Uh-oh.

The stock price for WPT Enterprises has been consistently falling, with the exception of a minor fluctuation in early July, since it dropped below $1 per share in late June 2008. And despite CEO Steve Lipscomb’s “don’t worry, be happy” attitude about it, NASDAQ isn’t cool with that mantra. In the next 180-day time period, if WPTE’s price doesn’t stay above $1.00 for 10 consecutive days, the company will be delisted.

Here is the statement released today:

WPT Enterprises, Inc. Receives Nasdaq Staff Determination Letter Regarding Minimum Bid Price

LOS ANGELES, Aug 19, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — WPT Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:WPTE) today announced that the Company received a Nasdaq Staff Determination Letter on August 14, 2008, notifying the Company that it was not in compliance with the minimum stock listing price requirements of Nasdaq Marketplace Rule 4450(a)(5) as a result of the closing bid price for the Company’s common stock being below $1.00 for 30 consecutive business days. This notification has no effect on the listing of the Company’s common stock at this time. The Nasdaq Marketplace Rules provide the Company with 180 calendar days to regain compliance, which will require the bid price of the Company’s common stock to remain above $1.00 for a minimum of 10 consecutive business days. The Company will continue to execute its business plan to provide an opportunity to demonstrate value to the investment community and regain Nasdaq compliance.

You read it here second … as semi-suspected, the WPT is going to Fox Sports, following what appears to be the Full Tilt Infomercial/time-buy method … though that’s not made clear from the press release that PokerNews rewrote shortly before it was supposed to be released:

(And since we’re bound to be picking on taking a fair and thorough look at PokerNews these days, is it really protecting an inside source when you say the info comes from an unnamed source, yet you end with a quote from the CEO about the information that isn’t supposed to be public yet? Just curious how that works in poker “journalism” powered by “the independent online poker authority” … but all good, I’m all about gonzo fact-dissemination in the spirit of breaking-news-is-breaking-news, and will keep your laudable disregard for time restrictions in mind at next year’s WSOP.)

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL JULY 17 @ 4:00PM PT

FOX SPORTS NET AND WORLD POKER TOUR® INK BROADCAST LICENSE FOR SEASON VII

FSN Will Air 26 All-New WPT Season VII Episodes Across Its National Sports Network

(LOS ANGELES) July 17, 2008 – WPT Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ: WPTE) and Fox Sports Network (FSN) announced today a partnership and broadcast license for Season VII of the World Poker Tour® (WPT) television series. FSN, the nation’s leading provider of local sports, received exclusive rights to air 26 all-new one hour WPT episodes in the United States across its national sports cable network.

“The World Poker Tour has a track record as the ultimate brand name in televised poker,” said George Greenberg, FSN Executive Vice President of Programming and Production. “FSN is very happy to televise such quality content and we look forward to future programming opportunities with the WPT.”

WPT, which films its tournaments in premiere properties around North America, will create 26 one-hour episodes from upcoming regular-season events. WPT will shoot the first two episodes today at the Bellagio Cup final table in Las Vegas. FSN and WPT will announce the timeslot and schedule for the complete season broadcast at a later date.

“FSN and News Corporation are two incredible powerhouses in the television industry that have played key roles in the growth and popularity of televised poker,” said Steve Lipscomb, WPT Founder, President and CEO. “It couldn’t be a better fit for WPT and our fans. We’re thrilled.”

WPT joins the ranks of MLB, NHL and NBA on the FSN network, which serves as the TV home to nearly two-thirds of all teams based in the United States. FSN’s 16 owned-and-operated regional networks and its affiliated networks reach more than 80 million homes across the U.S. FSN is owned and operated by News Corporation.

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As Dan mentioned in his Steve Lipscomb interview post, there were some layoffs at WPT Enterprises last week. My sources tell me that there were approximately 10 people let go, primarily from the online and interactive departments that handle the WPT store and website content. This is starting to hit home with me now because two of those people were friends from my days as an accountant at the WPT offices, and while the majority of the employees are said to have been on edge about the possibility of layoffs, it always hurts to be let go from a company to which you’ve been loyal for four or five years.

WPTE wouldn’t confirm the number of people let go, if there would be more, or what departments were trimmed, but Lipscomb did provide an official statement:

“WPT Enterprises is undergoing a reorganization to meet the future demands of our business and changes in the marketplace we inhabit. All decisions affecting members of the WPTE family are extremely difficult decisions, but this reorganization is vital to creating and sustaining a growing business. WPTE has taken great care to ensure smooth and successful transitions for all former and existing WPT staff.”

photo: Michele Lewis

WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and WPT CEO Steve Lipscomb taking in the spectacle of the main event and whatever it may suggest about what’s ahead on the poker horizon.

All WSOP-long I’ve been seeing Lyle Berman and feeling torn between my journalistic ethos and respect for poker etiquette. Here, the guy who has answers to everything everyone wants to know about the future of the World Poker Tour has been anywhere from 10-feet to 100 yards away from me, but I can’t bring myself to approach him mid-tourney or just after a painful bustout to pepper him with questions about whether or not the business he helped build is crumbling. Call me a wussy journo or poker fanboy, but could I really take a chance of putting Mr. Berman on tilt, especially when WPTE stock is trading for less than a dollar a share and he might really need the prize money?

But lo and behold, WPT CEO Steve Lipscomb showed up at the Rio yesterday, and he wasn’t playing! He was just taking his annual tour of the WSOP main event with buddy Jeffrey Pollack … which seemed like a great time to trip him by the shoelaces, pin him down on the ground and shove a recorder in his face while threatening to pop him with a loogie. Alas, no one had a concealed watergun in the pressbox and he was wearing loafers, but still … Lipscomb did sit down with Pokerati for almost a half hour during the main event and give some frank(ish) answers to whatever softballs I could hurl at him.

(NOTE: I didn’t know at the time that the WPT had laid off about 10 people last week and was about to give a few more their walking papers today — but now his comments about hating that part of the job make a little more sense.)

Steve Lipscomb (at the WSOP) on the future of poker and the WPT
June 6, 2008 — Las Vegas

What you don’t hear below …
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Argh, it’s getting frustrating … so much stuff going on that it’s hard to keep up, let alone post about it. So here’s a bit of everything:

6,844 entrants in the 2008 WSOP main event.

I jut had a wonderful discussion with WPT honcho Steve Lipscomb. He didn’t laugh when I asked him if he was looking for a job with the WSOP.

Team Pokerati updates:

Tom Schneider is hurting. Like 7k in chips last we checked.

Donkey texts in (we’re still getting his CSR set up) — “Back down to 20k after 2nd level.. Thought Micon was playing AK. he had 77. I had 66. Cost 4k to see river”

Damn, that sucks. And oh yeah, Donkey is playing with Micon from Neverwin two or three seats to his left, and Beth Shak on the other end of the table. (Donkey doesn’t know who she is — but he is aware that she is all patched up.

Jerry Randack was doing fine last I checked. Saw him skillfully (albeit a bit cautiously) play Ace-rag with an ace on the flop, and build a nice pot to the point that he got a really nice call by the time he rivered the nut flush.

No report on Robert Goldfarb. Serves him right for not wearing his patch. But he is texting in his status on breaks.

The Big Randy looks to be playing very comfortably … with about 26k in chips.

More TK, of course. The big buzz of the day wasn’t about Phil Hellmuth’s pro wrestling-esque army-tank entrance … it was about the presence of Ultimate Fighters, including Chuck Liddell and Forest Griffin, who won a big fight just last night.

Um, go poker!

UPDATE: There was a rumor about some smaller agents being shaken down by a bigger one. It didn’t check out, however, on first call … but there’s gotta be something to it — the agent battles are getting harsh as all compete for a piece of nine heretofore unknown needles in a a haystack of 6,844.

GSN let the renewal option for the World Poker Tour’s 7th season lapse on June 7th. There is currently no deal in place, though GSN said it’s still open for discussion, for shows that are scheduled to begin taping with the Bellagio Cup next month.

This doesn’t look good.

See the shareholder notice below:

WPT Enterprises Opens Discussions for Season VII Television Broadcast Rights

GSN Renewal Option Lapsed on June 7

LOS ANGELES, Jun 09, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — WPT Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ: WPTE) announced today that GSN’s option for exclusive broadcast of the entire World Poker Tour(R) (WPT) seventh season expired on Saturday.

GSN CEO David Goldhill said, “The World Poker Tour has been a great partner and the show continues to perform strongly on our network. We are continuing discussions with WPTE regarding how we may be able to work together - including perhaps broadcasting parts of Season VII.”

WPTE is currently in discussions with several major networks to broadcast programming from its landmark seventh season, which kicks off July 11 at the prestigious Bellagio in Las Vegas and runs through April 2009.

“We have enjoyed watching the show and our numbers grow on GSN. Our hope is that we can find ways to collaborate with the network long into the future,” said Steve Lipscomb, WPT Founder, President and CEO. “This may allow us the first opportunity to explore diversifying content on multiple networks like most sports leagues. We have already begun those discussions and look forward to making another season of the best and most widely distributed poker programming in the world to our dedicated viewers and fans.”

New Season VI episodes will continue to broadcast Monday nights at 9pm ET/PT on GSN through late August. Encore episodes will continue to broadcast on the network for up to four years. Episodes of seasons II through V currently air on the Travel Channel.

So the days keep ticking by — May 24, June 1, June 7 … and still no word on the future of the World Poker Tour. The best guess is that the WPT is still trying to renegotiate something with GSN. It’s all a shame, really, not just because once upon a time the WPT did so much for poker, but also because this current season — #6 — is proving to be one of their finest in years. Seriously, have you watched any episodes this season? They’re really good. Loved the set for Turks and Caicos, and the action and commentary on all the other episodes has been significantly better than in previous seasons.

But it may be too little too late according to insider gossip and semi-substantiated rumors. The first piece of evidence we have, of course, is the stock price (WPTE), which is continuously descending beyond its all-time low. $1.16/share=not good.

Now let’s go back to non-poker Christmastime … when the WPT supposedly held some sort of employee-appreciation pizza party, and CEO Steve Lipscomb reportedly told his people that things were not looking good for the WPT — specifically that he wasn’t sure if they’d make it to the end of 2008, and that they might-wanna start looking for other work. Yikes. This information is secondhand rumor from two or more reliable sources, at least one of whom may or may not still be working for the WPT.

CORRECTION: Have crossed out some possibly erroneous info above. Supposedly what Lipscomb really told his people was that 2008 was going to be a “very rough year” … and some in attendance drew those conclusions simply on their knowledge of what it takes to nurse a super-short stack until better cards/times arrive.Crap, there goes my whole premise for this post.

Furthering suspicions, a California headhunter says her office was flooded with resumes from managerial and executive-level employees of the WPT in January of this year. 17+ is the number we’re hearing.

So there you have it — rampant speculation deduced from public information combined with whispers on a semi-informed street suggesting that whatever does or doesn’t happen with GSN, it may be a last-ditch effort to save the show a struggling business. Read into it whatever you must, and in the meantime we’ll keep checking Steve Lipscomb’s blog for an update but won’t expect much …

(Have a look at his fifth most recent comment, from yours truly, left in January ‘07. Still waiting for a response …)

Danielle in New York writes in with a little more info about the film project they’ve got working:

Another thing you can add if people are being hesitant to being interviewed or showing us their room, we have filmed in underground poker rooms in NYC. I don’t know how familiar you are with the scene in NY but a couple years ago a big bust broke up a lot of the more well known poker rooms in the city. About 6 months before these busts we were able to film in one of the clubs and interview the owner. Unfortunately since the big bust, its been hard to come by more games in the NYC Area.

One angle I’d love to take while in Dallas, it to interview someone who could talk about all the raids either as someone who was at one of the raids or someone who ran a room that got raided. Of course, if there is an issue of not given out the name of a room or the name of the person we are interviewing, we will abide in any way possible to make everyone comfortable.

I’m not sure how much I got into the extensiveness of our project but our goal is to make the most definitive and comprehensive film about poker in America. We’ve gone everywhere from Vegas to New Orleans to Saratoga Springs to Oklahoma. We’ve interviewed people within the poker community including Annie Duke, Jeffrey Pollack (Commissioner of the WSOP), Phil Hellmuth, Steve Lipscomb (CEO of WPT), Greg Raymer, Chris Moneymaker, amateur poker players, tournament directors, and poker room mangers from casinos across the US.

So there you have it … I wonder if the poker-room people they end up talking to will be “good” or “bad” gamerunners representing the Dallas scene.

The World Poker Tour has announced that a ceremony will be held on April 21, during the WPT World Championship at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic, to award bracelets to each of the 96 past WPT champions.

What a great idea! To memorialize a poker tournament victory with an expensive piece of jewelry that symbolizes the grandeur of what those players accomplished… Wait, haven’t I heard this idea somewhere before? It’s just not coming to me at this moment…

Anyway, the private Ceremony of Champions will take place at the “O” Theater at the Bellagio, where the players’ victories and accomplishments will be celebrated, and each will be awarded a Tiffany & Co. personalized titanium and diamond bracelet. Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten will be the Masters of Ceremony.

From the press release:

“There are so many incredible stories to celebrate from the six World Poker Tour seasons and we are thrilled to pay tribute to each of our WPT Champions,” said WPT Founder, President and CEO, Steve Lipscomb. “The championship bracelet has become synonymous with poker as a symbol of achievement and respect, and we are honored to continue the tradition that Benny Binion began over 30 years ago.”

When Benny Binion began the tradition… DOH!

The World Series of Poker has bracelet events, and now each WPT event will be a bracelet event. Really? I don’t want to say that one company is trying to be like another, but… Is there no other way to congratulate poker players than with a bracelet? What about a gigantic 25-pound bejeweled poker chip? Or a diamond-encrusted wallet to hold all of their dough?

Originality is dead.

Has a familiar ring to it, eh?

It seems that the World Poker Tour is in the process of creating some type of WPT Europe, in addition to the WPT schedule that pretty much stays within the U.S. border with the one exception of Canada. The WPT signed an agreement, the details of which are yet to be released, with Group Perelada in Spain.

In today’s press conference, Steve Lipscomb only touched on the subject but said the following:

“We are expanding our presence in Europe and other international markets as we go into the online gaming space, and as we do that, we’re taking those markets piece by piece… This year, we’re going to do a WPT Europe event. We’re going to be doing regional tours similar to what we’re doing in China… Those audiences, as we understand, are very hungry for programming as they grow their own poker world, and we’re going to help them and grow it together.”

Antonio at the WPT press conference

A few impressions from the press conference with Antonio Esfandiari and Steve Lipscomb:

~Antonio is immensely happy about this deal. He has a deep respect and fondness for the WPT. Though he was being cool, as always, he was close to just bubbling over.

~Antonio is going to be representing the WPT on television, in advertising, with Club WPT, and with anything they do in the global market, including WPT Online.

~Steve seems to have a lot of respect for Antonio as well. He feels that Antonio represents players from every background and culture, but he is one of the classy players who doesn’t insult others, has an incredible passion for the game, and will represent the WPT well. Steve mentioned more than once that when Antonio won his WPT title, he went straight to his dad’s place to surprise him with a huge chunk of $$$ and told him to retire; he was particularly struck by that.

And click below for a few quotes from today’s conference:

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That’s what it seems like they’re banking on — you know, along with restructuring tournament operations and slimming down staff. Steve Lipscomb just announced today at a press conference (at the Commerce in LA?) that Antonio the WPT-Made Millionaire will be the new face of the World Poker Tour.

And despite the reduced schedule, the WPT also apparently has a WPT-Europe in the works. Should be interesting to see how this all shakes out over the course of 2008. My prediction is that the WPT will, several years from now, be seen as the AFL* of Poker.

* And by AFL I mean American Football League, not the other AFL that looks out for the hard-workin’ little guy.

Players have spoken and Steve Lipscomb has apparently listened. As the WPT tries to recover from the fiscal beating it’s taken for the last couple years of generally crappy programming ratings at a time when High Stakes Poker was just finding its stride and the online poker world was in a tailspin … (why did the PPT collapse again? Those shows were great!) … a simple adjustment to a Berman-Lipscomb-Corp. policy stands to put a little more money into players’ pockets. An email sent out a month ago:

Dear WPT Player,

This is a quick email to announce that we are revising the rules for WPT Final Table Player Sponsorship. In previous seasons, pre-approved sponsors were required to send WPT a list of their players prior to the start of each event. If one of the listed players made the Main Event Final Table, the Player would be able to wear the sponsor’s pre-approved logo. No other logos were accepted for that player.

NEW RULES TO WEAR A LOGO:

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There were three items that weren’t covered in Steve’s letter that are very important to me and some of my professional poker friends. Resolving these issues would make competing on the World Poker Tour more profitable, and therefore more enjoyable, for the players the WPT depends on.

1. Payout structure - In the WPT championship, the winner received $4 million. Sixth place got $300,000. This difference is not the only reason, but is one of the main reasons that people are complaining about the blind structures. If this difference were significantly smaller, players might not be as bothered by a crapshoot. I’m sure other people will comment on how to improve the blind structure, but I would like the payout structure narrowed. Viewers will be impressed if the winner gets $2 million or $4 million. Both numbers are amazing to people that watch poker. This top-heavy prize structure is one of the reasons so many poker players are going broke. Finishing 6th among 600 of the best players in the world should get paid better than 12to1.
2. Deal Making - The WSOP allows deal making and their shows are great to watch too. The viewers don’t know, and even if they did, they might find the negotiation process interesting to watch. The inability for players to make deals when the variation in prize money from first to sixth is so vast is another reason why the blind structure is so important. The final table is not real poker and is being played for more money than most people have ever seen, and we can’t make deals. If we could make deals, I wouldn’t care so much about the blind structure. In addition, if a deal was made, it would speed up the tournament reducing your production costs and would spread the prize money over a greater number of players.

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