Government Shutdown and WSOP, etc.

[lwestatbus]

As I've wallowed in my depression over the Stars lockout it occurred to me that there will be some spillover effects. One of the most obvious is likely to be WSOP Main Event attendance (and prize pool). Somebody probably has statistics on how many players win their seats through the online sites but if you take out the Americans in that group we can expect to see a pretty hefty reduction. My private bet with myself is attendance at least 1/3 lower than last year.

A second effect is televised poker sponsorship. While there are lots of non-poker site sponsors there is no doubt but that the poker site revenues and tourny sponsorship is a big part of revenues. It will be interesting to see if this changes.

[HalfSugar]

I'd say it will fall by at least 50%. PokerStars send a huge number each year although I've just logged in and there are still 175,000 players online when there are usually ~300,000 so clearly there is still a huge non-US contingent playing.