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WSOP Makes Logical Move With Live Coverage of November Nine

Posted by : compncards | 1 Comment

17

Oct

Categories : Las Vegas,Live Poker,WSOP

The World Series of Poker announced on Sunday that the final table of the 2011 WSOP Main Event would be broadcast semi-live and with hole cards.

This complements the live coverage that the WSOP provided during the summer on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN3.com.

Fans will be able to watch the November Nine on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN3.com.

While this seemed the next logical step for the November Nine, I still applaud the WSOP for taking this step forward with the final-table broadcast.

The November Nine is a solid concept, but other than the first year the event has really failed to live up to ratings expectations.

While the poker has been some of the most dramatic in years, many fans just simply chose not to watch.

Those in the media not in attendance at the event and the die-hard poker fans listened to the streams of the event, and while that was great, this is going to far exceed anything that we have experienced in the past with the November Nine or the Main Event final in general.

In my opinion, this was about the only move that the WSOP could have made this year to really impact ratings.

There aren’t any superstar players at the final table that casual fans would recognize, so this was potentially shaping up to be a ratings nightmare.

Now, with the fact that casual fans, die-hard fans and even media can watch the event unfold with only a slight 15-minute delay, I expect this will easily be the highest-rated final table since the inception of the November Nine.

At the same time, I wonder how this will change current media reporting of the event. Since the event can be watched live, how valuable will live blogging of the action be to poker fans?

Yes, they maybe could see what’s going to happen before it happens on TV, but the real value of the live blogging for some sites was that you could find out the action days or even months in advance.

Now that you only have to wait 15 minutes, the value of the live blogging drops significantly – at least for events like this year’s November Nine.

I’m looking forward to the live streaming and I’ll definitely be watching. How about you?

Comment (1)

  1. PokerGob   October 17, 2011 at 10:23 pm

    For the poker player viewer it is great. For the novice poker player viewer it may not be so good. The less skilled viewer may not be as interested and it won’t keep their attention. My overall feeling is that it is good for the players that know what’s happening but not necessarily all that good for poker on ESPN. It will only captivate only a small niche audience.

    I do believe that poker is going to be off American TV very shortly and November 9 may be the last time we see poker on TV for quite some time in the USA

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