why not just have the preliminary event online and save people travel expenses for the 27000 that won't play live?

They expect between 20,000 and 30,000 players and the event is scheduled for 5 days. maybe part of the package is travelling expenses similar to what thney do now for other tourments.

you will be inform

So the poker players here really think Full Tilt's potential new owners can actually pull this off? Wow.

It is a ridiculous idea. What does it cost to hire Wembley? Who is paying for 30 000 tablets? What if it rains? Why would anyone sit about in a half empty stadium in cold weather as a poker tournament runs down? Will Wembley allow the grass to be covered for days on end (this depends on any sports events taking place soon after those dates). Can Wembley host casino games? (Probably not licensing for gambling is very restricted in England). These are the first few obvious questions that came to my mind. It is a bad sign that FT's potential new owners would consider this viable.

I read somewhere that Wembly costs 250,000 - 750,000 pounds per event...that's probably for an event like a concert or game lasting 2 or 3 hours...sooooo, if you have an all-day poker tournament at Wembly it will cost millions, especially if it goes for 2 or 3 days. I don't know for sure, maybe someone has some solid info.

Wembley still haven't emailed me back. I'll phone them at 10am BST (2.5 hrs from now) to confirm.

To me it sounds unrealistically optimistic - but then so does the Full Tilt/Tapie deal, and lots of people seem to believe that - so what do I know

Just spoke to Wembley. They confirm that ISPT has provisionally booked the stadium for September 2012 - there won't be an actual date until England know their fixture schedule, which will be released in November.

I mean, it seems as if Laurent Tapie is a great visionary, so maybe he has some huge plans for this sport. It should be reminded that there have been other ideas in poker (and everywhere, for that matter) that seemed near impossible to pull off but eventually revolutionized the field.


I just don't see why people aren't looking forward optimistically to that, consider whether they would be participating and just see what comes along.

Prices for such venues are variable according to expected profit of the organisator etc

Look at it this way

if you want to host a friendly match between UK and some not that good country or you want to host the champions league finals, the price to "rent" the stadium is going to differ immensly.

(fwiw I don't know how exactly it works in the soccer stadium world, but that is how it works with large venues in general, soccer system could be an exception)

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it”
Chinese proverb

This is without a doubt the worst business idea of all time. Ever.

Ha ha, I take your point, but I also doubt I am interrupting anything... My interest in this is that I want to see a healthy FT up and running, preferably with some decent deposit bonus incentives, and this sort of idea with the current potential investors sets off alarm bells somewhat.

IST should save £££ and hold the event at west hams stadium. Ziiing high five!

ziig will obviously only play in the red label arena

"Q8+9: talks about ISPT. Says at the moment there is no link between ISPT and FTP, the project was started in 2010, long before FTP came on the table."

Source: http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusines...pie-ispt.shtml , kindly translated by bbfg

It seems they were planning that for a long time.

Well it seems they are serious about it, and fair play to them for trying something innovative, but I am still sceptical.

They would need to be in the upper tiers to ensure any tablets/participants didn't get rained on - I have attended Wembley in a lower tier and I am pretty sure I would have got wet had it rained. The weather can be bleak in September in England (was very hot at least in part though this year), and a less than half full Wembley with people sat in the stands, then the final part of the tournament in what I assume would be basically an empty stadium (maybe not though) just seems odd, but who knows?

If you think a rock concert only occupies a stadium for 2-3 hours and from that extrapolate to the costs for a full day then you're delusional. A concert takes the venue for a full day, the audience is there for a few hours but the crew takes all day to build the stage, lights, sound etc.

This.. probably two days. They build everything up the day before. Then there's sound check, the actual concert and packing everything back up. So a few hour concert occupies a stadium for 2 to 3 days.

I don't see how this is a bad idea at all. The specifics may be questionable, like open air forum and some other things, but I don't think the idea is bad. Think about a 30,000,000 guarantee! And for what? $1,000 buy in? Sooo many peeps come from the online world that it would be feasible to get something like this done. Online pro's would clamber for this thing, I think anyway. If I could get there, I most certainly would, and I'm NOT a pro. Maybe that's the genius of this. It gets people like me thinking they have a good shot at a real tournament that is mostly in their wheelhouse being mostly online with a prolly soft field.

Ah, yes of course!

How many entrants are there on avg. for the Stars 1k's (or for FTP)?

Point taken. I don't know how many there are generally, but I do know that this is a different animal than a straight up online tourney. There is a ton of money GUARANTEED. There is a television tournament (Has to be televised at a 30,000,000 guarantee) for a miniscule buy in. There is the comfort of playing the thing in your comfort zone (if you are an online pro, or even if you are the average online player who has wanted to try a live tournament but don't have 10k). Will it work? I don't know. I just see the potential in it. It's a good idea that may change the face of live tournaments, or it might fall flat on its face.

I think you guys are too stuck on the 30 million and 30,000 seats. Remember, they are guaranting a min of 30 million in payouts. No where does it say the buyin has to be 1K and the prizes wil not be bigger

It's a crazy idea, but I think it has a chance of happening, albeit not quite in the manner depicted in the video.
Although it was planned before the FTP talks, I see this megatourney as being the way to ensure FT's survival in the UK/Euro market. Instead of people cashing out ASAP, they will be satelliting themselves into a big tourney that's 3000 miles closer to home than Las Vegas.

From a business standpoint, I can't see it making an instant profit for the Tapie Groupe, though. While IMG might be able to sell footage to 30 countries around the world, Tapie will have to spend millions more (on top of the prizemoney) in advertising the rebirth of Full Tilt on television. He can make some glitzy adverts saying "Play a $1 tourney on Full Tilt, go on to win 10 million at Wembley" but it's gonna be a loss leader.
It's certainly not going to be a spectator sport in the stadium itself. It's scheduled to take place just after the Olympics, and no one's gonna have any money left (let alone a desire to sit on plastic chairs) after that.

I kind of expect them to jettison the phone/pad idea, and just set up tables for 1000 live players, after most of the online qualifiers are dumped out a week before the main event. I mean, if you're one of 30,000 qualifiers, you're not gonna bother to fly from Germany or Turkey (at your own expense) just to be given a phone/pad and a bad beat in the first 5 minutes.

Gotta agree it may come off but not as describe in the video. Interesting concept