A quartet of poker players have secured a corporate sponsorship that will see their yearly earnings approach the amount paid for professional golfers and tennis players.

Joe Beevers, Ram Vaswani and brothers Ross and Barny Boatman will be paid £550,000 a year to promote an online gaming company, PrimaPoker.com.

The four, also known as The Hendon Mob, will be paid to play at 14 major poker festivals, named the PrimaPoker Tour, with the venues ranging from Dublin to La Vegas.

PrimaPoker hopes that the deal will attract more customers to it site, while many see the deal as further evidence of poker’s transformation into a legitimate sport.

Earlier this year, a report by the bookmaker, Ladbrokes, revealed that around £40m a day is spent on online poker – a dramatic increase from just £6m a year before.

Meanwhile, the number of online poker sites has soared.

In 2002, there were only 30 operators offering poker on their websites. By the end of 2003, this number had increased to 140.