Quote:
Originally Posted by Chippa58
Not a businessman, but I'm struggling to understand what the business model of this venture was supposed to be. Was there any revenue besides tournament rake? Were they getting paid by tourism interests in Aruba? Seems like a lot of hands would be grabbing at their revenue between host casinos, travel expenses, employees, investors, etc. I'm just wondering how this venture was supposed to generate a profit.
Typically with a traveling tour like this, the host casino pays a fee to the tour and the host casino keeps the rake. That's how it works with the WSOPc.
My bigger question is what are the expenses of this business besides their own salaries, minimal marketing and travel? Like, if you see you're not making money off of it, your options should be pretty clear of where to cut down on expenses. That is, of course, if it's on the up and up, which seems unlikely.
I'm also curious whether the host casinos will bear any liability on this. It seems like the victims are far more likely to receive compensation from Maryland Live, Foxwoods, etc, even though they didn't perpetrate the fraud obviously. They did, however, lend some significant credibility to the PPC and they do actually have money, which the PPC may not. There were 26 stops and people have said the amount owed is around 300K? That's only like 11.5K per stop, and I know there were some repeat stops, but those casinos may consider it good marketing/customer service/public relations to settle rather than be sued.... Even if they're likely to win the case.
It's also important for the poker community to hold everyone accountable in some way, so that perhaps these casinos will do a better job of looking into things as much as they can going forward. I'll admit that I have no idea what that process has been or even could be, but whatever it is obviously didn't work here.