WPT/Party Continues to Rip off WSOP on Facebook

I swear I\’m not the Facebook police any more than I am a Harrah\’s attorney … but when the shit just gets served up while I\’m busy liking stuff … it\’s kinda hard to miss! Yet another example appeared on Tuesday night of a rather blatant misappropriation of WSOP trademark on Facebook. It always seems to happen on Tuesday nights … hmmm.

First, before I get into the new offense … to be fair and clear, the WPT did acknowledge their error almost immediately after we mocked their maiden foray into Facebook marketing. On September 21 a WPT spokesman said:

“We would like to confirm that the Facebook ad mentioned in your September 17, 2010 post was indeed a mistake on the part of a 3rd party advertising agency used by our “WPT Texas Hold’em on Facebook” licensee. The ad was placed by the advertising agency without the knowledge of WPT or our Facebook game licensee.

Please be assured that we acted immediately to rectify the situation and that the advertising agency has pulled the unapproved ad. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.”

Cool, yeah whatever, like we said, we\’re not the Facebook police, but you\’re welcome — Pokerati is always happy to help. We did notice the replacement ads that appeared the following Tuesday:

LOL-sigh. We\’re not the grammar police neither … but I think you mean we\’ve gotten better. Or maybe \”we gots better, yo?\”

Regardless, grammatical impropriety is probably the least of it. Check out the WSOP-branded Facebook ads that began showing up last night in people\’s sidebars:

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, this ad takes you directly to the real-money gaming available at PartyPoker.com. Party Gaming, of course, is the parent company of the World Poker Tour.

[Shaking head …]

I know it\’s not really my business, but in the spirit of continued assistance and diplomatic mediation … you can\’t do that, Party/WPT! Harrah\’s spent good money so that little black-and-white circle with red shapes in the middle makes poker fans subconsciously connect with the WSOP. Don\’t think they own the rights to all black-and-white circles on Facebook … but this one, as seen on ESPN every Tuesday, that\’s pretty much theirs. And if you keep trying to use it to gank their Facebook fans, someone\’s gonna get hurt sued pissed! We don\’t wanna see that, now do we …

There, Harrah\’s … we just saved your legal team about $14,800 in billable hours. Think you might be able to hook me up with an extra food comp in November?

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