWPT.com, the WPT executives have shut the doors on this online leg of their business. The WPT poker room just didn’t have the support to stay open.
There are a number of factors that ultimately led to this, so it should not be assumed that other online poker rooms will follow. First of all, ClubWPT.com never really had the following it expected and just couldn’t get off the ground. Another reason has to do with the timing in which the room opened. Getting into the online poker room business at later stages than already established rooms like PokerStars and PartyPoker doesn’t necessarily mean you will fail. However, the WPT came on the scene in late 2006 just before the UIGEA shook the world of online poker. At a time when poker accounts were uncertain, not as many new players were signing up. While these issues have somewhat remedied themselves, the WPT online poker room never recovered.
Another reason the WPT never took off was that, overnight, ClubWPT.com became the competitor of many of their sponsors, including UltimateBet, PokerStars, and PartyPoker. The once-supported live tour that hosted satellite tournaments at many of these sites suddenly lost a great deal of backing and online advertisement. Furthermore, as a result of this, the WPT became just a North American tour, losing global venues from its lineup and attention from much of the poker community throughout the world. Furthermore, following the UIGEA, the WPT saw a drop in attendance to its live events, as the WPT refused its online competitors to host WPT live event satellites if they accepted US players.
Ultimately, the choice to back out of the online industry of poker will hopefully prove to be the first good decision the WPT company has made in a long time. Perhaps they will be able to re-align themselves with some of their sponsors and concentrate on promoting their live tournament circuit, so they can fill more venues and be able to actually compete with their offline competitor, the European Poker Tour (EPT).
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