Bodog Beat

WPT founder and CEO Steve Lipscomb announcing the new WPT Europe. (Bodog Beat Image)

As we reported earlier this week, the WPT released their schedule for Season 7 and it was conspicuously absent any stops in Europe. While there have been rumors that the WPT pulled out of Europe for financial reasons, the bad kind, it would appear that this couldn't be further from the truth.

During the press conference this afternoon and as part of a response to a question about the Traktor Poker Tour in China, WPT founder and CEO Steve Lipscomb mentioned their desire to create more regional tours, specifically in Europe. To summarize, Lipscomb basically said that the absence of Europe on the "WPT USA" schedule did not come from a desire to get out of Europe, but to get out of the way of the new "WPT Europe". Interesting…

There were no details given as to other possible tournament locations for the tour or when we could expect to see anything concrete in the way of dates, hence the question mark in our headline. But those few sentences within the press conference seemed to signal that the WPT was more than willing to go head to head in Europe against the already very popular European Poker Tour, indicating a belief that they could provide a better product, or that, in the least, there is room for both of them in that booming market.

The only morsel we did get is that the first step toward creating and growing the concept of the "WPT Europe" was taken just recently in the form of an agreement with Grup Perelada, the company that owns Casino Barcelona, the site of last year's WPT Spanish Championship, to host a tournament as part of the new tour.

We'll let you know if we here any more details on this, and keep coming back for live updates from the WPT LA Poker Classic.