Athletes Replace Pros as the New Ambassadors of Poker?

This month poker media have featured a number of interviews and articles on the role of sponsored poker pros and world champions in promoting poker and enlisting new fans. Meanwhile the market seems to have found a solution and we are witnessing the substitution of professional poker stars with sports stars as the new champions of the industry.

The debate about the rights and obligations (if any) of poker champions was revived this month with the @Joe Hachem and @Daniel Negreanu interviews in Bluff Magazine and especially with Hachem’s dramatic claims that the ‘game of poker is dying’ and that @Jamie Gold and @Jerry Yang ‘destroyed the legacy of the world champ’, largely on account of their young age and lack of life experience.

Reactions from players and poker commentators ranged from solid support to wild disagreement. In related articles some explored the idea of a possible dress code in live poker or staging a special event or campaign to elect an official poker ambassador who needn’t be a world champion or even a bracelet winner. Though Daniel Negreanu disagrees with Hachem and argues that the world champion is by no means obligated to act as an ambassador for poker, he has stated on other occasions that sponsored pros owe it to their ‘organization and the game’ to observe minimum standards of conduct.

While much of Hachem’s bitterness with regard to the young players was attributed to his ‘negative’ attitude and personality or his simply being a bad loser, many agree that poker presently lacks viable role models likely to attract new fans of the game and to help ensure a bright future for the industry.

The reasons are many and varied - the new generations of players have a very similar personal history and it is difficult to sustain media and public interest in them; with the loss of the U.S. market after #BlackFriday in 2011, television is no longer an active ‘star incubator’ and buzz generator; last but not least, the industry, as represented by the biggest poker room operators, seems to be giving up on its own stars.  Rather than deal with their whimsical and often unruly nature, or wait for the pros to work out some common code of ethics and behavior, poker operators started looking for promoters and ambassadors elsewhere. And found them soon enough - in #sports.

To quote Lee Davy on CalvinAyre, ‘So the evolution of poker sponsorship has moved from the upstarts of the professional poker world, to the stars of world sport, to the teams that operate in the biggest leagues in the world’.

PokerStars took the lead and enlisted a fantastic line-up of athletes - Ronaldo, @Boris Becker, and @Rafael Nadal. #PartyPoker did even better and is partnering with legendary teams such as Real Madrid, Manchester United, and most recently, in the U.S. - with Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA and the New Jersey Devils of the NHL. 

When you’re looking to enhance the image of an industry, to associate the game of poker with skill, honest perseverance, integrity and enjoyment, rather than random luck and addictive gambling, to lend credibility to online poker and boost the popularity of live tournament play - then sport emerges as the natural choice and source of new ambassadors.

The match is perfect since there are more than enough eager candidate-diplomats among athletes, who have always been drawn to the glamor, risk, competition and intellectual challenge associated with poker. The ball is now in poker pros' own field and it will be interesting to see if they will defend their turf.