Pinnacle Entertainment, a casino and hotel operator that bills itself as “The Best Casino Entertainment Company In The World,” released its 2012 second quarter financials on Wednesday, reporting increases in revenues and profits compared to the second quarter of last year. Of particular interest to poker players is a brief mention of the Heartland Poker Tour (HPT), which Pinnacle acquired in June.In the earnings report, Pinnacle Entertainment President and CEO Anthony Sanfilippo said, “In July, we extended our development strategy and growth pipeline with the acquisition of the assets of Federated Sports and Gaming, Inc. and Federated Heartland Inc. Through the Heartland Poker Tour purchase, we acquired an impressive portfolio of brands and intellectual property that will help us advance a new line of business and our online gaming strategy. We also plan to expand the Heartland Poker Tour and more extensively integrate its events into our property portfolio. We expect the Heartland acquisition to be accretive.”
Federated Sports and Gaming had previously owned the HPT, the company led by Annie Duke (pictured) and Jeffrey Pollack that founded the Epic Poker League and the Global Poker Index. Federated purchased the Tour in June 2011 from its original founders, Todd Anderson and Greg Lang.The HPT was already popular, featuring low buy-in tournaments at smaller casinos around the country, making it accessible to a much wider section of the poker community. The HPT’s founders had originally hoped that the alliance with Federated would allow the HPT to “create bigger fields for HPT events and even greater television coverage and viewership,” but none of that happened.
The Epic Poker League did not even make it past its first season, suspending activities prior to Event #4 and the $1 Million Championship. League officials cited scheduling problems as the reason for the break at the time, but shortly thereafter, it became obvious that it the issues were financial, as Federated Sports and Gaming filed for bankruptcy just a couple of months later. It also reported $8 million in liabilities.
Pinnacle purchased the HPT from Federated for $4.2 million in a bankruptcy auction last month. The company also won the bidding for Federated’s assets, including the Epic Poker League, EpicPoker.com, and the Global Poker Index, paying $300,000.Pinnacle Entertainment owns seven gaming properties in the U.S.: Belterra Casino Resort in Florence, Indiana; Boomtown Casinos in both New Orleans and Bossier City, Louisiana; L’Auberge Casino Resort in Lake Charles, Louisiana; Lumière Place and River City Casinos in St. Louis, Missouri; and River Downs racetrack in Cincinnati, Ohio. An eighth property, L’Auberge Casino and Hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is scheduled to open August 29.
Boomtown New Orleans, L’Auberge Lake Charles, Lumière Place, and River City all have poker rooms, as will L’Auberge Baton Rouge.
Those properties would seem to fit well with the HPT. In fact, the HPT already had a stop at River City in March with “special events” at Lumière Place. Expanding into Pinnacle’s other properties would make sense and, based on Sanfilippo’s statement, “We also plan to expand the Heartland Poker Tour and more extensively integrate its events into our property portfolio,” it sounds like the company aims to do just that.
The general rumblings in the poker community about Federated Sports and Gaming’s handling of the Heartland Poker Tour were mostly negative, a view that was only strengthened after Federated filed for bankruptcy. Darvin Moon (pictured), the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event runner-up, signed on with the HPT as an ambassador in 2011, just months before it was acquired by Federated.This month, in an interview with Poker Listings, the usually reserved Moon expressed his displeasure with Federated, saying, “The whole crew were like a big family and Jeffrey [Pollack] had to go and fucked it all up for them. He’s a douchebag but that’s a part of life.”
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