Quote:
Originally Posted by Dream Crusher
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?
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.