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News that mysterious (or not so mysterious) “French investors” are looking to acquire Full Tilt Poker had the folks from WickedChopsPoker.com doing the math, mostly subtraction…and folks, it doesn’t look good by any stretch of the imagination, even using Mickey Mouse calculations.
• As of March 31st, Tilt owed players around the world approximately $390M…but only had approximately $60M in bank accounts, leaving a short-fall of about $330M.
• After April 15th, liabilities were still over $300M.
• By June 12th, Tilt couldn’t survive a $5M run on the bank.
• Considering they probably had some run on the bank already by Euro customers post-4/15, let’s put their total amount owed globally to players around $350M.
• As we’ve written before, precedence matters to the DoJ. So if the unfortunately named Anurag Dikshit (pronounced Dick-shit) and PartyPoker paid out a total of $450M under no threat of indictment by the DoJ, it’s safe to assume that Tilt’s pay-off nut is in the same ballpark.
• On top of that, there’s been a brain-drain of talent from Full Tilt, and some new employees, especially high-priced ones at the top, will need to be hired. A full-on communications assault should happen (via customer service, marketing, advertising, promotions, etc.) to regain the public’s confidence in the company. And you’re possibly looking at rebranding Tilt as well. That all costs money.
So there’s approximately $350M owed to players, a low-end $350-400M DoJ pay-off, and then an additional operational capital investment. That’s $750-800M out the door before you’d see a penny back in return. Ouch.
Still, we suppose there is some glimmer of hope.
WCP noted that there is always a chance these investors have “a war chest” on hand.
God only knows they’ll be needing one.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com Editor-In-Chief
