Caesars Entertainment announced Thursday that it would be selling the intellectual property rights to the World Series of Poker (WSOP) to NSUS Group, an iGaming investment conglomerate that launched GGPoker, among other projects.

The sale cost is $500 million in total, broken into a $250 million cash payment up front, as well as a $250 million promissory note due five years after the transaction closes.

Caesars Retains Hosting Duties for WSOP, Some Digital Rights

Caesars won’t be giving up its association with the WSOP entirely. The company secured the rights to continue hosting the annual World Series of Poker festival at its Las Vegas casinos for the next 20 years. Currently, the WSOP is hosted at the Horseshoe Las Vegas each summer.

Poker rooms at Caesars’ brick-and-mortar casinos will continue to use WSOP branding, and will be given preferential rights to host WSOP Circuit events. NSUS is also issuing a license to Caesars Digital that will allow the company to continue operating the WSOP Online poker rooms in Nevada, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania “for the foreseeable future,” according to a Caesars press release. However, Caesars will not be allowed to operate other online real-money poker operations “for a specified period of time.”

“After collaborating with Caesars Entertainment for years, NSUS Group, the operators of GGPoker, is thrilled to announce their new role in leading the World Series of Poker,” Michael Kim, CEO of NSUS Group Inc., said in a statement. “We will leverage GGPoker’s cutting-edge technology and industry expertise to create an exciting future for WSOP, ensuring players have an increasingly improved, safe, and seamless poker experience.”

The sale is expected to close before the end of 2024, according to the press release.

Caesars Hinted at Sale of Assets During Earnings Call

Caesars made the move after reporting that the 2024 World Series of Poker – which ended with the conclusion of the Main Event on July 17 – was a huge success for the company.

“This was our best World Series ever from a financial perspective,” Caesars CEO Tom Reeg said during the company’s second quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “It fills a lot of rooms on the east side of the strip at a time when it can be, as we’ve noticed recently, almost 120 degrees here, so a good time to have a significant group of gamblers in-house. We see benefits in our hotel. We see benefits in table games. We see benefits in slot play and in our food and beverage that’s all ancillary.”

That said, the WSOP was never one of the biggest revenue drivers for Caesars, serving more as a prestige and niche brand rather than a major impact on the bottom line. In Caesars’ accounting, the WSOP has been lumped into the “other” revenue category.

The earnings call gave hints that certain assets, including the WSOP, could be sold by Caesars so it could focus more on its core businesses.

“There are non-core, non-operating casino assets in the portfolio that I think you could trade at a significantly accretive multiple for us, and you should expect us to try and take advantage of those opportunities,” Reeg said on Tuesday.

Caesars, which was known as Harrah’s Entertainment at the time, purchased the World Series of Poker brand in 2004 when it also bought the Binion’s casino in downtown Las Vegas. Harrah’s also bought Horseshoe Gaming that year for a $1.45 billion price tag.

NSUS Group is headquartered in Toronto. NSUS, which is meant to be pronounced as “Answers,” employs 300 people and has offices in Dublin, Seoul, Isle of Man, and Malta. Along with GGPoker, NSUS has also launched online brands such as 2Ace, Ocean Master, and SlotsVenture. 

(Image: courtesy of WSOP)