Playdom's Poker Palace gets World Series of Poker branding

With allthecraziness surrounding Playdom and Disney this week, we scarcely noticed that another major-but-not-quite-Disney-level brand hooking on to Playdom's rising star. That brand is the venerable World Series of Poker (WSOP), which earlier this week added their stamp on top of the game formerly known as Playdom's Poker Palace.

The decision to brand an existing game is a bit unorthodox in a world where major brands usually launchtheirown promotional Facebook games. Still, we think it's a pretty shrewd decision on WSOP's part. There are already a metric boatload of poker games on Facebook, and trying to launch and market yet another one, even with the WSOP branding, would have been tough and somewhat pointless. By pasting their branding on top of Playdom's moderately successful game, which already has an established player base, WSOP saves themselves a lot of trouble and avoids diluting the market at the same time. Hopefully this will turn into a trend, with other companies sponsoring existing games rather than simply cloning them for their own marketing purposes.

An interesting sidenote: The World Series of Poker is broadcast on ESPN, which is part of the ABC/Disney media conglomerate that has announced plans to purchase Playdom. Could this be one of the first signs of the marketing synergy behind that partnership? Probably not, but still, it makes you realize that the Disney stable now available to Playdom extends well beyond animated characters. After all, Playdom is already working on a series of ESPN-branded games,..


P.S. Remember you can play poker on Games.com Poker on Facebook too!