An in-depth look at poker sponsorships Part 3: The Boycott

Part 1 of this series delved into where the sponsorship money goes in poker, and how it has created something of an income inequality in the poker world -as well as an elite society. In Part 2 I looked at the black eye that the numerous patches and logos are giving poker as more and more poker players start to look like NASCAR drivers, with logos covering every inch of their body.

The final part of this series on poker sponsorships will take a look at the disturbing trend of online poker rooms boycotting their competitors tournaments by disallowing their sponsored players from competing -well, at least their big-name sponsored players.

This rift is no more evident than between the two largest online poker rooms -which also happen to have the biggest collections of poker talent on their rosters. PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have gone from a quiet competition to all out war in the last few months, and the industry being hurt the most is the live poker industry and major tournaments.

Instead of a full contingent of poker talent at major tournaments like the PCA and Aussie Millions we are seeing a split, with pros either sitting on the sidelines, or playing in other tournaments elsewhere around the world. Who would have ever thought that Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Selbst, Viktor Blom, ElkY, Liv Boeree, David Williams, WSOP Main Event Champions like Jonathan Duhamel and Joe Cada and other top pros would skip the Aussie Millions in favor of the EPT Deauville!

 The Super-High-Roller tournaments at the PCA and Aussie Millions likely would have had fields of over 50 entrants had both sites sent their sponsored pros, instead both tournaments saw 38 players enter -at the PCA it was PokerStars pros and at the Aussie Millions it was Team Full Tilt, with some big name free agents participating as well.

Basically, sponsorships have turned the poker world into a series of competing tours akin to the NFL and USFL back in the day. In the end the online poker world needs to come together and unify poker, not drive a wedge through the middle of the game.

Hopefully the two sides can work out an agreement where we once again see the entire field of top players competing at major tournaments: Of course this would require major tournaments working out scheduling together and coming up with plans to deal with conflicting sponsorship deals -something that is unlikely to happen until tours like the WPT (owned by Party Poker), the EPT and NAPT (owned by PokerStars) and independent tournaments like the Aussie Millions and WSOP realize that the success of one benefits all.

Mike Sexton recently wrote an interesting piece on this issue where he outlined a plan for major tournaments; you can read it here.