June 26 2014, by Steve Ruddock

888 Poker Has to Be Regretting Signing Luis Suarez

On Tuesday Luis Suarez basically broke social media after biting Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini, who is not the first, nor the second, but the third player Suarez has sunk his teeth into during his short but tumultuous career.

Despite two other biting incidents and the use a insensitive racial term towards another player Suarez (one of the best footballers in the world) was signed by 888 Poker to act as a brand ambassador just ahead of the World Cup.

The signing attracted a few headlines for 888 when it happened, and drew a few groans considering Suarez’s less than stellar reputation, but given Suarez’s stature and the upcoming World Cup it seemed like a pretty logical move by 888.

Following the latest Suarez biting incident, the company is probably extremely happy they didn’t focus a dedicated marketing campaign on the Liverpool striker and that Suarez has done very little to rep the 888 brand.

And fortunately for 888 the sponsorship has been almost forgotten.

His time at 888 has been mostly forgettable and outside of a few promotional pictures there isn’t really anything of note linking Suarez to 888. Still if I was 888 I would have dumped him the second he clutched his teeth in the first “I’m going to bite your shoulder and then flop on the ground like you struck me in the mouth” move in futbol history.

Athletes as a spokespeople haven’t panned out

This brings me to the second part of this column, which is the use (or perhaps misuse is the more appropriate term) of athletes or other celebrity endorsers by online poker rooms.

For one thing, athletes and celebrities of any note are accustomed to making seven to eight figure salaries, so even a few hundred thousand from an online poker room is likely to barely get them out of bed. They just aren’t motivated to rep an online poker room, and for most of them poker is just a passing fancy, and not a passion.

Additionally, there is next to zero recognition of these sponsorships outside of the poker world. For all their celebrity, nobody outside of poker players really cares who online poker rooms are sponsoring, these deals simply don’t register with tabloid/mainstream press anymore than the charity work these celebrities do.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the pope being added to Team PokerStars Pro (Team Vatican I’m assuming) garnered few if any mainstream headlines.

For instance, how many people know that George St. Pierre is also an 888 Ambassador? Or that several sports stars have been sponsored by PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker over the years?

The only athlete who seems to have managed to have some sort of dual existence in sports and in poker is Rafa Nadal, who des a decent job repping the PokerStars brand, including special events live and online. But even in Nadal’s case I’m not sure how well known his PokerStars sponsorship is outside of the poker community –I don’t see magazine or newspaper stories referencing it.

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