Celebrity Poker Tour CEO Blake Wynn Peels Back the Curtain on CPT Season 2
Celebrities in poker are nothing new. Gabe Kaplan and Chill Willis were a couple of celebrities involved in the early days of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), and the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas used to hold celebrity charity events that included Dionne Warwick and Mr. T.
During the “Poker Boom” of the mid-2000s, an influx of celebrities ventured into the game including Jason Alexander, Kevin Pollak, and Jennifer Tilly, all of who dabble to this day. There was also the Celebrity Poker Showdown, which ran for five seasons on Bravo from 2003-2006.
However, the events of 2011’s Black Friday dramatically changed the poker landscape, with most TV shows devoted to the game disappearing from the airwaves. While celebrities made sporadic poker appearances on TV, primarily on ESPN episodes of the WSOP, they weren’t a big part of the game.
That all changed in 2024 when the poker world was inundated with celebrities. The PokerStars Big Game got in the action by inviting the likes of Arden Cho, Michael Ian Black, and Rob Gronkowski, but it was actually a new tour that brought hundreds of celebrities to poker.
The Celebrity Poker Tour (CPT) completed its first season in 2024 and kicked off Season 2 on February 7. The CPT hosted eight events in its first season and the celebrities were a mix of traditional sports stars, comedians, and TV personalities, as well as more modern-day celebrity streamers, vloggers, and internet personalities.
The CPT was the brainchild of Blake Wynn, the 25-year-old CEO who is taking celebrity poker to the next level in a new day and age of the game. PokerNews chatted with Wynn to get the story behind the Celebrity Poker Tour, what they learned in Season 1, and what sort of things they might have in store for Season 2 in 2025.
“Hawk Tuah Girl” Gets Distracted and Folds Flopped Two Pair in CPT Invitational IV
Q&A with Blake Wynn
PokerNews: When and how did the idea for CPT begin and how long did it take to make happen?
Blake Wynn: The idea for the CPT almost sort of happened by accident. When we threw the first tournament, which was the Enclave Celebrity Invitational in August 2023, I think that was the moment that we realized that, as opposed to having that be a one-off event that we did in partnership with PokerGO, there was a hunger for the idea of getting unique personalities together, celebrities being the epitome of that, and pitting them against one another.
That became clear as a means of engaging and exciting content as soon as we threw that first one. So immediately following that one we worked with the PokerGO team and we decided that 2024 was going to be the inaugural year of the Celebrity Poker Tour. The first event was on February 8 which was about five months after that first event had taken place during which time we were figuring out who we were going to cast for each event, creating the branding, and all of the backend work that goes with launching a business.
The actual idea for it came from inside my house where I have a poker room and we play low-stakes games with celebrities and I would oftentimes have folks like Alexandra Botez, Austin Ekeler, Joey Hamilton, Princess Love, Bryce Hall, and others come to my house and we would play low-stakes poker. It was so entertaining that if we were able to film it, we thought that would make for some incredible content, so that's how the idea came to be and that's why we did the event that we did in August of 2023, but the CPT was a result of that event.
How do you feel about the CPT after your first season?
You know, when you're someone who's running something and you're trying to bring your vision to life alongside your team, you always feel like you could do more, but that being said I don't by any means feel like we fell short. We had a strong year, we came shooting out of the gates, and we've thrown some of the most-watched poker events in the history of the game.
"When you factor in the conflict that they would have with one another, you'd end up with some really exciting soundbites and moments, not to mention the nature of the cards is pretty dramatic."
Some of the viewership numbers probably exceeded my initial expectations, but my expectation going into the year was that if we got interesting people in a room and created an environment where you would have a senator sitting next to a comedian sitting next to an athlete sitting next to an influencer sitting next to UFC star and so on, it would be the kind of melting pot that would be must-see television.
When you factor in the conflict that they would have with one another, you'd end up with some really exciting soundbites and moments, not to mention the nature of the cards is pretty dramatic. Those kinds of moments are exactly what did happen, so from that respect, I would say that it met expectations.
What did exceed my expectations was how interested people were in participating from home. We were allowing people to either put real money or fake money on it by picking who they thought would win or head-to-head matches on the Fliff app, and when we saw how much of our audience actually participated in that, it was incredibly interesting. We had Elon Musk tune into multiple events, so there were definitely things like that that probably exceeded expectations.
Who were some of the breakout stars of Season 1 in your opinion?
I think the result of having breakout stars being women for us in Season 1 with five wins out of eight events created a result in which our audience also became largely women. I think that's a very exciting thing for the future of the game.
I also think there were some intriguing people like Tana Mongeau, who never actually won an event, but placed in the top two or three multiple times and everyone's waiting for her to win.
Bryce Hall certainly became a star. He went from getting in the very bottom portion of the player pool in the first event to becoming a CPT champion himself later in the year. Aljamain Sterling was another fun one that we had who had a couple of deep runs, so there were a number of breakouts.
I think the Celebrity Poker Tour was the breakout star in general because every single player that we had was not a part of the poker world with the exceptions of Maria Ho, Wolfgang, Rampage, Princess Love, and a small handful of others.
As far as you can share, what is in store for 2025?
This is going to be a phenomenal season. We've learned so much about what works, what doesn't, what people want to see more of, and we're implementing it. The biggest thing that people want more of in relation to CPT is they want more content, so in addition to the eight events that we're having this year, there's going to be a wealth of content that comes out across our social media, across YouTube, and other outlets that didn't exist this year.
In 2024, if you checked us out on social media, you saw many engaging graphics, you saw lots of crazy moments worked up into clips that showcased some of the signature moments, but you didn't really see a lot of other content besides that. This year, there will be a wealth of it.
In addition to that, we are adding a tournament that we didn't have last year which is at the very beginning of August. We're having a Summer Invitational following the NBA Summer League so we can get lots of NBA players involved because this year people liked watching Mike Bibby, Mario Chalmers, Kenyon Martin Jr & Sr, and some of the NBA guys that we had like Dwight Howard. But this time we're going to have a big NBA event and I think that's going to be incredibly exciting.
Are there any new celebrities coming in Season 2 that you might be able to tease?
Yes, there's going to be well over 100 new celebrities that we have in Season 2. People tended to like the comedians, they liked us having streamers, and they liked the professional athletes, all of which will have new faces from each of those categories.
Also, whatever stars that social media creates in 2025, you can expect we’ll reach out to them to hopefully get them on the felt for CPT Season 2. You’ll be able to learn about all the celebrities leading up to events by following us on socials at @celebritypokertour.
*Images courtesy of Celebrity Poker Tour / Blake Wynn.
