An American poker bizzer who would prefer to remain anonymous writes in with an update on some of Harrah\’s struggles to fill the 55,000 square feet of pavilion space dedicated to the Gaming Life Expo at the 2007 WSOP:
I\’ve been in contact with the GLE folks again and I\’m starting to sense an air of desperation from them. There are clearly a good number of booths that have not been deposited and it seems that they will _not_ be having the online poker sites back at the GLE, although they won\’t come out and say that. But in response to my question yesterday about whether the .net\’s that are still taking US customers will be there (Bodog, Full Tilt, Doyle\’s Room, PokerStars — the big sites that all were at the 2006 show), she replied by naming many of the smaller non-poker site booth operators that will be back and noted that they are trying to land a large auto company or Harley-Davidson presence at the show.
Given that neither Harley nor any auto company had any corporate presence at the 2006 show, to me this looks like they are desperately trying to sell space, and it causes me to wonder if the show won\’t go down in flames before it even starts this year. Just think about the massive amount of space that the poker sites took up in the hall last year. I would guess that the poker sites were 40+% of all the rented space. And Harrah\’s has added probably another 25% of floor space over last year by getting rid of the underused food court area and the two rooms that they had walled off inside the Pavillion area.
Interesting perspective. Certainly seems plausible. But hey, aren\’t they still claiming 10,000 anticipated players? Either way, it seems poker vendors might be able to sell more wares/get a better return by putting their money into advertising campaigns on various poker blogs!