WPT on GSN now

[stabn]

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The World Poker Tour, which launched the whole poker phenomenon

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He can't really belive this can he?

Taking credit for the Moneymaker effect?

Wow.

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lipscombs decision to use holecams was a fairly major one.

[Eponymous]

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I have been pushing, since 1998, for all-soccer digital channels, ethnic channels, video on demand, and pay-per-view instead of pushing more international soccer on the "mainstream" channels i.e. ESPN and ESPN2.

(International soccer are ultra-niche TV products in the U.S. with the exception of the Mexican First Division, which gets better ratings than the NHL week in and week out. The top matchup in the Mexican First Division, Chivas Guadalajara vs Club America, gets better ratings than a North Carolina-Duke basketball game and better ratings than every NHL game with the exception of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.)

International soccer fans had to adjust literally every year as contracts change hands. Some of them had to switch from digital cable to DISH Network to DirecTV in a short time span (2 to 3 years) in order to watch the product they want to watch.


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Shouldn't it be pointed out that the "real money" to be made in international soccer will be when the sport is able to secure government-granted MONOPOLY licenses in juristictions in EAST and SOUTHEAST ASIA? Philippines, South Korea, and Hong Kong would be the 3 logical targets for international soccer to start with, with mainland CHINA being the ultimate prize eventually.

[olivert]

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Shouldn't it be pointed out that the "real money" to be made in international soccer will be when the sport is able to secure government-granted MONOPOLY licenses in juristictions in EAST and SOUTHEAST ASIA? Philippines, South Korea, and Hong Kong would be the 3 logical targets for international soccer to start with, with mainland CHINA being the ultimate prize eventually.

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Funny you would mention that (and yes, I know you are trolling).

The English Premier League (EPL), arguably one of the top 5 professional sports enterprises in the world (and one that most myopic Americans ignore) made a BIG push into the Chinese-speaking markets, INCLUDING CHINA, about 2 years ago.

PremierLeague.com launched two versions of its website in a language other than English for the first time two years ago. The language(s)? Traditional Chinese (for Hong Kong and overseas ethnic Chinese communities) and Simplified Chinese (for China and Singapore).

Furthermore, the English Premier League started scheduling BIG matches on Saturdays at 12:45pm British Time (instead of the traditional 3pm). Why? 12:45pm British Time translates to 7:45pm or 8:45pm Singapore/Hong Kong/Beijing Time, depending on the time of the year.

Starting with the 2007-2008 season, the TV rights to the English Premier League in mainland China will change hands, from NewsCorp-managed ESPN STAR Sports (i.e. Rupert Murdoch is in charge, despite the ESPN brand), to government-run GuangDong Television (GDTV).

GDTV launched a new Shanghai-based subscription soccer channel WinTV (priced at 188 Yuan, or USD$24 each month) last summer in anticipation of its big bid for the English Premier League.

The biggest club in the English Premier League, Manchester United (owned by an American, Malcolm Glazer, who also owns the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers), started running a Chinese-language sideline ad board for a beer brand known in the Chinese-speaking world as "100 Glories" during the 2006-2007 season. (Hint: WPTE knows this particular beer brand VERY WELL given that this particular brand has been the OFFICIAL beer of the WPT for the past two seasons.)



At least the English Premier League understands that its global TV viewership (and its "wagering" clientele) will eventually morph from being predominately English-speaking to predominately Chinese-speaking sometime in the next decade.

For certain English Premier League games, there are already more TV viewers in Greater China (when you factor in Hong Kong) than in the U.K.

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You can mock WPTE, PartyGaming, ChanPoker.NET, etc. all you want. They all want Greater China and they all know that they have to do business with the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) if they want any piece of the Hong Kong market.

(By the time the likes of UB, Absolute, PokerStars, etc. get around to thinking about Asia and the Chinese-speaking world, they will likely be too late. The poker business in Asia will be very different from the way the business works in Europe and North America.)

[Army Eye]

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The World Poker Tour, which launched the whole poker phenomenon

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He can't really belive this can he?

Taking credit for the Moneymaker effect?

Wow.

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He didn't take credit for the Moneymaker effect, he took credit for launching the poker phenomenon, which seems pretty accurate to me. The WPT is definitely what got the ball rolling, as far as the rapid growth of poker, and then Moneymaker + ESPN took it to an even higher level of course.
And ESPN significantly increased their coverage of the WSOP in 2003, with many more episodes, hole card cams, and they also placed it much more prominently in their scheduling. I'm not privy to how and when they made those decisions, but it'd be quite a coincidence if it wasn't directly due to the success of WPT.

[smak]

I can't tell if Oliver's points were well thought out, because I can't stop laughing over the thought of people moving to a new house to get GSN.

[Joe O]

Oliver,
Prop bet? If you can find someone who moves for no reason other than to get GSN and watch the WPT, I will give you $1000. If you can't find someone by the time the first WPT season on GSN ends, you "jump off the Golden Gate Bridge".

Deal?

Or maybe you can admit that there is a significant difference between lifelong fans of soccer teams who want to watch games live and poker players who like to watch 6 month old tournaments featuring mostly players they have never heard of?