WSOP Sees Record Participation; Series Looks At Global Expansion

Numbers for the '13 World Series of Poker at the Rio Convention Center are "strong, with 40,039 entrants, one of 13 records broken through 31 of the 62 scheduled events," according to Mark Anderson of the LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL. Thanks to the "participation growth, the total prize money is up by more than" $5M from last year, to $54.1M "at the halfway point." The WSOP is "collecting information," trying to "gauge what works and what doesn’t." WSOP Exec Dir Ty Stewart yesterday said, "What we kind of learned this year, the big events are working. We have to balance the staging for the super events within the series as well as keeping excitement for the daily events we have." Anderson notes the WSOP also is "trying to broaden its reach beyond the United States, making strong inroads into the Pacific Asia realm to add to its footprint in Europe." Stewart: "There’s a lot of exploding interest in Asia. Asia is definitely an area that we’re monitoring" (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 6/19).