Pink slips are in the air at online gambling news giant, Bluff Media. At least, that’s the reports coming in today, when “several sources” said to be very reliable and close to the situation confirmed the magazine’s impending cessation.
After 11 years as one of the premier media outlets in the online gambling industry, it appears the US-facing edition of Bluff Magazine, Bluff Media, is throwing in the cards. According to Chris Grove of OnlinePokerReport (OPR), following a cryptic Tweet from Bluff’s founder and former owner, Eric Morris, Grove was able to confirm the situation with numerous “close” sources.
“The site [Bluff.com] will continue to exist in some yet-to-be-determined form,” said Grove, “but the current staff and structure will be eliminated.”
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News of the online gambling media giant’s impending closure was first revealed by Eric Morris (@EircMorris1616) on Thursday when he Tweeted:
| “BREAKING NEWS:@BLUFFMedia has let go of entire staff. Looks like operations will cease as of Aug 15th.Sad day for company I founded in 2004”. |
Grove went on to say that the August 15 date of termination may not be accurate. He noted “conflicting reports” regarding the information he received from other sources, but did not give any further insight into whether Bluff Media’s operations may cease sooner or later than mid-August.
11 Years of Online Gambling News at Bluff Media
Bluff Media is the US arm of the online gambling magazine giant known as Bluff. Founded in October 2004, the company began as an online and physical magazine publication issued on a bi-monthly basis. By August 2005, the news outlet had become so popular that it increased its output to monthly publications.
Bluff Media acquired online poker tournament tracking site thepokerdb.com in 2006. For the next six years, the company focused on its US and international publications, which spanned Europe, Australia, Latin America and South Africa.
In February 2012, Bluff Media was acquired by the world-famous horse racing group, Churchill Downs, whose headquarters in Louisville, KY are home to the Kentucky Derby. It was assumed that Churchill Downs would use the magazine as a catalyst for its expansion into online gambling in the US, but that plan didn’t pan out quite as well as they’d hoped.
Around that same time, Churchill Downs was buying up casino properties throughout the US, but the big ‘regulated online gambling boom’ that was expected to spread across America after Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey authorized the activity in 2012-13 fizzled out entirely at that point.
As Grove explained, “that sluggish pace undoubtedly decreased both the value Churchill placed on Bluff and the operational resources provided to Bluff.”
In what can now be looked upon as a foreshadowing of the online gambling magazine’s downfall, Bluff ceased print of its physical magazine publication in January of 2015, transitioning to an online-only news journal.
There’s been no word yet on the impending future of Bluff Europe, which operates under its own separate domain name, BluffEurope.com. Reports indicate that the European publication operates independently from the US version, under a license from Bluff.