Poker Leaderboard: Tournament Prize Money Awarded By Venue

Hundreds of millions of dollars are paid out in live poker tournaments held in casinos around the globe each year, with the largest series invariably being the annual World Series of Poker. With that fact in mind, it’s little surprise that the venue that hosted the WSOP through the majority of the poker boom and the decade that followed is the runaway leader in tournament prize money awarded.

The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino has paid out a jaw-dropping sum of $3.27 billion, with the vast majority of that total being accrued each summer from 2005 through the final series at the venue held last fall.

The Rio has paid out more than five times as much as the nearest competitor, the Bellagio Hotel & Casino. The poker mainstay at the center of the Las Vegas Strip has awarded $587 million in prize money since it was founded in 1998. Bellagio hosted four separate World Poker Tour series each year during the height of the boom, and remains a top tournament destination to this day.

The Venetian Las Vegas is the only other casino on this leaderboard to have doled out more than half of a billion dollars ($523 million) in tournament prizes. With huge tournament series seemingly coming one after the other, there is almost always an event running at Venetian, if not multiple.

While the top three venues on this list are all located in Nevada, there are plenty of casinos around the US and the world at large among the top 10. Casino Barcelona is the leading international casino with $469 million in prize money paid out. The venue further extended its advantage in that sub-category thanks to the record-setting European Poker Tour Barcelona series that finished in late August.

It is also worth noting that Bally’s and Paris Las Vegas joined the top 10 on this all-time list purely as a result of becoming the new site of the WSOP. This year’s series saw nearly $330 million in prize money awarded in live events this year, with more than $80.7 million paid out in the main event alone. Binion’s Hotel & Casino, the original home of the WSOP, is no. 13 with $296 million paid out. ♠