Online Poker Room Offers to Stamp Name on Town

New online poker room, PokerShare.com, has taken a page out of Golden Palace’s book and has come up with a bizarre marketing ploy. It has offered the town of Sharer, Kentucky, $100,000 to change its name to PokerShare.com.

The “one-horse” southern Kentucky town, which is so small it doesn’t even have a grocery store, was found by public relations agent Darren Shuster through a MapQuest search. PokerShare.com, which hired Shuster’s California-based firm, has given Sharer the initial opportunity to take the deal because of the town’s similarity to the poker firm.

Butler County Judge-Executive Hugh Evans doesn’t see the town changing its name. "I can't speak for everybody, but certainly speaking for myself, this isn't going to happen," Evans said. "When you talk about poker and gambling, we're not for that in our county. It's very conservative."

Shuster seems to think that the offer is too good to pass up. Sounding very much like a stereotypical I’m-from-the-big-city-and-you’re-a-hick-so-I’m-smarter-than-you businessman, he responded to the idea that a town might actually not want to sell itself out:

"If they say no, that's OK. We can go to another city. Let them tell their constituents that they're going to turn down that kind of money. For what? Civic pride?"

Continuing to spin the offer as more than a publicity stunt (which, let’s be honest, is all it is), Shuster proclaimed, “There's no doubt about it that the primary goal of renaming an American city after PokerShare.com was to get publicity. But there's a lot of other ways of getting it done without spending $100,000. And we thought it tied into what PokerShare is all about, and that is giving back. And we want to demonstrate that. The publicity we get from it makes it worthwhile to donate the $100,000."

Further evidence of how small Sharer exactly is can be seen in part of Evans initial conversation with Shuster.

"He told me, 'We're trying to get hold of the mayor,'” Evans relayed. “And I said, 'They don't have a mayor.' And then he said, 'Well, we need to get hold of the board,' and I said, 'They don't have a board. That's a rural community.'"

If Shuster can’t reach an agreement with Sharer, he will move on to other towns around the country. For now, he’s content with waiting.

"I'm going to wait until I get accepted or rejected," Shuster said. "I guess we were hoping that they had more of an infrastructure, but then again, how are we supposed to know that until we try?"

Originally published September 26, 2005