Best way to get signups from an offline poker league ?

[Catfish]

Let's suppose I could organize a regional offline poker league with 1000+ players. What's the best way to convert them to online RMPs ? If that league were attractive enough, what if every participant had to sign up and deposit a minimum at a poker room to join the league ?
And would you go for an MGR or CPA deal under those circumstances ?

[lifeofsportsdotcom]

I'm not sure how you structured your league but you make online poker tourneys part of the league.

What we have done numerous times for one site I have is we run tourneys monthly in land based locations with "ONLY" the winner from the land based events advancing to our finals and we give more "ADDED" incentives for the online events. Our land based tourneys have $20 dollar buy in's and we do not take a rake (100% pay out) with only the winner advancing but we give the top 3 finishers in our online events seats to our finals with the same buy in's... This gets the players signing up and gives them value to sign up with the three seats to the finals and also will ensure depositors.

Use a newer site as your partner if you want to maximize the number of New Accounts your league will you get you. IE: ChanPoker I'm assuming not many would have accounts as it is a new network and cut a deal through this site or deal directly with Brandon. Brandon is great to deal with and will help you set things up I'm sure of that.

Hope this helps

[haynesey]

Like lifeofsports said, incorportating online events would give you a better chance of building a nice player base, especially if you have 1000+ potential players to market to.

[Catfish]

I also thought about using a newer room so less players would already have an account there.
Using the landbased tourneys as qualifiers for later online vents is a good advice. My idea for the offline events was to offer 10-player tables for a 10€ buyin and having the table winners play a final tournament (offline) later in the evening, where the prizes would be seats in major online tournaments.
This way, players can play as many tables as they want. So I could award the first three of each table with a buyin in an online tourney to convert them.
But the main idea is this : I am going to organize two separate leagues in two neighbouring cities who have a traditional rivalry. Tournament results go into a database and ranking. Best ten players of each league will go into a "city vs city" final, with some nice prices again. I will talk to the regional TV station, chances are good that they'll broadcast the final live.
Has anyone ever tried to make it mandatory for the offline players to join an online room and deposit ?

[Jeremy]

I would do private online satellites during the week for your biggest offline MTT event on the weekend. This has worked for me in the past.

[lifeofsportsdotcom]

Yes we have done that for a 4 province tourney in Canada.... It's very tough to make it mandatory to sign up because we had what we thought was a fool proof system and guess what it didn't work.

Stick to the basics and you will get a ton of sign up's. Just provide high value and things tend to work for sign up's/depositors.

TV: We have made 2 shows for National Networks in Canada in the past 3 years. My advice don't even go down this road. No matter how much money you think you can make with Sponsors or selling advertising it's just not worth it. Headaches will become your life and we had to resell the show in 2 countries to break even. Too much time and effort and very little of a benefit to anyone.

[Catfish]

online qualifiers for the offline tournament .. that is a good idea. I was always thinking the other way around - but this way might even work better.
The TV thing is something that I am still going to try, if only to make my events more attractive. My regional state TV station works a bit differently from the private stations, so the production cost/ad selling may not be such a problem. Can't hurt to try.
Biggest problem I guess is to shape the whole thing in a way that I get consistent player value.

[Catfish]

double post sorry