Crossfit is pretty huge now. Reebok has been pumping a ton of money into marketing it and Nike is about to get into the mix which is when it will probably go completely main stream.

Crossfit Poker is the wave of the future for ESPN.

Nobody watches poker anymore, they put it on Sunday nights when everyone is watching football. The wsop main event broadcast doesn't even top the top 50 for cable ratings for Sunday.

If it weren't so cheap to be broadcasted it wouldn't be on ESPN anymore. Of course they will always broadcast the main event final table, but that's most likely where TV poker is headed... Once a year type thing

one man's garbage...

Seems fair to compare wnba teams in major markets to college teams in hick town usa

Lol. The point was there wouldn't be empty seats if they were playing in arenas more fitting their stature. You think it's fair to compare them to the NBA?

you saw that the post was in response to empty seats, no? Kind of funny my post is probably a slam on them saying their stature is around those hick town schools and you still can't help but bash it even further...

The trouble with comparing google searches is that people who like and are into poker, crossfit, or football or whatever, don't do searches for "poker", "football" or "crossfit" they have much more specific searches than that - "man utd fixtures" "how to play JTs". The people typing that stuff in are new to those sports so it is a measure of the rate at which new people are becoming interested.

I don't like how they start at day 4 or 5. My fav moments from previous years were watching celebrities early in the tournament on the first and second day. Hellmuth's amusing entrances , Chuck Liddell, Ray Romano. Now they've resorted to showing the banter and opinion for 30 minutes of some annoying moron who is a playground bully.I mean I watched hoping someone would punch him in the face but it's been very poor coverage compared to other years. And where was all the internet stars, Coleman, Deeb, Galfond, Dwan, Isildur and current stars like Hellmuth and Negreanu. Haven't seen a whiff of them. Thats been the best part of past coverage, the integration of poker pros, celebrities, aspiring pros and regular people. There is none of that this year. They showed Kevin Pollack speaking in the intro of the first episode, never saw him in an episode, they only showed Paul Pierce walking out after being eliminated. Poor!

Obviously I know that the number of people who care about poker is very small. Even when the WSOP was a big hit for ESPN, it was watched by less than 1% of the US population.

But there are hundreds and hundred of cable channels that just show repeats of random crap all the time. There are dozens of sports stations that are devoted to specific sports that aren't even in season most of the year. Given the the footage of WSOP tournament final tables already exists, why wouldn't it make economic sense to broadcast them on one of these stations at some point, even if it only drew 100k viewers?

NBA subsidizes the WNBA. It's part of the NBA TV Deal.

Strong man and athletic competitions don't pay to be on TV. Poker isn't popular and gets bad ratings. Thats why it's not featured.

Where is said 'trouble'?

This!
I just as well seriously question the far-sightedness of people who link to google-searches with key-words like we had it ITT. And even with poker vs crossfit, it's obv useless. First of all due to "regs" not typing poker or crossfit, as you said, and also since +95% of crossfitters will be under the age of 45, and many people who play casual poker are older than 45 yo, while a non unsignificant part of the older population dgaf about the internet at all. So many flaws in a pointless argument we've seen here.

Bjsmith, I just mean the flaw in the reasoning. The number of new fans is not necessarily proportional to the total number of fans.

So you think that the plummeting results for 'poker' are due to everybody having already learned it over the past ten years and there now being a growing number of searches for "range merging" and things like that?

If there is a sharply declining number of newly interested and casual poker players, that's a bad sign for poker's success, and an even worse sign for the ESPN broadcasts.

Are you suggesting that they just put on 8+ hours of unedited final table coverage? Because the editing/announcing/etc would take a lot of work and apparently isn't worth their effort.

The hell... is she doing 140-pound military presses there (45 for the bar, 45 for each plate, plus 5 total for the two collars)? That's a pretty good push for someone her size.

Only so much uniqueness in televised poker. It really is something you need to play to enjoy after you've seen every feasible all-in scenario and gimmick fairytale storyline. On top of that, the general public refuses to attempt to learn and enjoy any form of poker other than holdem, which further limits the marketability of televised poker. Maybe we could have had a brief boon if one or both women had final tabled the WSOP ME a few years back [And perhaps even won it] but that's about it.

You know what would bring tv poker back? A show like High Stakes Poker where there's a minimum buy in of $1,000,000. There are plenty of players you could find. From pros to businessmen. Negreanu and Esfandiari would play, Dwan could be bankrolled by some Asian dude (I know he's trying to stay away from the public eye, but it would be great TV and great for him). Even Isildur could be staked. I would love to watch him play for a mill on TV.

Also, with viral videos going crazy nowadays, if anything happens in these episodes, sites like Huffington Post, BuzzFeed and even 9gag tv will post it.

You saw how the public went berserk over what happened with the One Drop tournaments.

Add to that, and I say this seriously, I think the horrible editing, setting, commentating and cutting of day 1-3 at the WSOP broadcast also really hurt tv poker.

Why would Dwan be great TV? Some guy who's quiet, plays slow, and mumbles is not great TV.

It doesn't really matter anyway. The same people who watch good poker tv watch bad poker tv. The same people who don't watch bad poker tv wouldn't watch good poker tv. It is what it is.

this, ainec.

Do you even lift bro?

I don't know about already having learned it but yes, they have more specific searches than "poker" whether casual or regular. Agree with your second paragraph at least as relates to newly interested players and for the long term of poker, but the number of newly interested people this year isn't suitable for comparing the totality of poker now with the totality of poker in 2005 (live tournament entries or players online are not at 20 percent of 2005 levels), nor is it suitable for comparing the total popularity of different events in different phases of their popularity curves.

If you want something more positive look at this one:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore...5%D1%80&cmpt=q

(poker in Russian)

I imagine they could get edited content for free, for example all of the Pokerstars infomercial programmes like the EPT coverage.

Dwan? Do you not remember the crazy action he created on HSP? Or the massive bluffs and pots? That's how he made his name.

Having said that, I would definitely rather people bankroll Sammy Farha. Now he was probably the most entertaining poker player of all time in every sense of the word.

You just described golf.

Golf has its own channel. Peasant