Full Tilt TV Show Walkout As Prize-Money Missing

Filming on the Full Tilt sponsored TV show ‘The Poker Lounge’ has just been cancelled mid-way through the event after the poker TV producer failed to receive payment from Full Tilt Poker.
TV production company ‘Presentable Productions’ had just finished filming the third heat of the eight heat six man $20k sit-n-gos poker show, where each week’s winner receives $120,000.
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However, when Full Tilt’s payment was not forthcoming Presentable’s managing director Megan Stuart then decided to pull the plug on filming the show, explaining:
“The money hadn’t come through for some of the players, basically the Full Tilt ones. We would have been staging the tournament under false pretences had we carried on.”
Apparently, the decision to halt filming was a joint one made between Presentable and Full Tilt and is being seen as yet another consequence of poker’s ‘Black Friday’ when the US Department of Justice closed Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute Poker’s American operations.
Cash flow has since become a problem for Full Tilt who, along with the other mentioned sites, had 76 accounts frozen by US authorites along with millions of dollars. As a Full Tilt statement explained at the time:
“Unfortunately, there remain significant practical and legal impediments to returning funds to players in the immediate future. Full Tilt Poker has no accounting of the millions of dollars of player funds that were seized by the government.”
Luckily, it would seem Presentable Productions and Full Tilt may now have sorted out their payment troubles and subject to the availability of players and crew, the show is still expected to air in July. Producer Megan Stuart has subsequently released a statement, which read:
“We haven’t sorted out figures for the future but we have been given assurances of future payments from Full Tilt with which we are satisfied. They are honourable and we have always had good relations with them in the past, so we have no concerns about payments.”
However, the latest embarrassing situation is a clear example of how the recent decimation of US online poker continues to send shock-waves throughout the whole of the poker industry.