Poker superstar Daniel Negreanu, perhaps the face of the sport in 2019, heads to this year’s World Series of Poker as the likely favorite to win Player of the Year.
Negreanu has earned tens of millions in tournament cashes alone, not to mention what he’s likely pocketed in cash games, TV appearances, his long run as the face of PokerStars and his MasterClass, among other things.
So this year he decided to give his fans a chance to own a healthy percentage of his stake for this year’s WSOP for as low as $5.
He offered about $278,000 spread among three categories: low (buy-ins of $1,500 or less), medium (buy-ins between $1,501 and $10,000) and high stakes (buy-ins of more than $10,000).
Although there were small transaction fees from the financial institution processing the payments, he did not charge a markup.
Meaning, if he offered fans a 10 percent total stake for his low-limit entries, and he profited $1,000,000, he’d pay those fans $100,000, split up based on the percentage of shares each fan purchased.
He offered the package as first-come, first-serve, starting on his website at noon PT on Friday. But the demand overloaded the site’s server, and only a few people were able to purchase.
So Negreanu re-launched the promotion on Saturday. All $278,000 sold out in less than three minutes, even with considerable caps on the maximum fans could buy at each of the three levels.
There were technical glitches attempting to submit payments.
But, due to a glitch in the software, payments continued to roll in for nearly half an hour. In all, he took in $1.8 million. Of those who eventually succeeded in submitting payment, only 10 percent did so before the packages sold out.
That forced he and his staff to refund thousands of people overnight, apparently eating $60,000 in processing fees as well.
Negreanu recently split from PokerStars, just days after getting married to his second wife, Amanda Leatherman.
He’s decided to play in more small buy-in events at this year’s WSOP, and professes to be as confident as ever about his poker game, in part thanks to his new wife’s extraordinary support and fewer responsibilities away from the felt.
In short, Negreanu’s unique and innovative offer seemed attractive and popular. He has nearly 500,000 Twitter followers, and makes as many TV appearances as any player.
Since Phil Ivey’s United States tournament play faded due to international gambling adventures and subsequent legal trouble, Negreanu probably is the most recognizable poker player in the world.
I thought his decision to allow fans a piece of his action was generous and interesting, if a bit naive about the technical difficulties and audience demand. (Full disclosure: I purchased a piece of his high-stakes action.)
But, predictably, when things went wrong, hundreds of fans took to social media to complain, or in some cases, outright berate Negreanu.
He spent many hours responding to people individually in the days surrounding the promotion, especially when things went sideways — carefully explaining what happened, what his team planned to do next, and answering specific, nuanced questions.
Negreanu also said numerous times that he’ll figure out another opportunity to offer fans who got refunds to own a piece of his action at zero markup.
This was a cool idea that was not executed well. I hope that doesn’t deter him or others from offering things like this to fans in the future, and it will be interesting to see what sort of ROI he’s able to generate for those who did get shares.