Bodog’s Sponsored Pros
I would love to know what Bodog is thinking, if indeed they’re even thinking at all, with regards to their sponsored pro poker players. In an industry where the top outfits can’t seem to add sponsored pros to their site quickly enough, Bodog has not only failed to sign any pros of significance, but actually dropped the few respected pros they had and now have just two sponsored pros, both of them women who have really not done anything of significance in their poker careers.
If Bodog were to operate sans-sponsored pro, I might think they’re onto something. The whole sponsorship thing just screams “bubble” to me (but if you’re reading this Stars/Tilt, I’ll still take one! … eh, who am I kidding?) What puzzles me about Bodog is that they seem to shake hands with the sponsored pro concept but do so with the grip strength of Stephen Hawking.
Just today they announced they were parting ways with newly-minted WPT Champion David Williams and in his place signing… Amanda Musumeci. Who?! I had to Google her just to find out who she was. Since her poker resume is, to put it nicely, modest, I was left to conclude that she must just be really attractive. But I’ll have to keep waiting before I find out since I can’t be sure any of the images that appear in the Google Images results for Amanda Musumeci are actually her. None of the results depict anyone sitting at a poker table which might be because she has never cashed in a live tournament.
Musumeci joins Evelyn Ng to form the Most Uninspiring Lineup of Sponsored Pros Ever. The fact that they parted with Williams a week after he wore their patch while winning $1.7 million in front of the cameras at Bellagio and yet still retain Ng, who hasn’t cashed in a live tournament in nearly two years, seems to suggest they operate with a “what haven’t you done for me lately?” methodology. In that case, hey Bodog, I’m over here! You even interviewed me once, what do you say?
I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes with the decision to drop guys who sit on top of the poker mountain like Williams and Justin Bonomo and whether it was the players or the poker site who initiated the end of their agreements, but I can speak from experience and say that whoever is running Bodog’s sponsorship program is quite likely wholly incompetent. I’ve twice won satellites to major live tournaments on their network. In each case, they tried to get me to sign some agreement in which I essentially had to hand myself over to them for a full calendar year in exchange for zero compensation.
After winning a 2008 Irish Open package and reading the fine print that said they had exclusive sponsorship rights to me for a full year after the tournament, I laughed at them and told them I wasn’t going to sign their silly document. In Ireland, I took their free hat and shirt and reminded their agent that since I never signed their ridiculous sponsorship agreement, the only place he’d see me wearing their shirt was at the gym.
After winning a package to the the £10,000 buy-in 2008 WSOP-Europe Main Event, they emailed me the same ridiculous document to sign. I told them “no thanks” once again, only this time I received an email from their player coordinator who informed me that since I wasn’t going to sign the document, they weren’t going to register me for tournament in London. I pointed out to him that nowhere in the fine print of their WSOP-Europe satellite promotion did it say winners had to sign a sponsorship agreement in order to be registered for the tournament. After he responded saying it didn’t matter, I took it a step further and asked him if he really thought it was wise to upset a high-volume customer who runs a major poker information portal. He called me twenty minutes later and had nothing to say other than, “there’s no problem, Mr. Albertson. We’ll register you for the tournament in London.”
One need only look at their market share to see that Bodog is clearly not in the hands of adept management, but their actions with regards to sponsored players just seem head-scratchingly incompetent. I can only assume Bonomo and Williams left under their own prerogative because even a monkey is capable of realizing that you don’t drop those guys from your brand unless you have to. So since they left under their own prerogative, I can only assume Bodog was no longer giving them a good reason to stay on as a sponsored pro. And if that’s the case, then why is Bodog even trying anymore? Either stop trying to maintain sponsored players altogether or, if you’re not prepared to spend the money to attract the game’s top talent, throw lowball offers at several b-list players who probably have no chance of getting a deal anywhere else. Try to build a real stable of pros even if they are the Schleger’s and Dunst’s of the game and not the Ivey’s and Dwan’s. That or just stop trying altogether, but please, don’t just put out a “stable” of two players, neither of whom have done anything to deserve their sponsorship status beyond winning a coinflip at the point of conception, and think you’ve done something good for your business as a result.
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