This is pretty strange.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/...over-20m-loan/

This story states that Katz is part owner of CRTV, and I believe I have read this fact elsewhere before. So he is suing his own company?

Some of you might remember CRTV because they accidentally sent promotional e-mails to PokerGo subscribers last year. This is because CRTV is the parent company of Poker Central, and I guess their e-mail lists got comingled.

If CRTV is just going to default on a loan of that size, it raises questions about the sustainability of PokerGo. It always seemed that Katz was happy to run it at a loss, but if he's going to sweat this amount, then maybe that's no longer the case.

I wonder how Poker Central investors Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, and Antonio Esfandiari will feel about this lawsuit.

wow

In early 2017, shortly after CRTV launched, Mark Steyn (one of the 3 original hosts on CRTV) and CRTV had a falling out and Mark Steyn was let go. According to this article, it sounds like this lawsuit is an attempt by Katz to avoid having to pay Mark Steyn. From what I can tell, Im not sure it has much to do with PokerGo.

I never really understood how CRTV was making enough money to pay all of their hosts to begin with. Most of them are pretty well known conservatives, so it cant be cheap. I guess the answer is they cant.

^^^^
Catz/CRTV just lost the claim against Mark Steyn and now owes him about $4MIL (with Catz from his emails coming across very scummy in the Judgment).

Here's Mark Steyn's (Defendant/counter-claim Plaintiff) interpretation of his victory: https://www.steynonline.com/8597/crt...yn-the-verdict

If CRTV goes under, presumably PokerCentral/PokerGo would have to be liquidated along with it, right? CRTV is said to own it.

I don't quite understand why Katz would bankrupt his own company just to avoid paying this guy. Would he move to the front of the line of creditors, bumping Steyn? Maybe he comes out ahead if his stake in CRTV/PokerCentral is worth less than $20 million? Would this make sense if the company is not doing well and he thinks it might end up failing anyway?

I'm more mystified than before. What a strange mess.

LOL such a bizarre quote from Katz. What a piece of work.

So CRTV fired a radio host, tried to sue him, and the whole thing catastrophically blew up in their faces for a -$14 million swing. What happens to the WSOP broadcasting rights if PokerGo ceases to exist or gets dismantled and sold for scrap?

It's interesting to me, because while I dont currently subscribe to either, I have subscribed to both in the past. The Mark Steyn thing had me really puzzled when they just out of nowhere removed him from the schedule. And now that could put both CRTV and PokerGo out of business.

I didnt think about that. I was thinking that CRTV and PokerGo was separate, but just both owned by Katz. Im guessing a lot of the tech PokerGo uses is from CRTV and probably makes it impossible for PokerGo to survive without CRTV.

I agree

a dude that made $100MM off screwing students with loans gets screwed on massive loans.

poetic justice

I know nothing of these people or companies...so I'm assuming you are right.

But...is there anyone in taxes, business or law or understands large amounts of money, is he expecting to win or is this some type of way to avoid taxes. or he's hedging somehow expecting to settle for what he really needs?

poker has a wasteland of deceased media ventures.

also this.

PokerGo was always the dumbest idea ever. Let's make all the poker content go behind a pay wall so new people will never find it, genius. Poker is a small market (compared to most things) it was never going to work.

I don’t think any business minded person actually thinks a poker channel behind a paywall can be sustainable, without a heavy financial sponsorship, regardless of who is behind it.

That's not what is happening here.

In short, I understand that Cary Katz is effetively suing himself to avoid needing to honour his debt that he owes to Mark Steyn.


Katz's behaviour here has been quite remarkable - he initially contracted with Steyn for Steyn to do work presenting a show on CRTV. His company, CRTV, were not able to make it happen. Katz then took Steyn to arbitration, and the arbiter found against Katz completely. Then, despite being the one to propose the arbitration, and agreeing to abide by the outcome, he reneged on his agreement, and instead litigated against Steyn. The court then found almost entirely in Steyn's favour. Then, instead of paying the money owed to Steyn determined by the court, Katz is now suing his own company, with the goal to avoid paying Steyn.


I tweeted about this story around a week ago, during which I learned the above. Here are the various sources I used for this:

No, he appears to be deliberately destroying his own company to avoid paying what he owes to Steyn.

If CRTV dies not pay the judgement, can not Steyn petition the court to freeze all CRTV assets and liquidate these up to the amount of the judgement? Then the actions of Katz will become admissible evidence in a civil court, and if that evidence shows criminal acts, will lead to a criminal charge by the DA. Im no lawyer, but I’ve stayed in a Holiday Inn.

Has Mark shared why Katz originally stiffed him?

The judgement (?, Im not a lawyer, Im not exactly sure what it is) it outlines what happened. The short version is there was delays in the constructions of the studio and it wasnt clear who was supposed to be hiring a staff for the show. Some of this was caused by Steyn spending that summer in Europe before putting all his time in this show, although it was known to CRTV when they signed Steyn to a contract that he was going to be away during the summer and couldnt spend much time on the show until he got back. They finally got things going, but the show had a much bigger budget than they had anticipated (and a bigger budget than Mark Levin's show, another CRTV show). So that lead to Katz ending the deal with Mark.

His website just quotes the verdict and agrees with the narrative given in the verdict by the judge. Its a pretty interesting read.

Katz is not really the villain in the story, but his underlings did not give him enough correct information about Steyn and his quirks, and this lead to confrontation.

Yeah, it sounds Katz wanted to blame Mark because he hadn't spent enough time on the show, but the judge disagreed because CRTV knew ahead of time that Mark was going to be in Europe.

We just don’t know if it’s the smarter business decision or out of spite or both.

Wouldn’t be the first business to pick defaulting over paying a settlement.

Think it would have been better marketed as being free but w/ads while users have the option to pay $$$ to avoid ads. Pretty basic strat when it comes to these tv show apps.

First thing I ever heard about Katz was his student loan riches.

I think those student loan businesses have been shown to be about half a pip better than payday loan companies (on an ethical basis). Though he has been given credit for successfully conceptualizing these frequent 1-2 day SHRs at Aria and that has prob had a net positive effect on poker.

I do not wish him luck in his future endeavors, but there's plenty of people I'd anti-sweat first. I'm sure his AA will continue to hold up.

So basically, Cary Katz is in bed with right wing extremists such as Gavin McGinnes (leader of the "Proud Boys")? That's not good.

DNegs is an investor? Does he know that Poker Go/CRTV is affiliated with Gavin McGinnes? I feel like he would lost his **** considering how political he is.

I was wondering this myself. I would ask him, but he has blocked me

If he hadn't been so deceptive about his ownership in the company (possibly in violation of FTC regs), maybe someone would have pointed this out to him by now.

sounds like some deep principles at this point, lol