In a previous post I pointed out that a lot of people completely misunderstand what poker sponsorship is for. A few poker players are lucky enough to be paid by their sponsors simply to go out there and play with a patch on their shirt. For certain immortals (e.g. Praz Bansi), their play is good enough that this deal is worth the sponsor’s while.

Between about 2003-2009, poker sponsorship largely took the form of:

a)     Player wins big tournament

b)     Sponsor (and usually player as well) erroneously believes this heralds a glittering career on the felt

c)      It doesn’t

d)     Sponsor ends the deal with player, having spent tens of thousands of dollars for what in real terms must amount to a few thousand in exposure.

Around two or three years ago, the real financial upside to poker started to pull into focus for the big poker sites. As it did, the sites morphed from opportunist land-grabbers with (apparently) limitless budgets into savvy businesses squeezing their pros to get their money’s worth. In short, the profession of “sponsored poker player” became a job.

PokerStars and Full Tilt benefitted most from the land grab. With gross margins in excess of $1bn per annum each, they could afford to bankroll in excess of one hundred players each. However, even before Black Friday, these online behemoths were beginning to rein in the expense accounts. Players were dropped, advertising budgets were reduced, and in general everyone in the business was steeling themselves for a difficult year or two until the US legalizes online poker.

We’re still trying to work out what happened next. Over the weekend came the news that Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet (AP/UB) had terminated their contracts with all their sponsored pros. How on Earth this came as a surprise to some people is beyond me.

Personally, I’d been trying to predict ever since Black Friday what the future would be for the sponsored pro, but it certainly didn’t take the AP/UB announcement to telegraph that it was pretty bleak.

Take another look at my poker sponsorship schema above. I know I bang on about how there’s a lot of luck in poker, but even the softest head should agree that many poker careers have looked just like that. If you don’t believe me, just look at an old poker magazine. Sure, the Negreanus and the Iveys are there, but many of the other names are fossils. Agreed, this happens in most sports as well, but certainly not with the same alarming speed as in poker.

Even with Negreanu and Ivey, it takes a humungous spend to keep the poster boys in pole position. The Hendon Mob recently added the option on their site to discount invitationals and over $50k buy in events from the all-time rankings. Evidently these rankings were becoming such an Old Boys club that the Big Two could simply keep their headliners on top just by making sure they played a high amount of big events.

There was method to this. It’s well documented that spectators are drawn to sports by heroes. The NBA is the biggest exponent of this: from Jordan to Kobe, Shaq to Lebron, the big names are the big draws. And so it is with Nadal, Federer, Tiger, Gretsky, and so on. Poker wanted a poster boy and Full Tilt especially poured millions into making us believe that Ivey was that guy.

A Main Event final table for Ivey in 2009 was the boon the poker world needed. I can’t remember too many people stating unequivocally that Ivey was the best in the world before he achieved that feat, but I’m sure we can all remember his press afterwards.

Ivey certainly is a great player, and may well be the best in the world. However, for the foreseeable future, the marketing dollars just aren’t going to be there in the same quantities. And it’s my personal conviction that the marketing dollars – not the irresistible skill of a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods – have validated our heroes in poker.

What would the poker world look like without any heroes? The future will tell.