Poker on Television – Evolution and Changes

Nowadays, poker viewing on television has become quite common. What started out as a vision statement in the 70s has evolved to what poker viewing has become today with state-of-art technology to give you ultimate viewing experience.

WSOP

The World Series of Poker knew early on that television was very important source for improving their exposure. The history of poker on television has its roots when Brent Musburger and Frank Glieber of CBS Sports Spectacular provided the first commentating sometime in the 70s. Jack Binion of Binion’s from whom this concept began realized the necessity of television in poker and asked Hollywood publicist, Henri Bollinger to take it up further. This happened prior to the 1979 WSOP and very soon after channels like NBC and ESPN began providing coverage for WSOP. The trend setting ideas like bringing cash when the final two are playing is also to his credit. This trend began in the year 1980 when he just went over to the bank to draw $500,000 and placed it before the final two of Doyle Brunson and Stu Ungar right in front of all the people and the cameras.

The 90s saw ESPN going to the forefront of WSOP coverage. The coverage received professional commentating from the likes of Dick Van Patten, Gabe Kaplan and Jim Albrecht and even some pro poker players like Phil Hellmuth. Kaplan another pro player of poker was a huge contributor to providing professional views about the game.

The WSOP in 1997 saw another advent when Tom Sims got Andy Bloch to use a basic cam to record the hole cards that were dealt to him and submitted his observations to a magazine. This idea was later employed in the year 1999 in Late Night Poker held in England. Using the Henry Orenstein’s hole cam (U.S. patent 5,451,054; 1997) the Late Night Poker was a runaway success and received much credit from the viewers as they were able to enjoy the action better. The hole cam was initially treated with some amount of nervousness and displeasure from the players as they did not like the idea of others viewing the hole cards dealt to them. But, Steve Lipsomb, CEO of World Poker Tour thought otherwise and introduced this concept to WPT in 2003 which was an absolute hit.

Seeing this, the WSOP too introduced the concept in the very same year. Viewers now were able to follow the action and saw how Chris Moneymaker made an all-in bluff that got Sam Farha to fold her cards although she had a top pair to beat the K-7 combination he held. The pocket cam helped people realize the fervor of the action that was unfolding on the table.

ESPN

This idea of viewing the hold cards was such a runaway success that ESPN increased coverage of WSOP to 22 hours when it was held in 2004. The pocket cam provided avenues to help hold the interest of viewers and thus increase viewer ship by many folds. Another concept called the rabbit cam was introduced. This helped viewers what cards would have been dealt if the players had not folded down the game. All these innovations saw ESPN viewer ship zoom up by a phenomenal 42% beginning 2003. The pocket cam has revolutionized the way viewers can enjoy television coverage of WSOP and has been an important contributing factor to the increasing audience to poker.