World Poker Tour and Wynn Las Vegas Create Winning Combination
By Jennifer Newell
One of the biggest challenges facing poker tour operators is finding an ideal casino partner. The tour operator has a product to offer to players, but the casino must be able to see that vision and carry it out in a way that complements the tour brand.
The World Poker Tour has had 20 years of partnerships that spanned the globe. There have been casinos that hosted one stop during one season and never worked with the WPT again. But there have also been poker rooms that became staples of the tour, ones that delivered regular players year after year.
And then there was the meeting of the World Poker Tour and Wynn Las Vegas. It took 20 seasons to find each other, but sparks flew when they finally did.
Why Wynn?
The WPT had worked with the Bellagio in Las Vegas for years, but the original magic faded as the poker room’s management changed and the amount of available space for tournaments disappeared. But the time came to seek another LV partner.
It was going to be the 20th anniversary year for the World Poker Tour, and WPT executives wanted to find a new Sin City home. More than just a poker room in a casino, though, the partnership needed to be one that wowed the players and the poker room one that combined flash and substance, was stunning but welcoming. And that partner needed to know poker and the poker community.
Wynn Las Vegas had built a reputation of hosting tournaments with great value and big guarantees. That was only a part of the reason that Wynn had become a player favorite in Las Vegas. Its poker room offered comfortable seating and a pleasant environment, a well-lit room that was welcoming to vloggers, staff that was attentive to players with unique needs and as welcoming to recreationals and vacationers as to the high-stakes clientele. And there was something special about that fresh watermelon juice.
Finding Balance
The WPT and Wynn was a good match. The Wynn was ready to accommodate a massive 20th anniversary tournament series in its ballrooms, and the World Poker Tour would bring in players from around the world.
But how could the WPT stand out after 20 years of tournaments, and how could Wynn improve on an already stellar reputation? This is especially difficult to do nowadays considering the array of tours and tournaments, online and offline, that are available to poker players worldwide. There’s of course the WSOP Tour, and many online poker rooms, like Ignition, Everygame, ACR Poker, and other top ones listed at legaluspokersites.com, all offer a wide variety of tournaments online.
But the new duo put the players at the center of it all and made decisions around them. They made the players the focus, no matter the cost.
The World Poker Tour created a schedule that boasted several core events and side events that offered more non-Hold’em games than ever before. The women-only event was a featured event, one highlighted by an all-female reporting team and a livestreamed final table with female commentators. The tag team tournament provided an opportunity for couples and friends to play together in a spirited environment. And the WPT Main Event required a $10,000 buy-in with an eye-popping $15M guarantee on the prize pool.
Meanwhile, the WPT needed to offer satellites online, but Wynn Las Vegas didn't have an online poker site, and WPT Global was not available to US players. They did award numerous prize packages on WPT Global to international players, but they also tried something unique. WPT and Wynn partnered with vloggers and influencers in the United States and gave them leeway in awarding those packages to players through contests and challenges. Via social media, podcasts, and YouTube channels, some of the most popular poker personalities awarded prizes that covered the buy-in, transportation, and suites at Wynn and Encore on the Las Vegas Strip.
Most of the players who won those packages had never competed in a $10K buy-in tournament. Some had never been to Vegas. Each, however, had a unique story to tell about winning their way into a tournament that was set to make poker history.
Poker History, It Was
The result was a series that was so impressive to players from the start that they couldn’t help but talk about it on social media. Accommodations were top-notch – suites with living room seating and voice-activated curtains, to name just a few perks – and tournament ballrooms were well-lit and well-run. Word spread quickly that the series was better than most had expected.
By the time the Main Event began, players were experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) from around the world. Quite a few of them booked last-minute flights and broke from holiday festivities with families to get to Las Vegas to play the WPT World Championship.
All of the tournaments proved successful, but it was the Main Event that attracted enough players to nearly double the guarantee with a prize pool that settled in at just past $29M.
The biggest story that emerged from the inaugural WPT-Wynn series was player satisfaction. They felt seen and heard. From the structures to payouts, from personal welcomes and a player lounge, and from break time entertainment to cash games with Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey, players felt valued.
Ultimately, the team of the World Poker Tour and Wynn Las Vegas prioritized the player experience, valuing past and present communication with all involved. It worked so well that players talked about it for months, that the WPT World Championship at Wynn set a new standard that other poker tour operators and casinos would need to heed.
Players got their wish for another such event, as the WPT World Championship returns to Wynn Las Vegas this December (2023) with more tournaments on the schedule and an astonishing $40M guarantee for the Main Event.