Epic Fail: Poker League “Mountain of Debt” Claims Clarified by Execs
Responding to claims reported by CardPlayer.com that the Epic Poker League had left behind a “mountain of debt” as it seeks to reorganize under a Chapter 11 filing, the league’s CEO David Goldberg and Jeffrey Pollack attempted to clarify the situation in an interview with PokerNews.com.
“We’re not disputing those things that have been filed with the court,” Goldberg said regarding the $5 million the story said they owed, and the fact that FS+G had only $15,000 in cash at the time of filing. “The $45,000 budget that is listed in there is for, what I would call, Federated Sports + Gaming expenses. There’s a separate budget that sort of relates to all the Heartland Poker Tour expenses. That number is greater."
“We initially filed looking at a three-month budget,” Goldberg added, “but pulled that filing instead to go look at this on a month-to-month basis, so I think, unless I’m wrong, the figure they might have been throwing around was what was initially filed for a three-month budget. Instead, we started to look at this month-to-month because we think we that we will get resolution on our situation fairly soon . . . I think it’s safe to say we can resolve things in less than 90 days.”
The CardPlayer.com report claims that reorganization plans have been rejected by the bankruptcy court and that the league “burned through cash at such accelerated levels that it did not even make its first payment when acquiring its largest and only profitable asset, the Heartland Poker Tour”.
“No plan has been rejected,” Goldberg said. “What we’ve submitted are motions; for instance, we submitted a motion to use the cash collateral for which we needed the agreement of our secure creditors. There has been no formal reorganization plan for the business that has been submitted, but we have submitted motions to the court, which have been approved with the agreement of our secure creditors. We have not submitted any motions or petitions that have been rejected.”
Pollack revealed that money has been paid to the Heartland Poker Tour owners prior to the $1 million laid out in the CardPlayer.com article.
- Ace King, Gambling911.com
