Players Go All In for Poker Entrepreneur’s Pub League

Wednesday, 3 January 2007

A UK entrepreneur who impressed a panel of business-savvy investors on a TV show says his pub poker league has rocketed to a super successful start.
Steve Bellis from Wrexham was awarded £65,000 by the business experts on the Dragons' Den show

A UK entrepreneur who impressed a panel of business-savvy investors on a TV show says his pub poker league has rocketed to a super successful start.
Steve Bellis from Wrexham was awarded £65,000 by the business experts on the Dragons' Den show in exchange for a 20 per cent stake in his Nuts Poker League.
Before Bellis appeared on the show, the league had about 50 pubs, but this figure has doubled since he won the show in summer 2006.
'It's gone absolutely bananas,” said Bellis. 'I would never have believed TV could be so powerful because the interest has been enormous.'
'The licensed trade has been having a torrid time. Even during the football World Cup in the summer business was slow and they weren't happy, continued Bellis. “We put bums on seats in pubs on quiet nights because poker is the fastest-growing pastime in the world and the demand is huge.'
Bellis’ business makes money by charging pubs a small fee of between £2 and £3 a head for every customer the poker league brings in. Many of the pubs are in North Wales, though a few are further afield in locations like Liverpool, London and Manchester.



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