World Poker Tour on GSN Season 7 at Risk of Being canceledThe World Poker Tour (WPT) might not want to admit, it but their television future is in major trouble right now. As we reported earlier Game Show Network (GSN) had let the original May 24, 2008 deadline to pick up the show for another season expire. A few days later WPT extended the deadline to June 7, 2008 and GSN has once again passed on its option.

In a press release the following statements were made by both sides:

“The World Poker Tour has been a great partner and the show continues to perform strongly on our network. We are continuing discussions with WPTE regarding how we may be able to work together – including perhaps broadcasting parts of Season VII.”

“We have enjoyed watching the show and our numbers grow on GSN. Our hope is that we can find ways to collaborate with the network long into the future,” said Steve Lipscomb, WPT Founder, President and CEO. “This may allow us the first opportunity to explore diversifying content on multiple networks like most sports leagues. We have already begun those discussions and look forward to making another season of the best and most widely distributed poker programming in the world to our dedicated viewers and fans.”

This press release majority understates the situation. Right now WPT stock is trading at just over $1 per share and seems destined to become penny stock, they’ve lost sponsorship from Budweiser and now have been cancelled by two networks. This is not the sort of company major networks will get in line to sign. While GSN mentioned possibly airing some of season seven, they’re most likely referring to buy-rate TV where WPT would need to foot the bill.

While this is pure speculation their last resort might be to reunite themselves with online poker rooms, having each room foot the bill for bought air time. Could you see something like “Full Tilt Poker presents WPT Season VII Championship on FSN”. The show would in essence be a 2 hour long Full Tilt infomercial. A slight problem with that scenario might be some bad blood the WPT has with the online poker industry. To refresh your memory, when WPT was brand new, online poker rooms such as PokerStars and PartyPoker used to satellite hundreds of players to World Poker Tour events. They stopped doing so after WPT showed disregard for the hand that fed them, by opening their own online poker room, which failed. Despite WPT still having a version of its poker room as part of a network, if it made business sense major online poker rooms would probably still consider the option.

Only time will tell if and where we’ll see season seven episodes of WPT on television, and whatever the case might be it appears certain WPT is now in scramble mode now and does not have a position of strength to negotiate from.

We wish WPT luck as they search for a new television home and are keeping are fingers cross, for their sake.