A potential deal has been laid on the table for the sponsorship of the Canadian Poker Tour, or an all out purchase of the company, by an unnamed buyer that seems to be an online poker company. Kelly Kellner, the Chief Executive Officer of Heads Up Entertainment International, the company that owns the Canadian Poker Tour, had the following to say about the offer:

“For competitive reasons, the online poker company wishes to go unnamed at this time. As the online poker market becomes more competitive, our brand name and our market become more and more valuable. As a result of these negotiations, the numbers here can get very large, very quickly.”

The Canadian Poker Tour includes 50 casinos all across Canada but has also reached the Dominican Republic, cruise ships on the Caribbean, and Costa Rica. Through its various partnerships, Heads Up Entertainment International provides over 600 casino-based poker events. Keller went on to say:

“Was it out of the blue? Yes and no. We have always figured that the Canadian Poker Tour would be an attractive candidate for acquisition by someone. The management here at Heads Up Entertainment has realized that, with our development of our relationships with casinos and our building of the CPT brand and our other poker outlets such as Canadian Poker Player Magazine and Canadian Poker Player Television, we might be on track for something like this in 18 months to two years. When we started discussing the idea in more depth on Friday with this online poker outlet. We realized that it was happening way before we thought it would.”

There can be a total of 40 million people reached across North America with the ownership of the Canadian Poker Tour, the Canadian Poker Player Television, and the Canadian Poker Player Magazine. Kellner also said:

“We have built the CPT and other parts of the company through offering the best of everything to our players, from tournament structures to other tournaments and cash games to entertainment outside of our events. We certainly hope that is maintained by the entity that has made the offer to us if,” Kellner emphasized, “we decide to accept the offer.”

The Canadian Poker Tour has featured some of the world’s most popular and talented poker players including Jennifer Tilly, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Laak, Joe Hachem, Gavin Smith, Brad ‘Yukon’ Booth and Antonio Esfandiari to name a few.

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