The Microgaming-powered Prima Poker.com network received major publicity
coverage over the weekend when the Daily Telegraph carried an article
on the rise of poker popularity in Britain and the contribution to
this by The Hendon Mob.
Prima contracted the four professional poker players who make up the
Hendon Mob last year to promote the sport and its 24 network poker
rooms in major competitions around the world, and has just signed
up the British stars for another year in a record deal worth a million
dollars.
The feature reported that online poker is now the fastest growing
form of internet gambling in Britain, while television shows such
as Late Night Poker, Celebrity Poker Club and the World Poker Tour
- which use cameras hidden beneath glass tables to allow viewers to
see the players' cards - have been winning huge audiences and attracting
tens of thousands of new players to the game.
The success of television poker has gone hand in hand with the explosion in online gaming, and the feature reveals that a recent report by Ladbrokespoker.com, part of the Ladbrokes gambling empire, said online poker players were now staking £40 million a day worldwide - almost 10 per cent of that in Britain alone - compared with £6 million 12 months ago.
The Daily Telegraph said that the Prima sponsorship has elevated the Hendon Mob to the status of major stars of the modern poker era, reporting that spokesman Barny Boatman was recently featured in the Finnish equivalent of Hello! magazine, while in America, television coverage has made them household names.
"We played in an invitational tournament in Los Angeles recently with all these Hollywood stars," Boatman said. "People like Ben Affleck and Ed Asner were coming up to us saying, 'We're big fans of yours. It's a real thrill to get to play with you.' However jaded you are, you can't help but be a little bit excited by that."
Under the new sponsorship deal, PrimaPoker.com is bankrolling the Mob to play in 14 major poker festivals - from Barcelona to Las Vegas, Dublin to Paris - which together is being billed as the PrimaPoker Tour.