Before the challenge, I can't remember anyone wishing anything but the best for Galfond...but, even if I was curious as to whether Galfond could sweep all before him, I did not expect this.
This is where I think we have a conjunction of bad ideas. The first would be launching the site without a thorough grasp of what it would take to make it viable/profitable (Galfond has admitted as much).
The second would be to issue a blanket challenge to
all and anyone in an attempt to draw eyes and traffic to the site. The announcement of the challenge drew new players to the site but specifically that meant a handful up to two handfuls per day (in comparison to the established sites). In terms of current stream watchers (Twitch) the figure appears to have averaged around 3,000- even with all the discussion/headlines amongst the poker community. Jamie Staples draws on average double the amount of viewers for every one of his streams. So the notion this was a great promotion/marketing scheme in real world terms is questionable.
The third appears to have been the happenstance of scheduling Veni Vidi first. Even if there is a huge swing in variance back towards Galfond his credibility has been given a black eye. As detailed above, Perkins is not to be taken seriously, but all the other players could give Galfond a serious match. Kornuth has been given silly
odds (4 to1 I believe) and then we have
actionfreak, who many say could prove as difficult as Veni Vidi.
Galfond did not prep for the match prior to playing Veni Vidi. The result is, as someone succinctly put it, 'a world class PLO heads up specialist from 2010 sitting down with a world class PLO heads up specialist from 2020'.
So will this be enough to draw traffic to Run It Once? That remains debatable. But I imagine every time Galfond faces a losing session from here on out, it will lose Galfond (therefore the site) more credibility. As for any financial hit Galfond personally is taking - I presume he is wealthy enough to afford the losses (for the time being at least). However, that has nothing to do with the financial viability of Run It Once. Galfond has discussed backers and the pressing need to drive revenue to the site otherwise they would have to review where they stood.
Unless he can start playing like a boss against Veni Vidi immediately, Run It once will remain languishing in the doldrums, as I don't think the Perkins match will inject much enthusiasm. I then would speculate if the Galfond Challenge started off on the wrong foot, subsequently meandered along for several more months, people are generally going to lose interest.
If this is peak 'Galfond Challenge' and the interest in real world, commercial terms is fairly insignificant, I can't say I am optimistic in the longer term.