Sponsored Poker Pros, Are They Unnecessary or Misused?

Sponsored poker pros seem to be a dying breed in the poker world, and as online poker rooms come to the same conclusion and move on to new marketing methods to get their brand out to the masses the opportunities for poker players to make a dime off their name is slipping away.

But who is to blame? Has the problem been that poker pros are bad value from a marketing standpoint or that the online poker rooms have misused their potentially valuable assets?

In my opinion it’s a combination of both. Randomly sponsoring poker pros is likely a poor way to spend your marketing dollar,s but at the same time when poker sites have sponsored players they’ve generally dropped the ball when it comes to marketing them.

Who should be sponsored?

There are very few poker players who are going to add much value to your brand and are worthy of being a paid sponsored player.

In fact, most poker sites have been using their sponsored pros as glorified affiliates, tasking them with bringing in new, and hopefully high-volume players, and not so much with promoting their brand.

This may have paid off in the short-term as some of these unpaid sponsored pros can be excellent affiliates (usually getting some kind of special rakeback deal based on the revenue they generate between their play and the play of their underlings) but this has also cheapened the value of other sponsored poker players, and made it seem more like sponsored players are a dime a dozen rather than an actually commodity.

I liken it to Nike sponsoring hundreds of NBA players but most of them simply get a shoe deal, they are not featured in commercials or ads; in fact, you wouldn’t even know most of them were sponsored by Nike.

Poker needs to do the same.

Let sponsored players who deserve it publicly represent your product and appear on your website, and let the glorified affiliates remain in the shadows.

In my opinion, a marketable poker player needs to:

• Be skilled or high-profile
• Be likable
• Be outgoing and personable
• Be well-spoken or a strong writer
• Have a professional attitude and appearance

With this list in mind here is my list of poker players that are worthy of a sponsorship:

• Daniel Negreanu
• Phil Ivey
• Sam Trickett
• Vanessa Selbst
• Antonio Esfandiari
• Chris Moorman
• Mike Sexton
• Tom Dwan

Here are several other players that even though they couldn’t be the face of your poker room could easily be marketable. These are the types of players who are lower-profile but have what it takes to represent your brand the right way:

• Sam Grafton
• Matt Glantz
• Leo Margets

Obviously there are more players worthy of a sponsorship deal, these are just the players that came to my mind.

How sites should utilize sponsored pros

This section is only in regards to “real” sponsored pros, people who are paid and under contract to represent a site. This section does not apply to the sponsored pros I called glorified affiliates.

This section is meant to show online poker sites how I feel they should use the players that meet the criteria I laid out above. If you’re going to sponsor someone, get the most bang for your buck.

Get them into the low limit games

I keep seeing these well-known poker players sitting in high-stakes games, or taking on other high-profile pros in “challenge matches” but this is a complete waste from a marketing standpoint.

Sure, it gets the 2+2 fanboys talking, but if your goal is to bring new players to your tables (and not railbirds) then low limit games are the way to go.

I get that poker players need to make a living, but if you are paying someone to represent your brand then they should be obligated to play in low limit games when they are on “company time.” Precisely how much company time they need to put in could be established in their contract.

Even better than low limit games is to have them participate in fast/fold games where waiting lists can’t form, or even multi-table a bunch of $5 sit & go tournaments for an hour or two.

Class up the logos and patches

This has bugged me for a really long time; how can the patches and logos that are worn be so gaudy? It’s as if the poker sites got together and said, “what we’re looking for is something in between rainbow suspenders and a fish tie.”

First off, it looks cheesy, but more importantly it reeks of the player being little more than a hired gun and your sponsorship of them being an afterthought.

Demand social media presence

Social media is the way the world communicates at the moment and while many poker players are on social media very few actively engage with their fans, which is a shame, considering you could just hire someone to handle the social media accounts of your sponsored pros.

These may seem a bit dishonest, but it’s 100-times better than the silence people receive now.

Demand accessibility

I don’t care if it’s doing interviews or making yourself available for autograph sessions, meet and greets, and other events, poker players who are representing a company need to actually represent that company away from the tables as well as at the tables.

As a representative of the company you need to be available and actually promote the brand beyond “being there” and wearing a patch and a hat when you play.

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