LAST week, Steven Lipscomb, president of WPT Enterprises Inc., described his gaming company in a conference call with analysts as "a little poker Disney."

Never mind that West Hollywood-based WPT Enterprises, which produces the "World Poker Tour" television programs for the Travel Channel, had just missed analysts' fourth-quarter earnings estimates. Or that its success is built on the potentially fleeting popularity of televised poker tournaments.

WPT executives and its fans on Wall Street point out that the stock has nearly tripled in the past seven months, to almost $19 a share last week. With just nine employees and one key product, the "World Poker Tour" TV shows, WPT Enterprises sports a lofty market capitalization of $335 million.

Nicholas Danna, KATE BERRY an equity research analyst at Sterne, Agee & Leach Inc., in Birmingham, Ala., said the WPT brand is "monetized" to sell all kinds of new products--though none has come to fruition.

"You can compare them to anything from a mini-Walt Disney to Playboy Enterprises to Marvel Comics," Danna said. "But it's the idea that if you brand something, it opens all sorts of different avenues."

WPT Enterprises was spun out of another publicly traded company, Lakes Entertainment Inc., based in Monnetonka, Minn., which retains a 66 percent stake. Lakes Entertainment, which manages the Grand Casino Coushatta in Kinder, La., spun off a 4 million-share stake in WVF Enterprises last year, raising $32 million from the public.

Its stake in WPT Enterprises has helped boost Lakes Entertainment's stock to above $16 last week, from below $3 in 2003. The company's 12.5 million shares stake in WPT Enterprises is worth $237 million. Insiders own 80 percent of the company.

WPT Enterprises Chief Executive Lyle Berman is chairman and chief executive of Lakes Entertainment.

Berman came under criticism in 2000, when Rainforest Cafe, where he was chairman and chief executive, was being sold to another company he headed, Landry's Restaurants Inc.

Several large shareholders objected to a provision in the sale that called for Rainforest to pay a $2 million fee to a unit of Lakes Entertainment. A proxy advisory firm advised institutional shareholders to reject the sale, but it ended up going through--and the fee was paid, prompting a shareholder lawsuit.

Berman did not return calls.

Televised poker