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BGonline.org Forums
Playboy Million Dollar Backgammon Tournament Cancelled
Posted By: Stephen Pearson In Response To: Playboy Million Dollar Backgammon Tournament Cancelled (rew)
Date: Thursday, 16 August 2012, at 8:47 a.m.
I have read the posts about the cancellation of the event and i am going to provide my own statement to all that have posted - both positive comments and negative comments:
First of all, the tournament that i arranged in 2007 at the Bahamas took nearly 3 years of planning from the seed of an idea. A great deal of money was invested by myself and a group of investors in that event. Before Partygaming even got involved, we committed $60k to Atlantis in Bahamas to reserve the venue alone and we invested a great deal of money in putting together an excellent management team and ensuring this would be an event to remember.
Partygaming did not just come knocking on the door, these things take a huge amount of work and effort and it was probably 3 years in the planning before i contracted with them.
Since that event, I was contacted by several people over the years to ask if i would put on another tournament. When the Playboy Club opened, i was keen to do an event with them. Negotiating the use of a venue like that does not happen over night, several months of due diligence are required to work with a company like that.
The issue of a guarantee of prize pool is obviously an issue that seems important to backgammon players. But its a nice thing to have if only 2 people turn up to the event for those 2 players. The prize pool would guarantee itself if sufficient players wanted to play at this level, in fact only a 100 or so players would be required to play, not an inconceivable number.
As to contacting players and promoting the event. I personally emailed every player that participated in the Bahamas event to which i probably received about 5 replies.We further promoted this event extensively via the Playboy network.
As to the rake of the tournament. To put on a tournament of this nature, including producing websites, flyers, paying tournament staff, buying bespoke equipment, paying for TV production etc does not come for free. The balance sheet of this tournament IF 128 players participated would show an $8,000 profit for the organisers, and more likely the event would incur a loss. Planning for this event started last November, so that is not a big return for 10 months very hard work..
As to the promotion of the event. Based on the costs of putting on an event like this, an organiser is not going to take out TV adverts and newspaper adverts to promote a tournament, the backgammon world is a fairly small one as can be seen from this forum, the viral nature of this event should generate significant interest. However as one of you have stated rumours of the event being cancelled were circulating before it even got off the ground. That itself is not very helpful obviously.
Myself nor my business partner were in this venture to make money, yes of course we didn't wish to make a loss but we were not promoting this event to get rich, in fact that would never be the case, we wanted to provide all the right ingredients for players to participate in a high stakes event organised by people with a track record of organising big sporting events. Mainly because we both like the game of backgammon and wish to see bigger and better events.
Online qualifiers - the market for online backgammon has changed a great deal. Companies like Partygaming are now not focussed on backgammon, other sites like Play65 have closed their online money play and sites like Betfair are starting off at smaller levels, the interest was not there unfortunately from the online backgammon sites to run qualifiers this time round.
Myself and my business partner are as equally disappointed that this event would not take place. As of 2 weeks ago only 1 person had deposited money for this event, i received an email from that player last week that he wished to withdraw his entry and we returned his entry fee.
Based on the fact that zero players had deposited the entry fee, that the tournament is scheduled for 12 weeks from now and that at this time approximately $100,000 plus was required to invest in items related to the event. I am not Partygaming or BWin, i am an individual from where this money was coming from, ultimately i would imagine anyone in the same position on this forum would take the same decision.
Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but i trust this gives you some feedback from my side.
Stephen Pearson
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