Despite the fears of underperformance voiced earlier, public attendance at the WSOP championship reached all times high
Prior to the start of the championship some of its organizers expressed concerns regarding the number of people who would take part in the tournaments. Such a prospect was based on the results of the US Government raid on major online poker sites roughly two months ago, which saw these online venues shutting down. The shutdown in turn has caused poker companies to freeze funds on their accounts, some of which belonged to poker professionals who were expected to participate in WSOP events. Such freeze had a good chance to affect the capability of these professionals to join the land-based championship, due to their possible inability to have enough cash to fund a high buy-in.
Fortunately for the WSOP management these fears proved themselves wrong and public attendance was not affected by the Black Friday. Furthermore, judging by the figures published by WSOP towards the end of the first half of the tournament, number of participants and visitors has risen in comparison to the last year’s championship.
It seems like the fall of online poker had little if any negative effect on the WSOP enterprise, though positive influence of the April events can be seen clearly. Those professional players, who now have no option of competing online, choose to join an established land based competition, where they can earn money by playing their favourite game completely legally.
This is a win-win situation, where WSOP enjoys higher attendance and thus better business opportunities, while players whose personal income depended on online poker get a chance to preserve their livelihood. No doubt though, that once online poker becomes legal again (according to some experts, within the next 5 years), many of these players will go back online.
