It was e-Sports before e-Sports and MMA before MMA, and now poker, although it is certainly not hurting as a game overall and still has a vibrant broadcast presence, is looking to pull from the latest and greatest sports business trends to try and do its own rebranding for a new, engaged digital audience.
Welcome to the Global Poker League.
Using a single league entity format, similar to what is used in eSports and is similar to how MLS was formed, Global Poker will try and bring some of the biggest names in the sport together with cities and a tour to try and put together and determine the best of the best in a team format. Managers have been selected based on their poker skills, business acumen, ability to lead a team and commitment to investing time and passion into their team and the league, a total of 12 with 71 career wins, 405 Top 10s and $46,589,602 in live tournament earnings. Those managers will then hold a draft, just like other sports, on February 25 in Beverly Hills to pick their players, all with cities and catchy nicknames and even logos attached. It even has its own portable playing arena, ‘The Cube’ which will be a 20ft one-way sound proofed cube to help engage fans. Broadcast partner? Looks like they will again go the e-Sports route and give Twitch, the highly engaged and well followed live eSports portal a run.
Now the teams and cities thing for non-traditional sports has been done several times, and it never really works well. Why would local people care about The New York Rounders or The Rome Emperors or the Moscow Wolverines? The team members don’t live there for the most part, don’t often play there and there is certainly no history of team-fan connections in poker, it is a sport built on individual success, personality and talent. e-Sports does not have teams tied to geographic markets, and when you try to tie to a local market without it being unique, authentic and generic, it comes across as very contrived. Will people like the logos and maybe grab some merch, and will there be some buzz when events are held in cities? Maybe. Is it a big financial investment to build the logos and the teams tied to cities? Probably not. Is it worth trying to sell the idea to draw casual fans? We shall see.
What the team idea does have going for it is a strong affinity base for casual players already. Many are used to playing online and understand the way the games work. The gambling aspect is well known and accepted, as is the skill level of some of the sport’s biggest stars, as well as the celebrity players that have engaged over the years. Poker also has the growing interest in strategy and mind games that are becoming more popular with select demos, and that audience can also be spoken to with this new format. The goal of course is to bring in new fans to watch, participate and then go out and play and, if of legal age, spend money. Engaging with Twitch, growing their storytelling, and trying a team format to drum up buzz is a new approach to speak to a younger audience which was engaged in the game ten years ago but has probably gone elsewhere.
It is very ambitious and has deep pockets, so will it work? Tough to bet on it right now, but it certainly will be interesting to watch.
