The continuing shrinkage of the poker media continued today as QQWIN99 Wire closed down its website. While the U.S. Government’s restrictive Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act had been the reason for past media closures, Poker Wire has fallen to the reality of the new “exclusive coverage agreements” that both the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker have signed with CardPlayer Magazine and Bluff Magazine respectively.
Check back here tomorrow for my commentary of this new exclusive media environment.
Below is the text of the Poker Wire announcement.
As many of you know, both the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour have both signed exclusive deals with competing magazines for media coverage. With these new deals in place, media outlets like PokerWire.com are no longer allowed to post live updates or chip counts. The WPT exclusive took us by surprise; over the last six months we had put together a team of reporters that was second to none in the industry.
There were many complaints by the media about limited access during the WSOP—but the WSOP restrictions seem almost lax compared to the press release about the WPT’s new arrangement. The wording in the press release stated “Floor Access via escorted PR escort ONLY” in fifteen-minute increments and that “there will no longer be designated areas for media with tables, chairs, internet access and power.”
U.S. Attempts to Compensate EU for Banning Poker
It’s truly amazing to what lengths politicians will go, simply to maintain a position that has clearly become untenable to sustain. We are talking about the U.S. and its ban of online gaming. This latest analysis comes from the Wall Street Journal.
The Bush administration, pressured by an unfavorable ruling by the World Trade Organization, plans to push for legal changes that could make it easier for European service companies, from engineering firms to law firms and shipping companies, to do business in the U.S., officials say.
The U.S. is required to offer trading partners greater access to the American market because in May it lost a long-running dispute at the World Trade Organization over laws that banned foreign firms from offering Internet gambling services in the U.S.
- The News: The White House plans to push for changes that could make it easier for European service companies to do business in the U.S.
- The Background: After the U.S. banned foreign gambling Web sites, EU trade officials sought compensation for billions of euros in lost income. The U.S. has been in a trade dispute over online gambling since 2003, mainly with Antigua and Barbuda.
- What’s Next: EU and U.S. negotiators are working out details of a compensation offer to open some sectors of the U.S. services market to greater foreign competition.Europe’s online gambling firms were hit particularly hard and complained to the European Union’s executive arm in Brussels. EU trade officials took up the matter with the WTO, seeking compensation for billions of euros in lost income. The EU invoked a rarely used WTO rule that requires a country that closes one market to foreign companies to open others to compensate trading partners.
