Anyhow, check out Adidas’s new ad campaign on display around the rails at the 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany — targeting fans of international women’s soccer with phrasing that may or may not have been grifted from poker:

“adidas is all in”

BTW, go USA still, but really, seriously, gg Japan.

UPDATE: Apparently the “adidas is all in” campaign launched back in March. Click here to see the multimillion-dollar YouTube commercials wrapped around a distinctly poker phrase … as interpreted by the world of sports.

In fact … check this out … you have very major teams across the pond (and a few minor ones) that have direct links and betting pages on their official sites. The Spurs, for example, are supposedly working with their sponsor Mansion to develop a Tottenham skin, and already host weekly freerolls for game tickets.

The people making money off Peyton Manning jerseys hate online poker; meanwhile the other kind of football teams proudly support it — or are being supported by it.

Now you know I’m not much of a boycotter — really, I generally think they’re stupid and ineffective — but it does occur to irk me how much “free advertising” poker players give NFL teams by wearing their jerseys. Considering that American football gives nothing back to poker, and in fact subtracts from it … maybe it might be time for poker players to hang up their lucky Tony Romo jerseys, ya know? Just sayin’ … all it takes is watching a little soccer to realize how wearing any NFL promotion at the WSOP wouldn’t be too different from wearing a Bill Frist or Jim Leach campaign button un-ironically.

(And the way the FIDPA 80 work … they leave room for adjustments, so theoretically you could go to a tourney and the TD woulds say, “We’re using FIDPA rules today, except for #47, where we’re going to let you blah blah blah” or “… and we have one extra rule of our own: no coughing.”)

The WPA meanwhile, seems to have moved their rules agenda to the backburner, focusing instead on tournament rake — pushing for more sponsorship/commercial money to be added to major event prize pools, a la the PGA:

It’s a disgrace that tournament poker players for the most part do not share the revenue generated by their participation in events (e.g. television, sponsorship, etc). In most or all events players put in all of the prize money via the buy-in, have 6-10% of their money taken out, and only a small number of participants make a payday. Any revenue generated by sponsors or other means is not shared with you the players.

This is something we must change.

This is the WPA’s principal focus. This is why you joined the WPA. This is why we need your support.

Yeow! I’m not so sure I agree with the not-shared part … those waters they put on the table ain’t free, ya know! But the All In Energy Drink is!

Though I suppose both operations ultimately wanna become the FIFA of poker, it looks like their going about it in two kinda different ways

Online video game competitions for money are already in play — the Fifa Interactive World Cup, for example, awards $20k to the winner. And the shoot-em-up game Kwari has started offering real-money competition, where you win cash for kills and the house takes its cut by charging you for ammo. Bullets, chips … tomato, D’amato … Seriously, how familiar does this sound:

While King declined to give me specifics on the number of players, he did mention that a few weeks ago, their 50 millionth bullet was sold, and the game has had over 30,000 downloads. Out of those downloads, King said that they’re “well above 40% in terms of converting those downloads into actual accounts that have been paid into,” and Kwari Limited expects a spike in downloads once PayPal is enacted in the next few weeks.
[...]
Next up after America this year: the mecca of competitive gaming. “The plan is to roll out in Asia next year,” King said.

This is all very interesting, because while online multiplayer first-person shooters are clearly games of skill, the jackpots awarded arguably have a lot to do with luck.And yet they get to use PayPal?

ALT HED: PartyPlaystation