It appears this agreement actually extends ESPN's participation until 2020.

According to Kevmath, ESPN extended their partnership for four years but who knows how much of it will end up being on the flagship as opposed to their streaming sites & the deuce.

Yeah I just tried to correct that post.

I think this set up is better for coverage and brings it more into a modern format, although as a rec player who won a main event seat this year managing the rare, but possible potential of taking two weeks off work is not easy to manage. Obviously, won't be complaining if I'm guaranteed a million bucks, but couldn't imagine trying to squeeze this in every year.

I'm wondering if ESPN's demise has become a boon for the WSOP. If they want new cheap content to broadcast during the deadest time of the year then WSOP definitely fits the bill.

This is pretty huge for poker. No clue if it will work out but honestly given the stagnation of poker in general I was expecting poker to receive less coverage, not better coverage.

It's a pretty logical next step given how popular poker streaming has become from being basically nothing a few years ago. It's not expensive to produce and it's what the audience wants.

Someone should create a Sporcle quiz on every November 9 participant. Doubt most serious poker fans could even get 20% correct.

Which makes me scratch my head why ESPN would give it up. Their digital and global distribution platforms are as solid as anyones. Seems like a no-brainer to keep it to themselves to have cheap content.

Other takes:
- Wish they had a recap show set for the end of each day.
- Really happy that they axed the Nov 9. That never really gained much traction.
- 3 Day Final Table. Yuck.
- My biggest wish was always for them to to move the main event up in the schedule, then play out the final table at the end. Would be a great sweat to follow the final 9 and watch how they navigate the rest of the series. Who goes on a sick run, who get's stuck, who gets their head bashed in at The Rhino. (Yes, I know this will never happen)

Hopefully this means all the live streams moving to twitch and a better end product.

They need to make the live streams a priority. The live coverage in the past has been abysmal.

wait, what??




they really just need to go back to the raymer/moneymaker edited tv format and have it live streamed on twitch for the die hards.

Wow, that seems like more than they've ever broadcast annually. Even in the boom-times, I don't recall there being this much content

I guess I didn't realize poker streaming had blown up that much. I mean, sure it's blown up for those in the poker community but on the whole it doesn't seem that big given the low numbers it gets compared to other games on twitch. For instance, right now poker has 8500 viewers on twitch, as opposed to league of legends which has 113,000 viewers. Wouldn't it make more sense for ESPN to broadcast League of Legends? or Dota? or Hearthstone? or Overwatch? or any of the other dozen+ games that are more viewed than poker?

so true, why the hell would they do that?

It appears they've killed their app too, so you can't watch on Amazon Fire, etc

They said they would broadcast that much, not produce that much. If you include the many replays ESPN broadcasted in previous years (maybe less so in recent years) they definitely attained those numbers.

FWIW, the 130 hrs may have included the 40 hrs of live coverage. My grasp of the English language is not great. I'm from Texas.

All of those games already have sold their rights I believe and they are getting into esports. The point is that it's cheap live content which oddly enough appears to be more in demand than in previous years... which could explain why ESPN extended their partnership when many were expecting this was going to be the last year.

The whole Nov 9 system was screwed up from the beginning, trying to re-engage viewers 3 1/2 months later was a momentum killer .....

1. The last week in July seems a better otherwise "dry" time to draw new viewers into the"Final Table" than did the Nov 9 system. (No American football, no basketball, no soccer to speak of ....?, baseball not yet in the pennant stretch)

2. Also, the effect on play itself may be interesting, in the absence of several months hiatus for luck-boxers to get coaching, old guys to rest up, and any god-like runners to keep momentum alive. .

Turner/TBS has the right idea. They seem to understand they bring production quality to the table and still broadcast on twitch. If your end game is to get the viewers over to TV its pretty obvious that's a losing game.

There's no value added from ESPN trying to slap a CSGO, LoL, Dota tournament or league someone else is producing onto ESPN. All the viewers are on twitch.

Makes a hell of a lot more sense to move their audience for WSOP coverage to twitch than it does to try the opposite. I don't think poker will ever be as big on twitch as the top games, but its not really a fair comparison at the moment. The other games have huge productions on twitch and poker doesn't.

Its much more likely the WSOP could be the LCS/EPL,etc of poker than something like the GPL. The individuals streaming poker don't lag that far behind their counterparts in other games. Its the events that are lacking in poker.

I guess it depends on what they mean by "130 hours of original packaged shows" every year. I took that to mean new content televised on one or more of ESPN's channels, not streamed. If it meant streaming, then 130 hours seems low

FYI-I'm in the same boat as you in regard to the English language since I am not only in Texas but Dallas as well

Opening up WSOP to a younger generation is a SMART move. The amount of younger players in the game is slowing as online poker slips further into irrelevancy.

Below is the exact quote from the Press conference:

Source: Press Release

130 hours of original content would make no sense. Pretty sure this just means they will broadcast 130hrs on TV, including replays.

The final table will be on ESPN

on it

Anyone know if Poker Productions will continue to produce the shows or will Poker Central take that over?

I thought poker central was closing down ��

Hope this doesn't affect the live streamed final tables this year. Loved it last year, even the draw games with no hole cards.