By Joe Zusman | November 7, 2008

According to the NASDAQ stock exchange, World Poker Tour Enterprises (WPTE) saw its revenue decline even further since the beginning of the year. Revenue fell from $4.4 million down to $2.7 million in the third quarter of 2008 alone – that’s a 39 percent drop. The company has been losing money all year as evidenced by an overall 22 percent drop from the start of 2008 to the end of September.

Reasons given by the WPTE for their big losses this year include: lower sponsorship revenue from their domestic sponsors, decreased domestic TV licensing fees, and the failure of their WPT online poker room.

The last reason was reported by tightpoker.com when it was announced that the WPTE and software provider Cryptologic would be ending their seven year deal just over one year into it. Steve Lipscomb made this official when he stated, “we are ending our online gaming business in November after disappointing returns.”

The end of the deal with Cryptologic was a big blow to the WPTE because they will have to pay the software giant an undisclosed amount of money for breaking the contract. Their deal was initially set for three years, but was extended to the aforementioned seven year deal after the WPTE was happy with the work done on their room by Wager Logic – Cryptologic’s subsidiary company.

The continuing losses for WPTE come as a surprise since many thought the numbers for the company would go up after it announced plans for a new TV show on Fox Sports Network. WPTE CEO Steve Lipscomb was excited about the move back in July saying, “Of particular interest is our new collaboration with the Fox Sports Network to broadcast 13 one-hour episodes of a new television series.” Fox Sports will be the new home of “The World Poker Tour” television show’s seventh season.

In addition to its land-based tournament operations, WPTE has experienced success on TV as well after running six seasons of its show “The World Poker Tour”. The first five seasons of The World Poker Tour aired on the Travel Channel while it was moved to the Game Show Network for the sixth season.

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