2016 Global Poker League Week 9

"4 years ago the Global Poker Index (GPI) began to transition itself to become poker’s player ranking authority, with a mission to “Sportify Poker”. We acquired The Hendon Mob (the largest live poker database online since its start 12 years ago), followed by the launch of initiatives such as the American Poker Awards, the GPI World Cup and others.

5 months ago, we set out on another long journey when we launched the Global Poker League. Thanks to the support of 72 of the best poker players in the world (whose combined earnings total almost $400 million) we built up 12 global teams who would go on to compete for 14 weeks of regular season action. After the success of GPL's Draft Day in Los Angeles, we filmed 200+ hours of matches both online and live. We built “The Cube”, our signature arena in Las Vegas, and experimented constantly with better ways to connect the game to our viewers. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Powered by Twitch.tv as a partner though, we were able to accrue more than half a million unique engaged viewers to GPL streams.

We built a platform we believe will become the foundation of ‘Pokertainment’ in the next few years, but we are not yet there yet. We adjusted some of our plans to fit into the reality of our situation too - creating a new sports and entertainment property will take some time.

Right before summer, we secured a multi-year deal with one of China’s sports properties - Sina Sports - with whom we will launch GPL China in the 1st quarter of next year. Some other key strategic partnerships we’ve been cultivating for the past 9 months are now being finalized and set to launch in 2017. With a backlog of completed content and a real vision in place, it’s much easier for us to engage with media & entertainments groups as well.

A mentor of mine once told me that perhaps our biggest threat will be the disparity between how confident we are in our projects in the face of the doubts they will bring in the public arena. I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I’m lucky to have the partners, players and co-workers which we have. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years and I realize this endeavor is the most ambitious one I’ve undertaken, It’s the most exciting too. We want to create a framework that will aggregate Poker’s 100 million global fans (not even counting the Chinese market), convert them into consumers, create opportunities to grow the game of poker outside of its existing boundaries and push it into the more mainstream. The gist - Poker outside the box, but inside The Cube. :-)

The basics for the GPL are built, our next step is focusing on expanding “fan engagement” through the end of 2016 and into 2017, testing new fan monetization models based on GPL content and unique fan-centric experiences."

Alex