No surprise: PPT season 2 DELAYED

[BostonMetro]

I agree that Pokerdome is unwatchable - however, as long as there is one name pro at a WPT final table, I'm many times more likely to watch it. It doesn't really increase that much with more name pros in the game. WPT is simply rolling the dice and hoping that top pros make their final tables - they often don't and the viewership probably hurts.

I wouldn't have bought - er, stolen - the final table of this years WSOP in a million years if Allen Cunningham wasn't at the table. But he was, and I watched until 4 am.

Larger fields at WPT events will help top pros because there is more dead money - it will help casinos because of the increased juice. However, it will hurt the WPT because they are less likely to produce a watchable telecast.

I guess the seven members in the lawsuit have figured this out and are sticking it to the WPT - they probably aren't doing it exactly the right way to bring success and steer away from personal disgraces - but they know that to an extent the players have the WPT over a barrel.

I'm amazed that the WPT doesn't want to compromise and give some sort of overlay to the top players - i.e. those who "earned" "tour" cards.

[Mr. Orange]

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WPT is simply rolling the dice and hoping that top pros make their final tables - they often don't and the viewership probably hurts.

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not so sure about that one. WPT seems to go out of their way to play up the "underdog at the final table with best players in the world" angle. Every week its a new "moneymaker" story. "This guy qualified online for 0.35 now he's at the final table blah,blah". Often times they have pro's at the final table and don't even announce that they're pros. Dewey Tomko was on once and they called him a retired school teacher with no mention about his poker background at all. There are other's they've done that with as well. Even from reading interviews with Sexton you can tell that WPT really believes its better for game if amateur's win. To a certain extent that's true, but when it happens constantly it gets boring.
Sometimes when I'm watching WPT, I don't even feel like I'm watching a poker event. It feels more like a gameshow where the "amateur(s)" are the contestants and the "pro's" are obstacles in their way to winning.

[BostonMetro]

You can't have underdogs without top pros - they do love to play up that angle but it has gotten to the point where the shows are unwatchable. Will Daniel Negreanu make completely different plays than a complete unknown (especially when the blinds are huge)? Probably not - but still, for some reason, it's a big draw to have them. WPT probably can't be profitable without them - and they created the monster.

That said, someone needs to take a giant sledgehammer to the Pokerdome set. Has to be the worst poker show ever joining the UltimateBet tourney that was on and the Boston vs. New York Poker challenge (that's on at least in the Northeast). HSP, Head up championship, live Fox sports events probably at the top of the list.

[Kevmath]

Regarding Tomko, that was back in Season 1, when they downplayed WSOP success. This was also the case in season 2, when they said that Chris Moneymaker won a major tournament, never mentioning the competition.

[Mr. Orange]

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That said, someone needs to take a giant sledgehammer to the Pokerdome set. Has to be the worst poker show ever joining the UltimateBet tourney that was on and the Boston vs. New York Poker challenge (that's on at least in the Northeast).

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The Boston vs. New York Poker Challenge was probably the single worst televised poker show ever. I couldn't watch for longer than about 10 minutes.

[Ignignokt]

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Not even Harrah's can get a penny of positive cash flow directly from ESPN for the WSOP Main Event anymore. The advertising dollars Harrah's has to pay ESPN on behalf of PartyGaming and Miller Brewing should more than offset the "rights fee" ESPN has agreed to pay Harrah's for the video rights to the WSOP.

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Can you explain this? Why does Harrah's have to pay anything to ESPN?

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The confusion seems to be in that Oliver is spinning this information to suit his slant (in fact, it's FAR from a bad thing for Harrah's), or he's unsure on how sports sponsorship/self-produced programming works, and what it means. (Virtually every one of Major League Baseball's teams handles TV and radio rights this way, for example, and MLB's combined local revenues are staggering.)

I would guess that Harrah's asked for the right to produce/own the programming.

[olivert]

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Not even Harrah's can get a penny of positive cash flow directly from ESPN for the WSOP Main Event anymore. The advertising dollars Harrah's has to pay ESPN on behalf of PartyGaming and Miller Brewing should more than offset the "rights fee" ESPN has agreed to pay Harrah's for the video rights to the WSOP.

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Can you explain this? Why does Harrah's have to pay anything to ESPN?

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The confusion seems to be in that Oliver is spinning this information to suit his slant (in fact, it's FAR from a bad thing for Harrah's), or he's unsure on how sports sponsorship/self-produced programming works, and what it means. (Virtually every one of Major League Baseball's teams handles TV and radio rights this way, for example, and MLB's combined local revenues are staggering.)

I would guess that Harrah's asked for the right to produce/own the programming.

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I NEVER said that the new Harrah's/ESPN WSOP TV deal is bad for Harrah's.

Both Harrah's and ESPN make money on the TV deal.

The financial risk burden, however, has shifted from ESPN to Harrah's now that ESPN doesn't put one penny at risk.

The new WSOP deal, plus all the time buy deals out there
(the most notorious of which is MansionPoker.NET PokerDome, for which MansionPoker.NET is spending over $500,000 a week), is hurting WPTE, which can't get a penny of cash from any TV network for the second season of PPT.

If and when WPTE has to shop the flagship WPT product for another TV network in the US (i.e. when The Travel Channel has had enough of the WPT), WPTE will encounter the same problem: no TV network in the US would want to pay CASH to WPTE anymore.

High Stakes Poker, which still gets a very modest rights fee, is a completely different animal. GSN's ratings expectations on Monday nights are so low (because of competition from Monday Night Football, 24, and WWE Raw) that anything it airs on that night that gets 200,000 households is a relative success.

WPTE TV products are shooting for at least 700,000 households in the U.S. so that WPTE can sell its own integrated sponsorships. So far, only two companies have signed: Anheuser-Busch (which recently did a 1-year extension after the original 3-year deal expired), and Xyience "energy drink" (which signed on for 2 years).

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Ratings for Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown (CPS) fell by more than 50% in 2005 compared to 2004. That product appears to have run out of steam. NBC Cable decided to slot CPS directly against the WPT during May-June 2006 in an attempt to dent WPT's ratings.

The ratings for CPS, as you might expect, were low enough that NBC Cable denied my request for ratings data. Furthermore, one NBC Cable official warned me in no uncertain terms that she viewed my attempt to do a story on the CPS vs WPT "ratings war" as "inappropriate".

[olivert]

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I agree that Pokerdome is unwatchable

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PokerDome is an example of a TV poker time buy "on juice".

The amount of money FSN and the promoter, Hollybrook Regency, is getting from MansionPoker.NET is obscene.

Because the likes of MansionPoker.NET is throwing money around, there is no reason why any TV network in the U.S. has to put any cash at risk by paying CASH for the rights to TV poker products.

FSN doesn't have to put any cash at risk anymore. The likes of MansionPoker.NET, FullTiltPoker.NET, UltimateBet.NET, bodog.NET, and PartyPoker.NET now pay plenty of cash up front for mostly late night time slots on weekends.

Nor does ESPN, which doesn't have to risk another penny of cash on the WSOP through 2010.

WPTE, on the other hand, needs a cash rights fee deal, or a big sponsorship deal which will cover prize money, production cost, and TV time, in order for PPT Season 2 to go forward.

However, the very companies that now dictate the U.S. TV poker business, namely online poker "schools", now view WPTE as a direct competitor. It is unlikely for any of the major online poker "schools" to put up a substantial amount of money (7-figures minimum) to support WPTE's PPT project.

(The PokerStars.NET WPT Bahamas agreement is nothing more than a year-to-year TV production/distribution agreement, in which PokerStars.NET only pays a modest 5-figure "membership" fee to WPTE.)

[NickMPK]

So why doesn't PPT just try to move to GSN for similar rights fee that HSP is getting? That would be bad for me, since I don't get GSN, but it seems like the audiences would be similar.

[olivert]

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So why doesn't PPT just try to move to GSN for similar rights fee that HSP is getting? That would be bad for me, since I don't get GSN, but it seems like the audiences would be similar.

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The PPT is a high-cost product, with high production costs, plus a big prize pool that a sponsor has to cover.

High Stakes Poker is a very low-cost product.

You should have been able to see the difference in production quality.

A poker show on GSN gets at most 200,000 households on average.

WPTE shows are shooting for at least 700,000 households in order to sell multi-million dollar sponsorships.

WPTE shows currently get nearly $500,000 in cash from the Travel Channel in "rights fees" per episode.

I would be surprised if High Stakes Poker even gets $50,000 from GSN per episode.