I find one of the most interesting things about the poker boom over the last 6+ years to have been the transition from rounders earning income solely from poker (or investments) to earning from sponsorship deals.

It has fundamentally changed how an up and coming pro will plan to make the most money possible.

I know alot of the information about these sponsorship deals is private between the player and their sponsor, but I was wondering if there is already any major stories detailing the rise of sponsors.

I probably don't have the means to research such an issue, but I would hope someone like Nolan Dalla could produce something worthwhile.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is really interested in this.

Its hugely different......

It would only be similar if sports endorsements didn't exist until 10 years ago.

I am wondering about this too, primarily b/c I would be interested in finding out how much sponsorship money goes into the prize pool of the 50k HORSE and the Main Event.

Its possible that we will see this issue covered in some way in the upcoming "from busto to robusto" episodes. Gonna be pissed if they're not free though.

I too would to know more about sponsorship in poker, the history, and the future of it. Op i think your right about this being the perfect subject for Nolan Dalla.

Unlike other "sports" poker is very diff, in nascar, football, golf, ect. you either have only so many teams or so many guys of individual talent at any one time, that get the big sponsorship deals, poker was like this at the start of the boom, but now with so many playing poker and so many online pro's and up and coming players it almost to saturated. With new faces always winning trnys now like the ME, i do not think many in the future will get the gr8 sponsorship deals and become as famous to the avg person as the guys that came before, Hellmuth, Ivey, negreanu ect.

Golf was boring as hell televised, then boom, tiger woods! A whole younger generation was enticed to watch absolute most boring sport on television

Main Event = millions of dollars of buyins are poker sites paying for pros to get in. There is going to be 24 hours of main event coverage this year!!!!!

HORSE Event = $0? not televised. Greg Raymer said it's such a tough field and without Stars putting up his buy in he was thinking about passing on it this year. I'm not sure if he actually played it or not.

Brian Balsbaugh is the man with the info. He's an agent for a lot of top players and is obviously a much busier man than he was five years ago. Here's a list of the people he looks after:

http://pokerroyalty.com/player-management.php

He's the sane man's Oliver Tse......

But I think the most interesting part of this discussion is a player's motivation to make all these endorsement deals. I mean, with the boom of coaching sites and the games getting a lot tougher for celebrity pros, they need to endorse all these products to make a living whereas they could just sit in a game and win money.

A high stakes player could previously work whatever hours he wanted at the Bellagio and make a living from that, but since there aren't many players who are consistently +EV in the biggest games now they have to do all this other stuff.