http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...mountain-of-de
The timing of filing bankruptcy is not a coincidence.... Well played Annie, you fucking scumbag.
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...mountain-of-de
The timing of filing bankruptcy is not a coincidence.... Well played Annie, you fucking scumbag.
I've been looking for the flaw in their business model but I just can't spot it. Let's see, the business:
1. raises a load of money
2. gives it away to poker players
3. "generates no receivables"
4. fails
No, I just don't see what went wrong.
Daniel Negreanu had a good bit about this on his video blog. Jeffrey Pollack form 1:30-6:00.
Niggraneu has a lot of room to talk about hair brained business models and cashing in at the right time.. LOL POKER MOUNTAIN/FULLCONTACT POKER ROOM/ POKERVT/STACKED and every other thing he's touched besides poker stars.
From the article in OP:
"A budget submitted by Federated Sports and Gaming to the bankruptcy court proposed that executives use cash collateral from Heartland Poker Tour operations to spend $458,092 in Federated salaries for three months, March 2012 through May 2012.
In other words, while Federated Sports and Gaming had no tournaments scheduled to run during these three months, they attempted to use revenue from a company they acquired, but hadn’t fully paid for, to support lavish Federated executive paychecks."
Wow!
This is a surprisingly hard-hitting article from Cardplayer, which usually shies away from controversy.Originally Posted by Sandwich
I guess they don't like Annie or Jeffrey very much.
Jeffrey Pollack was a career marketer who knew nothing about poker. Harrah's hired him to manage the WSOP because their specialty is marketing, while they suck at operations. This made Pollack perfect for the job, since he was a great marketer but knew nothing about running a major poker tournament, so predictably the marketing was great and the tournament was run very poorly.
Personally I was unhappy with Pollack because he flat out lied to us regarding getting a NWP press pass. In 2008, he asked us to remove an offensive thread where one of our users was drawing obscene things on one of his female contract employees. In returned, we were promised a WSOP press pass in 2009. When we tried to collect on that promise, he denied ever making it. Shitty. Credit to current media director Seth Palansky for getting us one in 2010. We'll see if PokerFraudAlert can get one in 2012.
This is an extremely shady situation, especially with the high executive pay.
I'm just wondering... why the hell was anyone willing to put their money into this terrible, terrible business model? Didn't anyone ask the simple question of "How the fuck are you guys gonna generate any revenue?" before sinking millions of dollars into this?
There really is one born every minute.
Maybe Cardplayer is also owed some money from Epic
I was hating on Jeffrey Pollack before it was cool to hate on Jeffrey Pollack.
Written December 5, 2009:
=============================
A few weeks ago, WSOP Commisioner Jeffrey Pollack resigned. I have seen several articles praising his work and the legacy he leaves behind. I feel a bit differently. While Pollack wasn't all bad, his tenure with the WSOP was full of inexcusable gaffes and poor decisions. Indeed, even the final event he presided over (the 2009 WSOP Main Event) suffered from an embarrassing registration incident.
In some ways, Jeffrey Pollack was perhaps the most appropriate choice to lead the Harrah's-owned World Series of Poker.
Harrah's is widely known for its slick and effective marketing, but poor execution of operations. Few gaming companies are smarter when it comes to core business decisions and marketing. Few gaming companies are more inept when it comes to execution and day-to-day common sense.
It is not surprising that Harrah's hired Pollack, who was a career marketer. Pollack had little experience in poker prior to coming to the WSOP in 2005, but he was known for his effective work in marketing with NASCAR and the NBA. It is not surprising that marketing-obssessed Harrah's chose a man who could promote better than manage.
From a marketing standpoint, Pollack did an excellent job. He negotiated partnerships with ESPN, Sirius radio, Glu Mobile, Bluff Media, AOL, and Betfair. He also arranged sponsorships with Miller Brewing Company, Planters and Hershey’s. All of this brought an increasing number of players to Las Vegas to enter the highly-promoted World Series events, while at the same time earning Harrah's big money through these partnerships and sponsorships.
However, in areas outside of marketing, Pollack's legacy featured a never-ending, almost comical series of mistakes and failures.
For starters, his unwavering dedication to marketing partnerships allowed third-party companies to run roughshod over the rights of WSOP players. Final table participants in certain events were literally imprisoned, to the point where security guards were required to follow them to the bathroom. These players were also not allowed to have friends and loved ones present for their moment of poker glory. This was all done to enable Bluff Magazine to make a little bit of extra money with their live broadcasts. Again, the players were not compensated.
The World Series was first hosted at the Rio at the beginning of Pollack's tenure, in 2005. It was expected that a few growing pains would occur that year, but a competent manager would make sure that matters would improve over time.
Not Jeffrey Pollack.
Somehow the World Series ran WORSE in 2006 than in 2005, and hit rock-bottom (at least operations-wise) in 2007 -- its third year under Pollack. There was absolutely no excuse for this, as a competent manager should learn from previous mistakes. Instead, Pollack seemed to ignore lessons of the past and in fact broke what was already working.
It is nearly impossible as a top-level manager to always make the right judgment call. We are all human, and even the most intelligent, highly-paid executives have been known to drop the ball at times. At the same time, however, there are certain obvious common-sense matters that come up to where it is easy -- even for the average Joe -- to make the right call. Pollack and his team struggled badly in this department.
It does not take a genius to realize that a giant outdoor tent is a bad idea in 115-degree, windy Las Vegas.
It does not take great management skill to test a radical new design of playing cards before unleashing them into bracelet events in the World Series of Poker.
It does not take psychic-level foresight to predict that having just one cashier open on the night before the first event of the WSOP will end very, very badly.
It does not require complex mathematical modeling to expect more than 2300 people for this year's event when last year featured 2280 players.
It does not require a scheduling genius to find a solution to the problem of people tending to register for days 1C and 1D for the main event, creating an unbalanced "Day 2" situation. This is especially not difficult when it repeatedly happens year after year.
Unfortunately, Pollack and friends blew each one of these simple tasks, wreaking havoc upon the players, and often making a joke out of the World Series. While Pollack himself was not responsible for all of the poor decision-making, he hired the people who did, and stood behind them while the WSOP turned into one embarrassment after another.
Pollack was also particularly unapologetic for the various mistakes made. Instead, he offered excuses, and later trumpeted success when correcting in future years what should have been done right in the first place. For example, Pollack was especially proud in 2008 that he facilitated the abandoning of the outdoor tent that plagued the Series in 2007. I mean, seriously?
I will admit that I also have a personal axe to grind with Pollack. He flat-out lied and broke a promise to us, which I find inexcusable and unprofessional. When neverwinpoker was rejected for a press pass in 2008, Pollack promised Bryan Micon that he would make sure we would receive one in 2009. In return, we were asked to remove an unflattering thread about the employee who denied us the pass. We agreed, and I was sure that we would have full media access to the WSOP in 2009.
That did not happen. Not only did Pollack break his promise to us, but he denied having made it in the first place. Pollack realized in 2008 that his best action was to promise something now in order to secure benefit for his interests, regardless of whether or not he planned to deliver his end of the bargain later.
Is it any wonder that this man is such a success at marketing?
Whoever was in his position would have most likely secured the same sponsors as poker was BOOMING at that time.
This guy just luckboxed into the position and did a terrible job
This is from Pokernews today
On Thursday, CardPlayer published a story titled “Epic Poker Bankruptcy Leaves Mountain of Debt,” which provided an in-depth looked at Federated Sports + Gaming, Inc.’s (FS+G) recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
The story asserted that FS+G’s reorganization plans were rejected by the court, and provided specific numbers regarding how much money was owed to various creditors. The article also touched upon FS+G's acquisition of the Heartland Poker Tour, which is reported to be sold for $2.95 million.
On Friday, FS+G responded to the story with a statement and reached out to PokerNews giving us the opportunity to speak with Jeffrey Pollack and CEO David Goldberg to obtain clarification.
“We’re not disputing those things that have been filed with the court,” Goldberg said regarding the $5 million the story said they owed, and the fact that FS+G had only $15,000 in cash at the time of filing. “The $45,000 budget that is listed in there is for, what I would call, Federated Sports + Gaming expenses. There’s a separate budget that sort of relates to all the Heartland Poker Tour expenses. That number is greater."
“We initially filed looking at a three-month budget,” Goldberg added, “but pulled that filing instead to go look at this on a month-to-month basis, so I think, unless I’m wrong, the figure they might have been throwing around was what was initially filed for a three-month budget. Instead, we started to look at this month-to-month because we think we that we will get resolution on our situation fairly soon . . . I think it’s safe to say we can resolve things in less than 90 days.”
In regard to the Heartland Poker Tour, Pollack revealed that money has been paid to the Heartland Poker Tour owners prior to the $1 million laid out in the CardPlayer article, which also claimed that the Epic Poker League’s fourth event and freeroll had been cancelled. “We have not cancelled them. What we have said is given the Chapter 11 filing and out attempt to reorganize, we can’t say when or if those events will be held,” Pollack said. “As part of the reorganization, it is our intention to finish out Season I. Whether or not that happens, or when that happens, remains to be seen.”
Finally, Goldberg turned his attention to the claim that a reorganization plan had been rejected by the bankruptcy court. “No plan has been rejected,” Goldberg said. “What we’ve submitted are motions; for instance, we submitted a motion to use the cash collateral for which we needed the agreement of our secure creditors. There has been no formal reorganization plan for the business that has been submitted, but we have submitted motions to the court, which have been approved with the agreement of our secure creditors. We have not submitted any motions or petitions that have been rejected.”
As far as a timeline is concerned, Goldberg concluded: “We will continue to submit various motions and petitions during this process. It’s a pretty real-time and fluid process, so I can’t say specifically when I think certain things will be filed and introduced, but I think . . . we expect it to be a reasonably quick process overall.”
Below is FS+G's statement in its entirety:
Yesterday, Card Player published an article about the Federated Sports + Gaming Chapter 11 filing. This article is inaccurate. For example:
1. Epic Poker has not "shut its doors," as the very first line of the article asserts. Our doors our open, our website and social media game are up and running, the GPI continues to be published weekly, HPT is staging its events, and we are attempting to re-organize the company: that is why the Chapter 11 process exists.
2. No reorganization plans have been rejected by the bankruptcy court.
3. No reorganization budget has been rejected by the bankruptcy court: an amicable agreement was reached between FS+G and certain creditors.
4. The former Heartland Poker Tour owners have been paid a very substantial amount of money to date, as part of the company's acquisition.
5. During the reorganization process, the top FS+G executives are not receiving any compensation and others are receiving only a small monthly stipend.
6. The total reorganization budget for FS+G in March is approximately $45,000.
No one from FS+G was ever contacted by Card Player, prior to the publication of their article. Had we been contacted, we could have shared these facts.
We continue to be focused on finding a constructive way forward and will provide an update to the community about our progress — once we have substantive news to share.
Sincerely,
Federated Sports + Gaming, Inc.
How much money am I allowed to bet on "NOT"?As part of the reorganization, it is our intention to finish out Season I. Whether or not that happens, or when that happens, remains to be seen.
What happens first: Full Guilt money back or Epic Fail Poker completes their intended season including the million dollar freeroll
When your credibility is somewhere between Howard Lederer and Russ Hamilton telling "your side of the story" is pretty much unnecassary. Notice they didn't address the allegation that they tried to use HPT money to keep paying EPL executives...
Time for the Epic Ethics committee to ban their own..
I'd go with the epic fail league since there is some "value" left in EPL name/brand if you will.What happens first: Full Guilt money back or Epic Fail Poker completes their intended season including the million dollar freeroll
If they could sell the league, and draw a better pro-am turnout (or even kill the pro-am and make it straight am only, and add seats per buy in for the pro level) then the "PGA-esque" model of pro on pro will still have some dead money, and some more value added bringing the spark of some no-one (queue Darvin Moon, or Chris Moneymaker on their FT's) making something happen. I mean even the WPT shoots out seats from club WPT. If EPL had a version of iPoker similar to club WPT then they'd have some money income instead they chose Zynga (bad choice imo).
If they can't sell the EPL, then believe it or not, someone could buy this (I would say WPT, EPL, or even the WSOP could buy just the name alone) and implement something better and have it tour the very next day... That would attract more fish, meaning more money, meaning $1M freeroll would happen (I'd say early 2013).
The Full guilt poker site is tied up with so much investigation/litigation I wouldn't expect to see any money back till at least late 2013, and don't forget the DoJ has the US funds frozen to this day.
That's my take... I didn't do my homework on this assignment (This is all coming from what I remember from older articles)
This happens a lot with public companies. One example I came across the other day was RAYSTREAM Inc or RAYS.OB -- the balance sheet made me laugh when I scanned over it. This is a pretty blatant example of fraud that usually goes unpunished.
Same kind of thing happened at Epic. You get people who want to pay themselves a big-time salary before the company can even afford it. I've seen many of poker 'media' websites go down because they don't ever figure out a way to bring in some income.
Unless you had a piece of the freeroll, I'm not sure how this could be bad news - anything that can drive Duke and Pollack out of the game would be a win.
and Cardplayer fires back with, of all things, facts! http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...c-poker-league
Here is the pertinent bits:
2. Motion for Emergency Use of Cash Collateral, which, on page 11, details Federated Sports and Gaming request for $458,092 in wages for March-May 2012 and total outflow of $685,312 while in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Heartland Poker Tour projected inflow during same period listed as $675,000.
4. Cash Collateral Authorization after first Federated Sports and Gaming Motion for Emergency Use of Cash Collateral was not granted. Revised Federated Sports and Gaming budget approved for March 2012 of $45,000 verses $259,460 request on initial motion.
So Pollack is telling the truth: After they were denied the $450k (for three months) they only asked for $45k (for 1 month)!
Don't forget that Pokernews.com (where the response from FS+G came from) partnered with the FS+G controlled Global Poker Index to form a Player of the Year leader-board
I told you and micon a long time ago not to kiss Annie ass, You both had this bitch on radio and talked to her like she was a queen, The whole whole family is full of cheats, cons, crooks etc
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