Poker news source: CardPlayer Magazine - http://www.cardplayer.com
WPTE Adds Two New Managers to Team
BY: BOB PAJICH | bob.pajich@cardplayer.com
PUBLISHED: Wednesday Oct 31, 2007 02:02 PM
Company Looks to Strengthen Online Brand
World Poker Tour Enterprises (WPTE) recently added two new executives to its team in order to boost its online poker presence, expand its online market presence, and to give its current management team new perspectives on both the online poker industry and marketing options.
Andy Goetsch was hired away from his vice president of poker software development position at the online poker network CryptoLogic to become WPTE’s executive vice president of online gaming. WPTE also hired Rohin Malhotra as managing director of international sales and marketing. Malhotra has extensive experience in both marketing and producing TV shows, as well as marketing experience at PartyGaming.
WPTE just launched its real-money online site on the CryptoLogic network in late June of this year and hopes that Goetsch (pronounced “gets”) will help WPTE become a big player in the online poker industry. Goetsch worked with WPTE with building the WPT poker site with CryptoLogic.
Peter Hughes, chief operating officer of WPTE, sees Goetsch as a man who could help build WorldPokerTour.com into a site where players sign up and then stick around for years.
“Andy comes to us with a pretty solid poker background,” Hughes said. “Not only is he a terrestrial player, he’s been an online player for a while. He’s also was one of the folks we worked with at CryptoLogic. He helped CryptoLogic build out its poker room and poker network, and we think that he is a great resource for us to build up our poker room. He’s got the experience to bring in more revenue, more players, more marketing and more different types of marketing programs, so we’re very excited to have him on board and be part of the key management team, because its one of the parts of the business that we really consider our growth engine.”
Goetsch will help build WPTE’s real-money site by attracting both new online players and veterans, and by making the site too good for the players to play elsewhere. He will build new bonus programs and other “retention” structures to help build and keep the site's pool of players strong.
“What Andy brings to the table is a different point of view,” Hughes said. “He talks about the heart of the poker player, the heart of the online player. He tries to create programs which are not only about acquiring players, but retaining players.”
Malhotra will have as much to do with attracting players as Goetsch, by designing new ways to market the WPT brand all around the world. He also has experience selling and buying TV programs, and has held the title of international marketing and head of global programming for PartyGaming, the parent company of PartyPoker.
According to a WPTE press release, “Malhotra will leverage his knowledge and experience to maximize the WPT content library across all television and multimedia platforms. His charge is to strategically distribute and utilize WPT content in traditional and non-traditional media platforms while building the brand and translating the exposure into traffic and players for WPT’s online gaming site, www.WorldPokerTour.com.”
Here’s how Hughes put it:
“He’s familiar with how innovative sponsorship or innovative programming can help and drive an online-gaming business, so we plan to tap into not only that experience, but also his creative experience and the ways that we could use our show as a marketing tool.”
Most of his marketing skills will be put toward Western Europe, where most of the WPT’s players now live, and also in the new markets in Asia and South America.
WPTE faces serious competition from PokerStars, which is not only the world’s largest online site, but also is the main sponsor and producer of both the European Poker Tour and the Asian Pacific Poker Tour. The EPT now rivals WPT events in terms of prize pools (thanks to a lopsided exchange rate) and attendance numbers, but WPTE has recently started to hold poker events in China, where it is recognized and accredited by the Chinese government. |
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