The World Poker Tour has just announced the full 2024 WPT World Championship festival schedule, along with an unprecedented $5 million freeroll for ClubWPT Gold members. In the wake of the big news, WPT President and CEO Adam Pliska was kind enough to give me a few minutes of his time for an interview, in which he responded to a full slate of questions about the announcement, the schedule, and more.
I invite you to watch the interview, as well as have a look at the summarized transcript, below.
Adam Pliska Interview: Summarized Transcript
You’ve been with the World Poker Tour for 21 years and have borne witness to tremendous changes in the poker industry; plenty of highs and plenty of lows. What does it mean to you on a personal level to be able to bring legal online poker back to the United States?
It’s great! Out live tour is so robust in the U.S., and to be able to have the touch points online is just great. We already have the wonderful ClubWPT community of players, and now we’re adding to that by looking at the future.
When you have a safe way for people to come online and play, that means we’re going to see new players for years down the road. Now we’re seeding what we believe will continue to grow this industry in the 5-10 years to come.
The WPT brand is now directly associated with three online poker sites: ClubWPT, WPT Global, and now ClubWPT Gold. Very simply, can I please ask you to break that down and clarify – for those who might be confused – which site is for whom?
Sure. WPT Global is available for those players playing internationally in authorized jurisdictions. For the last 15 years we’ve run the most successful sweepstakes subscription offering in the United States; that’s ClubWPT. It’s a set fee every month along with a set level of cash and prizes that you can win.
Our new ClubWPT Gold sweepstakes-style site will allow players in the United States and Canada to play when they want, as much as they want, for whatever stakes they want, and in general just have a much more robust offering available to utilize.
The $5 million freeroll that we announced is essentially part of our “awareness campaign”. We want everyone to help us build ClubWPT Gold together. We’re excited to get people’s feedback on this.
Obviously a lot of planning goes into all of the World Poker Tour’s major announcements. I imagine many ideas were tossed around before you settled on this one and moving forward with its execution – you’ve said “it’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done”. Around when did you settle on creating ClubWPT Gold (i.e., how long has the site itself been in the works?), and was this idea of a $5 million freeroll a natural extension of that vision or did it emerge separately?
Throughout its 15 years of existence, we’ve always tried to push the limits of what we’re able to do with ClubWPT. Providing something even more robust than that for players is something that’s been on our minds and in the works for a very long time.
In terms of the big promotion, we’re offering players a $5 million freeroll tournament as part of the WPT World Championship festival. That idea came up this year as part of our planning. At it’s core it speaks to what we’ve always tried to do at the World Poker Tour, which is bring value to the community.
In 2022 we debuted the World Championship festival. In 2023 we offered the $40 million guarantee. Earlier this year we did the WPT Voyage. All of these represent different ways of bringing value to the community.
Now, all we’re asking is that people sign up to ClubWPT Gold and that instantly makes you eligible for all the promotions that we’ll be rolling out. If you win one of the 2,000 Golden Passports, you’ll have the chance to participate in the $5 million freeroll in December at the Wynn.
Poker players can be assured that we’re infusing $5 million into the overall poker ecology and thus everyone benefits. A lot more new players will show up to the WPT World Championship Festival. More players equals bigger field sizes and prize pools, so the community wins as a whole with a promotion like this.
With players from the majority of US states and Canada allowed to play on ClubWPT Gold, what sort of player pool size are you hoping to see on the new site come January 1, 2025 or whenever the eventual launch date is?
To us, it’s not important that we start with any set number. Rather, we want everyone in the community to understand that there’s no reason whatsoever why you shouldn’t sign up. This is an invitation to players to help us build something together, and in a way where the only ask is to sign up.
This huge news notwithstanding, I know you still see the WPT World Championship $10K event as the festival’s marquee event. With that said, can you please tell us what the company’s goals are to measure the success of that marquee event this year?
The people have spoken. They have communicated to us the following in no uncertain terms: it’s now an established fact that poker players want the prestige of winning the WPT World Championship. To get your name on the Mike Sexton Champions Cup is one of the greatest honors you can have in poker. We want to make sure that people get all sorts of opportunities to compete for that Championship moving forward.
So this year, we’re taking the $5 million freeroll promotion and tying it directly in; as part of that freeroll, 100 people will win seats to play in the WPT World Championship. In addition, we estimate that there will be a total of 1,000 qualifiers winning seats into the event via online satellites as well as live satellites at the Wynn.
With no guarantee on it, how important is it to you that you eclipse last year’s number of 3,835 entrants and approach a $40 million prize pool?
That’s a question that many people are asking. I’ll reiterate: our goal is to make the greatest poker event experience. Numbers are a factor in that, but so is the diversity of people, the fun, the entertainment, and growing the overall poker ecology.
So what I’ll be looking for is: do we have new players, do we see a growth in player diversity, can we surprise and delight people? If we accomplish those sorts of goals, and that’s what people are saying at the end of December, then this initiative will have been a success in our eyes.
I’m a mixed game guy and I couldn’t help but notice the proliferation of mixed game events on the 2024 WPT World Championship schedule: three H.O.R.S.E. events, a Big Bet Mix, PLO 8, Limit Omaha 8 / Stud 8, Big O, T.O.R.S.E., 5 Card PLO, Limit Omaha 8 and Mix Triple Draw. And most of them are at very accessible buy-ins of $600. I guess Matt Savage has really been whispering in your ear?
Matt is such a staunch advocate for players and player interests, and of course he loves mixed games. But it goes well beyond that. To us, at the end of the day, we want players to feel that we are building something together.
The World Poker Tour listens and tries. So when it comes to introducing mixed games into the schedule, player feedback has been tremendously important to us, so that’s why you see what you see on the schedule.
Further to that, it’s a MAJOR thing to have that many mixed events on any WPT festival schedule. What was it that finally “tipped the scales” and encouraged you to add them in? Was it someone at Wynn? Was it Matt? Was it feedback from the community? A combination of all three?
We have an incredibly serious debrief at the end of our festivals, and these debriefs have a lot of passionate people participating. These people are advocating based on their own experiences and the experiences they hear players relating over to them.
So, our ideas and innovations come from those debriefs, but at the end of the day, it really boils down to taking player feedback into account and using that to fuel our ideas.
Adam, thank you so much for your time; folks, that’s WPT President and CEO Adam Pliska – I look forward to seeing you AND all of YOU GUYS in December at the WPT World Championship.
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