World Poker Tour Earnings

WPT Enterprises (WPTE) announced their second-quarter earnings recently. The big news is that they were profitable (the previous quarter they returned to profitability, but only if you exclude one-time items). Their return to profitability, despite lower revenue, was due to massive cost reductions. They expect to be profitable in the third quarter as well. We'll probably only see one more quarterly report from them: WPTE's sale is expected to close in the fourth quarter, and they won't have publicly-traded stock after that.

They expect season 8 to air on Fox Sports Net in late 2009 or early 2010.

WPTE signed more season 7 (already aired in the US) sponsorship deals, and expects their international revenue from the season to be more than twice their US revenue (Full Tilt gave them $3.25 million to sponsor season 7 in the US).

ClubWPT (their free-play online poker site) has been growing due to partner FSN's promotional efforts, such as using its excess ad inventory to promote ClubWPT.

WPTE says they'll be licensing their brand to online poker companies for more non-US events (they've already booked Barcelona, Cyprus, Morocco, Slovakia, and Venice). With the subsequent announcement of their sale, however, I doubt they'll continue to seek sponsorship money from their future competitors.

For all the details see their press release, conference call or call transcript, and quarterly financial statement.

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