Poker on television
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Poker television programs had been extremely popular, especially in North America and Europe, following the
poker boom The poker boom was a period between 2003 and 2006, during which poker, primarily no-limit Texas hold 'em, but also other variations, became considerably more popular around the world. During the boom years, the online poker player pool at least doub ...
. This has especially become the case since the invention of the " pocket cam" in 1997 (and its first use in the United States in 2002), which allows viewers at home to see each player's hole cards. However, viewership has been declining dramatically in recent years, due to laws that restricted online play in the United States.


History

Poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
has been appearing on television somewhat regularly since the late-1970s. In the United States,
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
started airing the final table of the
World Series of Poker The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada and, since 2004, sponsored by Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker pla ...
(WSOP) Main Event as an annual one-hour show around this time and later by
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
, which were casino-produced shows produced under a time-buy arrangement for sports omnibus programming such as the ''
CBS Sports Spectacular ''CBS Sports Spectacular'' is a sports anthology television program that is produced by CBS Sports, the sports division of the CBS television network in the United States. The series began on January 3, 1960, as ''The CBS Sports Spectacular'', a ...
''. For many years, the coverage was less than robust because viewers at home could not see what cards the players had or follow their progress visually through graphics. Instead, the coverage essentially involved the commentators guessing what cards the players had in a documentary style production. In 1997, the hole cam, which allows audiences to see the hidden cards that players held in their hands, was introduced in Europe. The hole cam was patented by WSOP bracelet winner
Henry Orenstein Henry Orenstein (born Henryk Orenstein; October 13, 1923 – December 14, 2021) was a Polish-born Jewish-American toymaker, professional poker player, entrepreneur and Holocaust survivors, Holocaust survivor who resided in Verona, New Jersey, V ...
and first used in the ''
Late Night Poker ''Late Night Poker'' is a British television series that helped popularize poker in the 2000s. It used "under the table" cameras that enabled the viewer to see each player's cards. The show originally ran for six series between 1999 and 2002 ...
'' television series. It was used again in the inaugural
Poker Million The Poker Million has been a televised European poker tournament since its inception in November 2000. The final debuted to 30 million viewers and has since remained popular. It was created by UK gaming outfit Ladbrokes with the help of sports pro ...
tournament in 2000 which boasted the attraction of the first £1,000,000 poker game on live television. By 1996, however, the ESPN one-hour highlight show only included hands that were shown down, so that the commentators, including Gabe Kaplan, could comment, in post-production, on the hands while they were being played out. The commentators referred to this as "taking a peek at the cards", and provided the first contemporary announcing on hands during the play in poker history. By 2001, however, Late Night Poker had been cancelled in the UK and televised poker could no longer be found in Europe. In the US, the 1999, 2000, and 2001 World Series of Poker events were only broadcast in one-hour documentaries on the Discovery Networks. In 1999, documentary filmmaker Steven Lipscomb produced and directed a documentary on the WSOP for the
Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...
. It was the first U.S. poker production funded entirely by a television network rather than the casino. When the 1999 WSOP aired, it doubled its audience over the hour time slot. Seeing the audience reaction, Lipscomb believed there was an untapped market and began pitching poker series ideas to cable and network television. Because poker had been on the air for over twenty years, with little viewer interest, broadcasters were unwilling to commit resources to put a series on the air. In October 2001, Lipscomb wrote a business plan. Along with poker player
Mike Sexton Michael Richard Sexton (September 22, 1947September 6, 2020) was an American professional poker player and commentator. He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2009. Early years Sexton was a gymnast and attended Ohio State University, w ...
and poker business woman Linda Johnson, Lipscomb approached casino mogul and avid poker player,
Lyle Berman Lyle Arnold Berman (born August 6, 1941, in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American professional poker player and business executive. Business Berman grew up in Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota where he was graduated in 1964 wi ...
, whose company
Lakes Entertainment Lakes Entertainment, Inc. was an American Gambling, gaming company based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, Minnetonka, Minnesota. It merged with Golden Gaming in 2015 to form Golden Entertainment. History The company was created on December 31, 1998 as pa ...
agreed to fund the
World Poker Tour The World Poker Tour (WPT) is an internationally televised gaming and entertainment brand. Since 2002, the World Poker Tour has operated a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting playdown and the fi ...
(WPT)—the first organized and televised tour of poker tournaments in the world. In June 2002, WPT filmed its first episode at
Bellagio Bellagio may refer to: * Bellagio, Lombardy, an Italian town * Bellagio (resort), a luxury resort and casino in Las Vegas * Bellagio (Hong Kong), a private housing building * Bellagio declaration, an intellectual copyright resolution * 79271 Bellag ...
in Las Vegas. Wanting to create a compelling, action-packed show, WPT took eight months to edit the first WPT episode. ESPN, who resumed their coverage of the World Series of Poker in 2002, featured pocket cam technology in their return broadcast—albeit, in a very limited capacity—prior to the WPT's first show. During this time, the “WPT Format” was created featuring the WPT hole cam, interactive graphics and “live sports feel”. These new features put viewers into the minds and at the heart of the action. The first WPT episode aired on March 30, 2003, on the
Travel Channel Travel Channel (stylized as Trvl Channel since 2018) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which had previously owned the channel from 1997 to 2007. The channel is headquartered in New York, New York, United S ...
and became an instant success (the highest rated show in network history). A few months later, ESPN's broadcast of the
2003 World Series of Poker The 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP) was held at Binion's Horseshoe. Preliminary events Main Event There were 839 entrants to the main event. Each paid $10,000 to enter what was the largest poker tournament ever played in a brick and mortar ca ...
adopted many features characteristic of the emerging WPT series, with an improved graphic display detailing the exciting action of the Main Event's final table. This coupled with the unlikely outcome in the 2003 WSOP Main Event—where Tennessee accountant
Chris Moneymaker Christopher Bryan Moneymaker (born November 21, 1975) is an American poker player who won the Main Event at the 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP). His 2003 win is said to have revolutionized poker because he was the first person to become a worl ...
won $2.5 million after winning his seat through a $39
PokerStars PokerStars is an online poker cardroom that was a part of The Stars Group until it was sold to Flutter Entertainment on May 5, 2020. It can be accessed through downloadable poker clients for the Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It is the large ...
satellite tournament—and the ensuing publicity only further sparked the already accelerated interest in the game initiated by the WPT. These events are considered the main contributor to poker's booming popularity—increasing the number of entrants into live poker tournaments (at all levels), the growth of online poker and the overall greater interest in the game—but above all others, the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event (and subsequent broadcast on ESPN) is most cited as poker's Tipping Point; commonly referred to as the "
Moneymaker Effect The Moneymaker effect is the name of the sudden growth in interest in poker after the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event. History The term was created after Chris Moneymaker, a 27-year-old accountant and amateur poker player from Tennessee, ...
". Poker gained further exposure in Canada and much of the United States as a result of the 2004-05 NHL lockout, which caused sports networks in both countries to air poker as replacement programming for their
NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
coverage. The much improved ratings of poker television programs from this point on lead to ESPN covering many more events of the World Series of Poker (in addition to the Main Event as in the past) since 2003, as well as covering some other tournaments outside of the World Series, such as the
United States Poker Championship The United States Poker Championship (USPC) was a major annual stop on the poker tournament tour. This event was held at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The series started in 1996, took one year off in 1997, and ran every year fr ...
. Since its first broadcast, WPT has also expanded its tour stops from 12 events at seven casino partner locations to 23 domestic and international tournaments and 14 casino partners in Season VI. Since the introduction of the hole cam and WPT television format, poker has become almost ubiquitous in the US and Europe. While poker originally aired on sports channels such as ESPN and
Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...
has expanded to such "non traditional" networks as
Bravo Bravo(s) or The Bravo(s) may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music Groups and labels *Bravo (band), a Russian rock band * Bravo (Spanish group), represented Spain at Eurovision 1984 *Bravo Music, an American concert band music publishing company ...
and GSN. All poker television programs make heavy use of the aforementioned pocket cam and television format, plus generally feature a "straightman" and a "comedian" type of commentators, with one often being a professional poker player. With the ability to edit a tournament that lasts days into just a few hours, ESPN's World Series of Poker broadcasts generally focus on showing how various star players fared in each event. Key hands from throughout the many days of each year's WSOP Main Event are shown, and similar highly edited coverage of final tables is also provided. For the events in the WSOP before the Main Event, only the final table is covered in television coverage, similar to how the Main Event was televised before ESPN's airing of the 2003 World Series Main Event. The World Poker Tour does not offer general coverage of the multi-day poker tournaments. Instead, the WPT covers only the action at the final table of each event. With aggressive play and increasing blinds and antes, the important action from a single table can easily be edited into a two-hour episode. Although the tournament fate of fewer stars are chronicled this way, it allows the drama to build more naturally toward the final heads up showdown. Although most poker shows on television focus on tournaments, High Stakes Poker shows a high-stakes cash game. In this game professional and amateur players play no limit Texas Hold 'em with their own money (the minimum to enter the game is $100,000). This game has allowed spectators to observe differences between cash games and tournaments, and to see how players adjust their play to the different format. Poker's growth in Europe led to the creation of two FTA channels:
The Poker Channel The Player Channel, known as the Poker Channel until 3 December 2012, was a gaming TV network which broadcast to over 30 million households in 30 countries. The Channel was typically carried in the basic packages of cable and satellite operator ...
and Pokerzone. Both began broadcasting during 2005. Televised poker experienced a sudden disruption in 2011 after the lawsuit ''
United States v. Scheinberg ''United States v. Scheinberg'', No. 1:10-cr-00336 (2011), is a United States federal criminal case against the founders of the three largest online poker companies, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cereus (Absolute Poker/Ultimatebet), and a han ...
et al.'' was filed. Two of the defendants in that case, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, were the primary sponsors of most of the shows that were airing on American television at the time. Since it was discovered that online gambling (other than
sports betting Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. The frequency of sports bet upon varies by culture, with the vast majority of bets being placed on association football, American football, basket ...
) was not illegal and the state law used to file the lawsuit was not applicable to foreign companies, the lawsuit was resolved in 2012, with the two companies merging and without any admission of guilt. Although once popular, poker television programs have steadily been losing their audience and never fully recovered from the disruption caused by the ''Scheinberg'' lawsuit. ESPN is on contract to show World Series of Poker programming through 2017, though viewership has dropped dramatically since the early boom. The over-the-top content platform
PokerGO PokerGO is an over-the-top content platform based in Las Vegas, Nevada. PokerGO was launched in 2017 as a subscription-based streaming service offering poker centric online streaming. The content offered on PokerGO includes poker tournaments, ...
was launched in 2017 and is based in
Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
. It is a subscription-based streaming service specializing in poker content including cash games, tournaments, and documentaries. PokerGO streamed the
World Series of Poker The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada and, since 2004, sponsored by Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker pla ...
from 2017 to 2020 in partnership with
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
, before
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on W 5 ...
became the new domestic television partner in 2021.


Poker television programs

Here is a list of
poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
television programs that have aired on television in either North America or Europe.


North America

1 ESPN did not air the WSOP in 1996 or 1999–2001;
The Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...
did air one-hour specials of the 2000 & 2001 Main Events 2 World Series of Poker bracelets events and select coverage of the Main Event have streamed on exclusively on
PokerGO PokerGO is an over-the-top content platform based in Las Vegas, Nevada. PokerGO was launched in 2017 as a subscription-based streaming service offering poker centric online streaming. The content offered on PokerGO includes poker tournaments, ...
from 2017 onwards. 3 In 2021,
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on W 5 ...
became the new domestic television partner for the
WSOP The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada and, since 2004, sponsored by Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker pla ...
alongside
PokerGO PokerGO is an over-the-top content platform based in Las Vegas, Nevada. PokerGO was launched in 2017 as a subscription-based streaming service offering poker centric online streaming. The content offered on PokerGO includes poker tournaments, ...
.


Europe


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Poker On Television Topics of television programs