Key Points
- Kenney reckons NSUS chief Mansoo Kim offered him a 5% stake in the company back in 2018, one that was never actually acknowledged, even after the $500m WSOP purchase.
- He claims he raked in around $5m in commissions in 2019 but says later changes to the way things were done left his annual income down by more than $3m compared to what he was earning before.
- Kim is trying to get the case thrown out, and court papers show that Kenney changed his lawyers right at the last minute.
Bryn Kenney Sues GGPoker Owner NSUS: A Case of Alleged Broken Promises and Lost Commissions
For years now, Bryn Kenney has been the face of GGPoker, peddling the site to players all over the world. But now he’s putting this business in the hands of a federal judge in Las Vegas to see whether the company behind GGPoker has actually lived up to its word.
The poker pro has filed a lawsuit against NSUS Group, NSUS Limited and their chief executive Mansoo Kim or Michael Kim, as he’s named in the court papers. None of his claims has been proven yet, and Kim is asking the court to chuck the case out.
The complaint gets straight to the point in a memorable way: “In the poker world, deceit and misdirection are just part of the game. But in real business, they’re a serious no-no.”
Who’s in the Hot Seat, and How It Made It to Federal Court
Court papers fill in the gaps in the story that most reports on the case have missed out. The federal court order extending the deadline to file the case lists Kim as ‘Michael Kim’, describes NSUS Group as a Canadian company and NSUS Limited as an Irish one, and names a fourth defendant, a Nevada-based company called Global Gaming & Hospitality LLC.
Kenney initially filed his case in Clark County District Court back in 2026. Kim then pulled some strings to get the case moved to federal court on August 25, using a rule that lets people from different parts of the world have their disputes heard there.
The 5% Stake That Was Never Officially Agreed
According to the lawsuit, Kenney was signed up as an endorser for NSUS Limited back in March 2018. A couple of months later, Kim offered to give him a broader role in the company, a 5% equity stake, plus a payday whenever he brought in new players. But despite all that, the stake was never written down or officially agreed to, not even when NSUS bought up the rights to the World Series of Poker brand in 2024.
There’s no written agreement that he was ever given a 5% stake, so the court may have to figure out what exactly was agreed to. In his own words, his role went way beyond just posing for the odd advert, as he told a reporter back in 2022: “I started out as an ambassador for GGPoker and helped it turn that into an affiliate deal, advising them on tournaments, guarantees and all sorts of other things.”
$5m Year, Then a Stated Decline
According to Kenney, he earned $5m commission revenue in 2019. After that year, he states, Kim progressively lowered the amount he owed him.
Four Factors of Reduction:
- Players he recruited were removed from his network in GGPoker’s internal systems.
- Deductions were made without his consent.
- His commission percentage was reduced without his consent.
- Agents who recruited through him were contacted about moving their accounts to the company.
Kenney says that the four actions described above decreased his annual commission revenue by more than $3m compared to previous amounts he got. There is no information in the published material about how much his earnings ended up being. He demands compensation and an accounting, a court-supervised examination of the books to see if he indeed needs to be compensated.
What the WSOP Sale Tells Us, and What It Doesn’t?
It is the WSOP deal that provides this case with its largest sum mentioned in the headlines. According to the report, Caesars completed the WSOP brand sale on 29 October 2024 for US$ 500m, comprising US$ 250 m cash and a US$250m promissory note five years after the deal closing date.
The aforementioned sum represents what NSUS paid for a single brand, but not its value. There was no information about any valuation of the private organisation found in sources used for research; therefore, any estimate of NSUS value and its 5% stake remains hypothetical until Kenney provides the court with his books.
Cheating Accusation That Brings Back an Old Controversy
Finally, the third claim is likely to attract the most attention of all. Kenney claims that Kim assured him that there were strong anti-cheating policies in place, and that later he found out about systematic cheating and that Kim blamed him for it.
Poker community members will remember the context. Martin Zamani, former ambassador, accused Kenney of cheating via Twitter and Doug Polk’s podcast in April 2022, saying that Kenney cheated using collusion, ghosting, and live assistance. Most of the accusations were denied by Kenney and have never been proven; these charges have nothing to do with the lawsuit.
He left the ambassadorship programme in 2020; the reason is not specified in the complaint. By August 2022, PokerNews reported Kenney’s role in 4Poker as an investor and ambassador of a rival site targeted towards Latin America.
Where the Case Stands Ahead of the 12th of November?
The motion to dismiss that Kim filed back on 23 September has been hanging in the air for a while now, with a first hearing set for 21 October. However, in the days leading up to that, Kenney’s lawyers asked for an extra week to push the hearing back a bit further, citing a recent change in their legal team, and Kim has gone along with that.
Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey set the dates as 14 October for Kenney to file his opposition, 26 October for Kim to fire back with a response and then scheduled the hearing itself for 12 November, all of which are now ticking away. By the time the public docket on 15 October came out, though, we still aren’t clear if Kenney’s opposition had even been filed.
The hearing itself won’t be about proving who is right or wrong. The judge will have to decide whether to dismiss the whole case entirely, or maybe just trim back some of the claims or let the whole thing go to trial and evidence gathering. We had a look at what NEXT.io had to say on the matter and it seems they themselves got in touch with GGPoker and Kenney, but so far they haven’t made any kind of public statement.
Expert Analysis: The Stake May Get the Press, but the Commission Records Really Matter Here
We get the sense that most people watching this whole thing are looking at the wrong number here. A 5% stake sure makes for a pretty dramatic headline, but it’s the commission claim that has some teeth in it.
This particular claim dates back to 2018, and let’s be honest, from what we can see in the public records, there is no written agreement that gets mentioned anywhere. So naturally, that puts the case on a bit of a rocky road in a commercial court. But the commission dispute is a bit different, the reason being Kenney specifically describes certain practices that took place and if any of them actually did happen, then you wouldn’t be able to walk away from all records on that.
That’s where our curiosity and discomfort levels come into play. For a long time now, online poker rooms have used agents to bring in new players, but the question of who owns those players is rarely even looked at by the public eye. In our view, a case that decides how players can be shuffled between agents really is more important to the industry than the specifics of someone’s stake.
And then there is also an irony that has us scratching our heads. Back in 2022, there were some claims made against Kenney that he had taken agencies away from friends of his, which he denied and never proved, but which left us a bit puzzled. Now, though, Kenney is saying that the same thing had been done to him. We aren’t saying one way or the other if either claim is true, but the thing is, the industry has never even tried to explain to the public how these networks are actually run.
The cheating allegation from Kenney, in our opinion, is probably his boldest and riskiest move, because pulling a painful chapter back into a courtroom really can get messy. Is he just a wronged partner who got taken for a ride or is he simply a former insider trying to rewrite history as it were? The 12 November hearing won’t answer that question, but it may well decide if those records ever get to see the light of day.
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