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Sports Legends Challenge Shuts Doors after Venetian Lawsuit

Unofficially canceled-canceled, not “postponed”

by , Oct 5, 2009 | 1:12 pm

Comments (2)

PokerNews probably woulda prefered their name were never attached to this event.

The Venetian sued the parent company of the Sports Legends Challenge last week in Clark County Court, claiming the operation skipped out on a contract to the tune of $174k.

And now, according to at least one disgruntled former employee and phones no longer being answered, the operation full-on shut down today.

We can only imagine, that this is just the beginning of the fallout, actually.

Think about it … you’ve got two lawsuits regarding the set-up of the event … and we haven’t even gotten to the Bahamas yet!

Whether or not there was any fraud-like criminal activity in this multimillion-dollar-semi-bluff-gone-awry remains to be seen. Two lawsuits aside, potential additions to the got-screwed list include:

— Player who bought in
— Investors
— Charities hosting casino events promising SLC seats as prizes
— Players who won those seats
— Players who chopped and paid cash for the extra portion of those seats
— Poker pros who fronted their own travel costs

Anyone else?


(Click here for stuff on the still-pending Sludikoff lawsuit, filed in February.)

Apparently even before the too-good-to-be-true Bahamas-Atlantis event got hyped up and collapsed, the plan was to hold the super-big exciting Sports Legends Challenge at the Venetian … during the end of the WSOP main event in July … but somewhere along the way that fell apart.

The Venetian lawsuit (vs. Hall of Fame World Poker Championship LLC*) actually seems a bit peculiar, since the alleged money-stiffage came even before SLC backed out on the necessary $26k deposit to reserve suites and conference space.

* The name of the company shoulda been the first red flag, no?


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2 Comments to “Sports Legends Challenge Shuts Doors after Venetian Lawsuit ”


  1. F-Train     says:
    October 5th, 2009 at 1:37pm

    The Venetian lawsuit (vs. Hall of Fame World Poker Championship LLC*) actually seems a bit peculiar, since the alleged money-stiffage came even before SLC backed out on the necessary $26k deposit to reserve suites and conference space.

    I think you’re a little off here Dan. The sequence of events as set forth in the Sun article is:

    1. SLC and Venetian sign contract to reserve space. The upshot of this is that Venetian will no longer reserve that space for any other customer.
    2. SLC misses deadline for $26k deposit.
    3. SLC cancels reservation.
    4. As per the contract, SLC cancellation triggers a cancellation fee of $173k.
    5. Venetian tries to collect $173k fee and fails.
    6. Venetian sues to enforce.

    All pretty standard stuff.


  2. DanM     says:
    October 5th, 2009 at 11:31pm

    Hmm, you know, I almost deleted that graf (and the one above it) twice. Now obviously I can’t.

    I kinda thought the deposit is what showed, yeah, we’re serious about this deal, at which point they would really reserve necessary space. But without the deposit, you’d say, “nah, these guys are jokers, screw them.”

    But I guess if it’s a super-huge reservation, it’s not quite the same? Because if the cancellation fee was 150ish k … then the booking musta been way more than that, right?