What do player sponsorships REALLY do for a poker site

There is an article up today at CalvinAyre.com penned by Bodog CEO Patrick Selin regarding player sponsorships that I think every serious poker player should read. Now I completely disagree with Selin’s points about sponsorships being “suicide” for online poker rooms, but not because I disagree with the Bodog model of marketing to recreational players. The reason I disagree has to do with marketing in general, and I KNOW Selin knows better, but simply doesn’t want to say we don’t have the money to market in the same way as PokerStars.

I think the article is disingenuous in a sense: I would readily agree that 99% of potential online poker players are not factoring in sponsored pros when choosing where to play, but this belies the whole point of sponsoring players. Sponsorships are not meant as a marketing strategy in and of itself, rather it is part of general marketing strategy that includes many other forms of advertising to help with brand recognition.

Selin and Bodog are using the same approach with Evelyn Ng, Tatjana Pasalic, and Amanda Leatherman that PokerStars uses with Daniel Negreanu and Viktor Blom; that is they KNOW these players will get preferential treatment on TV and in interviews. The Bodog players get the VIP treatment because they are good looking women and approachable, while the PokerStars players because they are among the best known and most followed players in the game. So, Bodog saves on the sponsorship it doles out, but doesn’t get the same amount of return either -it’s also a bit one-dimensional.

Granted, I’m not playing at PokerStars to watch Viktor Blom play high-stakes (and there are probably 100 people who joined for this specific reason and 99 of them probably never deposited), but every time “Isildur1″ is mentioned in an article I see and read the words Team PokerStars Pro appear before his name. The more you see the words PokerStars (whether it’s on TV, in a banner ad, or attached to a player’s name in an article) the more likely you are to associate PokerStars with Online Poker, or with World’s Largest Card-room for that matter.

The sponsored players also have fairly large Twitter and Facebook followings, so the name of their sponsor -along with any promotions-get sent out into the world of Social Media, giving the site even more brand recognition. This is what sponsored players do for a site! They don’t attract people to play at the site because of THEM; they attract people as part of a general marketing strategy.

Nobody is joining PokerStars because Nacho Barbero or Liv Boeree plays there; they are joining the site because after reading an article about Team PokerStars Pro Liv Boeree, and seeing Nacho Barbero sporting a PokerStars patch at a final table, and receiving a Tweet from PokerStars Team Online member Randy “nanonoko” Lew about a special promotion, and hearing about a player on 2+2 winning the PokerStars Sunday Million, and seeing a PokerStars “World’s Largest Card-room” Banner at their favorite poker portal, and so on and so forth.

I guess my point is that sponsorships are not a one-off marketing ploy, but rather a part of a well-oiled marketing machine.