Ivey is notoriously media shy - actually, maybe shy isn't the right word. But for whatever reason he's certainly happier off the cameras and it's not just when he's had a big night in Bobby's Room.
Seriously, how many interviews do you see with him online or in magazines or on TV? How long are the interviews that do get done? Someone like Hellmuth makes a big song and dance in his entrance to the Main Event. Negreanu and many other players couldn't be happier to get in front of a camera and give their opinion on all sorts of topics. Ivey, on the other hand, sneaks in and out the side door when he comes to play in the WSOP and actively tries to avoid things like getting seated on the feature table.
As for the amounts discussed for Joe Nobody to wear a patch for a major poker site... think of it this way. These sites have oodles of money and $10K to patch a player at the feature table isn't that much, considering that said patch will probably get itself on the screen maybe 20+ times over the course of the episode. That's $500 or less the site is paying per exposure. The WSOP Main Event is probably the highest rating poker program worldwide for the year and it's a perfect fit for their target market.
And that's before we consider the issue of the major sites losing face if their competitor (or worse, one of the second-string upstart sites) starts getting more exposure than them. So it's a defensive thing as well: if you pay $10K to patch a player, that's one more player in front of the camera that's not wearing your opposition's logo.
