WPT Battles Travel Channel! Who Will Win?

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Having quit writing about the poker business for pay after switching to the "dark side" as a player agent last October, there are times I have to bite my tongue in order for me to preserve business relationships.

This is one of those times.

With that out of the way, I am hoping that WPTE will find a solution for the broadcasts of WPT Season 6 (which is scheduled to start filming in May 2007 with the Grand Prix de Paris at the ACF, followed by events at the Mirage and Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas) in the US TV market.


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As for the USPC on ESPN, even though the Trump Taj Mahal executive involved said to me 9 months ago that the Taj still has 2 years left on its contract with ESPN, the writing is obviously on the wall.

ESPN did NOT promote the broadcasts of the 2005 USPC (which aired in May-July 2006) at all and the first-run broadcasts only averaged 550,000 households (0.50% national household rating).

The 2006 USPC, which is airing now, has been airing mostly on ESPN2, again with ZERO on-air promotion by the ESPN Networks. (ESPN will repeat the 2006 USPC on Memorial Day Monday, and on Tuesday evening slot in June.)

Having signed with Harrah's for the WSOP Main Event and WSOP Bracelet Events (but NOT the WSOP Circuit, WSOP Europe, or "WSOP Asia") through 2010, ESPN has all the TV poker it needs for the US TV market, primarily to fill Tuesday evenings during the third quarter (July-September).
The 2007 WSOP Bracelet events are tentatively scheduled to air on ESPN in the US starting July 10.

(Translation: any other TV poker product besides the WSOP will air on ESPN or ESPN2 in the US if and only if the producer is willing to buy TV time from ESPN, Inc.)

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Those of you who prefer High Stakes Poker over the other products need to remember the following: High Stakes Poker works for a digital channel such as GSN, which is only looking for an average of 300,000 or so households per episode during prime time.

A widely-distributed (over 90 million US TV households, or 80% of all US TV households) analog cable/satellite channel such as ESPN is looking for 1 million households per episode during prime time.

Ditto NBC, which is looking for over 1 million households during Sunday afternoons. NBC Heads-Up has delivered about 1.5 million households on average for two straight years.

[iMsoLucky0]

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With that said, the WPT final table structure is a joke, and everyone knows that. Of course, everyone still plays in their events. What does that say?

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It says you can't find tournaments with a 10k buyin and 400+ players anywhere else year-round. It doesn't say anything about people liking the tournaments.