There was recently a slight to-do in the poker community about the popular site PokerStrategy.com supposedly reporting mostly negative news about Full Tilt Poker, which will re-launch tomorrow. Some people believe it is because PokerStars, Full Tilt’s new owner, ended all rakeback deals and thus cost PokerStrategy and other large affiliates a significant chunk of revenue going forward. In essence, the theory is that the negative news articles are a revenge play.
PokerStrategy.com CEO Dominik Kofert released a statement clarifying what was going on, explaining:
PokerStrategy.com’s business model is based on receiving advertisement commissions from poker rooms…
The reason for PokerStrategy.com’s existence is also its weakness: in order to receive commissions from a poker room, we must enter into an advertisement agreement. Those agreements generally require that we promote the poker room and place restrictions on negative coverage. Thus, when a partnership ends, even if it does so under questionable circumstances, we are often unable to give our public opinion about it and are restricted to taking action behind the scenes.
Now, I am not going to jump on PokerStrategy for this; I understand how things work. This commotion did take me back two years ago, however, when I penned an article about the poker news industry for this website. The powers that were at the time did not permit me to post it because it was critical of our industry, and to a much lesser extent our own site. I did not like the decision, but I understood it, especially because our site’s management had my fullest respect. Now, Poker News Daily is under new ownership, so I am dusting off that old article and getting it up on the site. So here it is in its entirety, confusing 2010 context and all:
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Poker Boom II and Poker News
In July I discussed my thoughts on what Poker Boom II might look like should online poker become fully legalized and regulated in the United States. I looked at the fish population, poker room competition, bonuses, and rake, which, after security and deposit/withdrawal options are probably the four things with which players will be the most concerned (although, frankly, a large percentage of players ignore security). What I have begun thinking about since then, though, is that should we Americans become free to play poker without worrying about anything except our bankrolls, my industry, the poker news industry, may very well change.
Poker news is an odd bird. For one, it is a fairly limited arena. When they find out what I do, about 80 percent of people ask, “So what news is there in poker, anyway?” Well, let’s see. We have live and online poker tournament news, legislative news, online poker promotion news, some poker television news, and other random news stories. That’s about it. Traditional news sites have every happening, every “something” of any interest in the entire universe about which to write. Whereas it is entirely possible to have a day in which there is no poker news worth reporting, that would obviously never happen on traditional news sites.
But the real reason I have always found poker news strange is that, by and large, the sources of revenue for the sites are the same companies that are the subjects of the articles. That is one heck of a conflict of interest. I have not been involved with the business side of any poker news sites, but it is readily apparent that they make the bulk of their money in two ways: online poker affiliate links and online poker advertisements. When the goal of a news site is to get readers to sign up at a poker room, it is naturally in the best interest of the site to write positive things about said room. Even if the site remains completely unbiased, the perception will always exist that it is simply a “shill” for the poker rooms.
Traditional media outlets don’t have this problem. Take, for example, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s website, which I frequent daily. As I write this, there are ads for AirTran, AT&T, Proactiv, eHarmony, and local businesses and events on the front page. While of course some of them may be written about at some point (maybe AirTran makes a business deal or someone reviews the Milwaukee Ballet in the Entertainment section), there is no conflict of interest in the slightest.
While most poker news sites do publish relevant and legitimate news stories every day, many also cater to their advertisers and “poker room partners” by posting throw-away stories just to get Google hits or even blatantly tell people to sign up for Poker Room XYZ and provide a convenient affiliate link to aid in the process. You will also often see mini-stories or ads for news site-sponsored freerolls or rakeback at an online poker room, although I don’t have as much of a problem with this, as they are transparent attempts to bring in money and not disguised as news.
I should say that one reason I enjoy writing for Poker News Daily is that, for the most part, this site has done a good job at avoiding these conflicts of interest and “shill” news. No, we’re not completely immune to criticism in this area, and while it makes me wince at times, I understand that sometimes you just need to put food on the table. But in my eyes, PND is better than most at sticking to the news and presenting stories in a fair, objective way. Heck, the powers that be let me write editorials and I’ve never been shy about calling out a poker room when I feel the urge, so that deserves a sticker.
Getting back to my original thought, what I could see happening once online poker is explicitly legal and regulated in the U.S. is more mainstream advertisers joining the fray. Right now, you almost exclusively see poker-related advertising on poker news sites because everyone else is too afraid to associate themselves with online gambling. And they must be very afraid because they are missing out on the eyeballs of a lot of young males with disposable income playing online poker. I don’t expect it to necessarily happen immediately and I don’t expect every big company to jump on board, but I think we could definitely see more mainstream advertisers and partnerships in the future. It would probably start with companies that would see dollar signs in the young demographic, like wireless providers, electronics and video game retailers, and even alcoholic beverage companies (the legal age for online gambling will be 21). As time goes on, we may see a broader selection of advertisers as online poker becomes more widely accepted amongst the non-gambling population.
The great part about this scenario for poker news sites is that they will eventually be able to break that bond with the online poker rooms. Without online poker rooms paying the bills, poker news sites won’t feel pressure to write fluff pieces or pull punches in situations where it would be more appropriate to be hard hitting. The sites that are just affiliate sites masquerading as poker news sites will disappear and those that actually report news will be able to do so even better than they do now. The word “News” would step forward as an equal to “Poker,” a position it should have been all along.