Mason,
http://www.clubpenguin.com/ is a virtual community for little kids. They sold to Disney for $700 million.
http://www.ivillage.com/ is a content and community site for women that sold to NBC for $650 million.
http://www.ign.com/ is a community site largely for 18-34 males that sold to News Corp for $650 million.
There are plenty of other examples. The young male demographic is a very valuable one, and expanding into a broader community focused on those users is worth a lot of money. I listed a number of poker-specific ways to monetize the site in the thread citanul references (sites like CardRunners have already implemented a number of those ideas and are generating some pretty impressive revenue streams). Not sure if you saw the thread, but I know Mat did. I also talked to Ed when he was involved about a number of things that could be done with the website, not sure how much of that he discussed with you.