They cut the ribbon but postponed the play. Image from pokerstarsblog.com
Another bit of important news for our Pacific Rim poker friends. From the Stars presser:
PokerStars Macau has announced that the 2012 edition of the Macau Millions has been postponed indefinitely.
“Our current agreement to operate PokerStars Macau events and tournaments at Casino Grand Lisboa will expire in March.” said Danny McDonagh in a statement. “As a result, the Macau Millions will be postponed for a later date.”
McDonagh, the PokerStars Director of Live Operations in Asia-Pacific, added, “The Macau Poker Cup: Red Dragon will take place as planned from February 18 to 26th. We will provide an update on Macau Millions and live poker tournaments in the near future. In the meantime, we look forward to welcoming players to the MPC February and continue to deliver the best live poker experience in Asia.”
The news seems to confirm the precarious state of poker in Macau at the moment, where the game has never been a big draw. Macau’s customer base favors other games, and between ongoing licensing pressures and the demand by all casinos to maximize profit from a given area of floor space, poker in Macau was never going to be an easy sell, despite what Oliver Tse might have said. Losing the Macau Millions pops a hole right in the middle of the entire Asian Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) platform.
The developments continue the historically bumpy path of Stars’ international efforts to grow the game, which is what happens when you take the lead in market expansion. Stars’ European Poker Tour (EPT) has achieved generally sound footing, but this only after a three-year hiatus in its Deauville, France stop while the French government dickered around with its gambling laws. The short-lived Russian Poker Tour was shelved entirely following that country’s creation of special gambling zones that made running the RPT impossible as planned. And of course there was the fiasco of Stars’ one and only try at running a Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT) event in Mexico, which was stopped by federales in the middle of play, purportedly for not enough bribes being paid to the government, though illicit cash games were the official excuse for the clampdown.
It’s the Bunny Hop for Stars, yet again: three steps forward and two steps back….
