At LasVegasVegas, flipchippro says that the rumors are true, and Harrahs will be sold to Apollo Management Group for around 17 billion dollars.This is a big deal for several reasons beyond the obvious poker-related ones, and those reasons are scattered up and down the Strip from Tropicana all the way down to Sahara in the form of nearly every hotel that has a porn slapper out front; Harrahs is one of the largest employers in Las Vegas, and any changes in ownership will impact a whole lot of people who work in the hotel and casino industry.
It's also a potentially big deal for poker players: when the deal goes through, Harrahs will go from a publicly-traded to a privately-owned company, which should have some significant effects on the WSOP, not the least of which will be online satellites for the Main Event in 2007. After all the .net stickers in the Main Event and the UIGEA trauma in 2006, it seemed like Harrahs was going to make things very hard for the online sites to run the Moneymaker-style $40 satellites, but if the casino (and therefore the WSOP) is privately owned, that could change.
1. What basis do you have for thinking that online satellites would reopen after the sale? Harrah's was in the process of working out the deal when they announced that they wouldn't accept 3rd party buy-ins. For all we know, Apollo could have made that a condition of the sale (unless they've said otherwise). Also, a private firm has less accountability than a public one -- no shareholders to answer to, no mandated revenue releases, less regulation, etc.. There's no telling what this could result in for Harrah's customers.
Regardless, the main reason behind the sale was to have access to the necessary capital to pursue aggressive expansion of Harrah's properties. The company will be looking at growth and revenue opportunities, and this means that if they DO open up satellites, it will most likely be in a way that benefits them (ie.- affiliate programs with certain sites and casinos, or even an online poker entity of their own), so it will be better than NO online satellites, but more restrictive than in years past. At least, that's my guess.
Posted at 11:55PM on Dec 19th 2006 by Astin