#398 - Worth the Wait? Delaying the WSOP Final Table - Part I

Last October, I wrote about a novel idea being considered for the 2008 World Series of Poker: live broadcast of the final table. Both to accomplish this and to capitalize on it, the idea then being considered was to (a) stop the Main Event when there were nine players remaining; (b) let ESPN show all the episodes leading up to the final table to build interest and suspense; and (c) reconvene the final nine in the fall to play for the championship on live TV.

Damned if on Thursday, May 1, Jeffrey Pollack & Co. didn’t go and announce they were doing it, though with important modifications.

The Skinny

All events prior to the Main Event will take place as scheduled. The Main Event will follow its original schedule to July 14, at the end of which there will be nine players remaining. Those nine will receive ninth place money and will disperse until November. In the meantime, ESPN will begin running weekly shows of the Main Event, from its cavernous multiple Day Ones to the final table. On November 9, the final nine will play down to two at the Rio. (Public and media, invited and encouraged.) The last two will contest the Championship on November 10, again in front of the public and the media. ESPN will broadcast the final table in two hours of the action in prime time on November 11. (Not live and not the whole thing, but just 1-2 days after it happens.)

The Goal

To build four months of anticipation. To, as Jeffrey Pollack said at the press conference on Thursday, “shift the paradigm to poker fans discussing who will win rather than discussing who won.” To make televised poker more like a major sporting event. To make poker more popular on TV. To attract greater interest from mainstream media, advertisers, and corporations looking for product placements and endorsers.

My Take

Jeffrey Pollack definitely did not take the safe path. As a gambler who writes for gamblers, I have to commend Caesars - not “Harrah’s” any longer because the parent company just changed its name from “Harrah’s Entertainment” to “Caesars Entertainment” - and I think everyone should hail Caesars, regardless of what they think of the merits.

You know how everyone wants the World Series run by people interested in “the long-term”? “Quick-buck artists” need not apply?

This move is the opposite of slapping a logo on the final table for a few million bucks. Caesars makes no money off this change in the presentation of the final table in the short term and, in fact, it has to spend more money. Caesars has three years to run on its contract with ESPN and the contract doesn’t provide more money for better ratings or more advertiser money. The Rio has to tear down the World Series and put it back up in November, probably shutting down some revenue-producing showroom for a crowd that doesn’t have to pay. That’s not a huge additional expenditure but it’s worth noting: this is no cash-grab.

But more than admiring Caesars for having the courage to innovate, I really like this innovation. I think it’s great “for poker” and I think it’s great “for poker players.” Let me explain.

I know it sounds like slick market-speak - the kind of thing that makes some people instinctively dislike the current operators of the World Series of Poker - to say this but Caesar is really building the brand with this move. It’s time for everyone to wake up and realize that (a) building the brand is frequently - maybe usually - good for players and lovers of poker; and (b) poker needs a shot in the arm right now, even if players think all is well because tournaments are well attended.

Even though we’re still playing for our own money in nearly all tournaments, not to mention paying for the privilege of playing for our own money, we benefit from poker’s popularity in the form of more entries (usually newer, presumably less-skilled players) and potential secondary sources of income (e.g., endorsements, product placements, media opportunities). That we are still making a living off the boom times of 2004 and 2005 does not mean that poker is still hot. WSOP ratings on ESPN are down. WPT ratings have plummeted. Hasn’t Celebrity Poker Showdown - a good barometer of how interested the general public is in watching poker on TV - left the air for good?

What’s going to be the engine to encourage millions of people to play poker? Or to encourage thousands of casual players to take a shot at tournaments (online, at local casinos, on the WPT, at the WSOP, etc.)? With online poker under fire, poker and poker players could really use some great development to encourage interest in the game.

That’s exactly what Caesars is trying to accomplish. If you look at successful forms of mass entertainment, you can see that poker’s popularity is something of an anomality. Arguably, as poker’s popularity “matures”, this move could be viewed as inevitable.

At one end of mass entertainment, you have staged and scripted spectacles - movies and plays. Their success relies on storytelling and presentation, as the stories presented aren’t actually happening and the outcome is usually already known.

At the other end are traditional sporting events, where storytelling is still important but the fact that the drama is completely honest and no one knows the outcome bolsters the “story” tremendously. For a sports season of thousands of games, that consumed the attention of tens of millions of fans, to come down to one game rivets the attention of the sporting public all over the world.

Somewhere in between, you have things like professional wrestling and reality shows. Professional wrestling is scripted and the outcomes predetermined, but it pretends to be a sporting event. Reality shows give the appearance of honest dramas where the outcome is unknown. Sometimes that’s the case, sometimes it’s unclear. Sometimes the show is presented live, sometimes it’s taped in secret so people watching don’t know the outcome because the outcome, as in a sporting event, is a big part of what hooks the audience.

Everything about poker is at one end of the spectrum or the other. It’s an honest drama and the outcome is never known to the participants, but the mass audience doesn’t see it until the outcome has been determined. And unlike reality shows or movies or plays, it is easy to find out the results without watching.

That people in numbers watch poker at all is remarkable. Who would watch the baseball World Series months later? Or the Kentucky Derby or the Indianapolis 500? No one marketing those sports would consider attracting a big audience to broadcast them other than live.

Poker as mass entertainment is about to celebrate its fifth birthday. Although coverage has improved from the 2003 WSOP and the earliest WPT broadcasts, there is only so much innovating they can do. If you don’t know the players and don’t need to watch to learn the outcome, building the story becomes ever-more challenging. And even if the broadcasters are up to the task, all that does is hold on to part of the current audience. We’ve passed the time when people will watch poker on TV simply because it offers the chance to see the gritty amateur try to take down the world-weary pro. Or the Internet hotshot against the wealthy hobbyist. Or the ….

Withholding the outcome as Caesars is doing accomplishes two things: (1) It builds the suspense, drawing people who watch individual episodes to return because that’s (just about) the only way to find out how it ends; and (2) Helps in story telling. Everybody - Caesars, ESPN, the rest of the media, the public - will get to know the final nine much better. It’s a lot easier to tell their stories over the period of four months than in a continuous-running event. The goal (and it may take a few years before this works out, and works out regularly) is for a lot of people to be intensely interested in the players, to be familiar with them, to have favorites, and to look forward to watching the finale to find out how it ends.

(Incidentally, there were probably regulatory and logistical nightmares making a live broadcast of the final table a practical impossibility, but that would make TV poker EXACTLY like a premiere sporting event. Being more like a reality TV show, which kind of fits how TV poker has been marketed, is still a good gameplan.)

If it all works, here are the benefits: (1) the mainstream media - which, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, has mostly given up on poker - will focus more attention on the conclusion of the World Series during those four months, in a manner similar to successful reality shows and sporting events; (2) more people will watch and those watching will watch with greater interest; (3) more people will become interested in playing this game and more players will go to poker rooms, play online, and enter tournaments; and (4) mainstream advertisers will become more interested in poker and poker players.

(This last bears some amplification. Other than online poker sites, which create problems for media outlets, the interest in advertising on poker TV is in trouble. And the online sites themselves aren’t spending like they did a couple years ago. In addition, most advertisers have avoided poker players as spokespeople. The higher profile and increased attention on the final nine should generally help poker players and will specifically help each year’s final nine. Again, it could take a few years, but there’s a good chance advertisers will eventually pay a lot of money for advertising space on the players, like they do with professional golfers and racecar drivers. For Caesars, having final-table players decked out like NASCAR drivers (or vehicles) is something they strive for.)

In summary, I applaud Caesars for trying to innovate and improve the product for public consumption, and for coming up with an idea that could succeed in reversing the slide in the general public’s interest in poker. In Part II, I’ll discuss some of the criticism leveled against the plan. I will post that on Friday evening (May 2) or over the weekend.