Any doubt as to the place of Internet poker rooms within the land-based landscape of the poker world were put to rest last week when the Party Poker.com Million was included in the newly formed World Poker Tour.
Producer-filmmaker Steven Lipscomb and billionaire gaming entrepreneur Lyle Berman have teamed up to create WPT, which has enlisted about a dozen upscale poker tournaments in the U.S. and abroad as charter members.
WPT is a Los Angeles-based joint venture aimed at creating a televised sport out of the top poker tournaments around the world.
The events--most of which offer prize money north of $1 million--pay a tour membership fee and grant WPT exclusive television rights to their tourneys.
Lipscomb, who produced "On the Inside of the World Series of Poker" for Discovery, will be CEO of WPT. Lipscomb and Berman, a champion poker player himself, met when Berman played in the 1999 World Series event.
Each event will be covered by cameras and aired in the new TV series, culminating in a grand finale in which the winners play each other and anyone else willing to put up a $25,000 entry fee.
The inaugural event is Bellagio's Five Diamond Poker Challenge May 27-June 1.
Berman's Lakes Gaming has put up $3 million to get the project running, with extra capital coming from the membership fees. Production on each episode is budgeted at $150,000-$200,000.
PartyPoker.com today announced that the company's marquee poker event--the PartyPoker.com Million II tournament, with an estimated total prize pool of $1.5 million--has been selected as a charter event for the World Poker Tour.
Officials with Party Poker.com are thrilled to receive the added exposure and the credibility lent by the event.
The site's host, poker champion Mike Sexton, proclaimed, "We are going to be right in the center of a boom for poker."
The Party Poker.com event is the only online-based tournament slated for WTP.
Chris Todd, a spokesperson for the site, said being associated with someone like Sexton, a legendary poker player, was key in getting the tournament included in WTP series.
"Having Mike on our team has opened a lot of doors and created a lot of opportunities for us that weren't there before," he said.
WPT is still seeking a distribution deal for the series with a broadcast or cable network. Lipscomb told Daily Variety that his strategy of going into production before selling the series is "part of a new wave of sports programming" that makes his World Poker Tour a safer bet.
"A lot of outlets have taken a bath committing to big sports before they knew exactly what they were getting," he said. "Plus, we're in the enviable position to have funds to do it this way. So when we do make a distribution arrangement, we can participate more meaningfully in the back end."
Return to "Online Poker Has Arrived."