Mori Eskandani: Can This Man Save Televised Poker In The U.S.?

Most of us are still focused on the aftermath of Black Friday, April 15, 2011, and the Department of Justice closing U.S. borders to the operators of the largest online poker sites in the world. These events hit American poker players hard. Many were stiffed money, players lost sponsorships and, overall, the poker economy took a dramatic hit.

The shutdown also disrupted the flow of poker television programming. For years, households were treated to more and more poker shows. After Black Friday, with offshore poker sites getting kicked out of the American market, funding for TV production took a serious hit, with the number of shows dwindling from the twenties to just a handful.

No one knows this better than Mori Eskandani. As the president of POKER PROductions, a company he started to fill the rising need for original poker programming, Eskandani has played a big part in getting a number of ground-breaking poker programs on the air in the last nine years. In addition to his tournament coverage, he popularized high-stakes televised cash games and was even brave enough to introduce pot-limit Omaha to an audience primarily educated on no-limit hold’em.

As Black Friday hit, Eskandani was putting the finishing touches on what would have been poker’s most lavish show yet, the Full Tilt Onyx Cup. That, along with a number of shows he’d already produced, including Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker and the Heads Up Poker Championship all had to be put on hold.

With online sponsorships now severely curtailed, these shows are in danger of never returning. However, Eskandani feels that if the industry can look beyond its current problems, embrace new opportunities and continue to innovate, it will once again be a big part of mainstream television.

“We don’t want America to fall out of love with poker, so, instead of focusing on the negative, let’s continue to innovate and show the world that poker is a game that challenges your intelligence, heart and soul.”

Working On Poker’s Image

The last time Mori Eskandani was featured in Card Player Magazine, back in 1996, he was working at the Mirage as a player host. There, he pleaded with poker players to clean up their act, take the game mainstream and work on developing a positive image that would appeal to even the most conservative gambling opponents.

His motivation at the time was simple. He, like his employer, wanted poker to emerge from the back corners of the casino and stand front and center as a featured gaming option for not just the grizzled veterans, but recreational newcomers as well.

“When I first came to Las Vegas, I tried to buy life insurance for myself and my family,” Eskandani recalled. “It didn’t matter how much money I had or how much I was making, I was turned down over and over again. I knew right then that poker had a major image problem and that I would do my best to help turn that around.”

More than 27 years later, Eskandani is more or less delivering the same message. With the lights dark on the set of the majority of poker-related shows, a reset is necessary so that can move the game forward.

Player Turned Producer

Eskandani came to the United States as an exchange student from Iran in 1975. He graduated from Portland State University’s School of Business. During that time, he was introduced to the American style of poker in Vancouver, Washington and fell in love with the game. Although his visits to the card clubs were at most twice a month during school, he hardly ever lost. He gave the game a serious try during the summer of 1977, and was convinced that he could make a living playing poker. After a few startups failed to get off the ground, Eskandani moved to Las Vegas in 1985 to try his hand at a career as a professional poker player.

The day-to-day life of a player was tough, but Eskandani managed it for over two decades. Still, the mainstream’s perception about poker players bothered him. Even worse, he realized that the stereotype wasn’t that far off. He was surrounded by bitter players who not only made what should have been a fun game less enjoyable, but who would also routinely shoot themselves in the foot by scaring away recreational players.

“What we say and how we act around the outsiders resonates in the mainstream,” said Eskandani. “That’s why it’s so important for the true influential voices in our community to focus on the positive. They need to stick to an upbeat message, because at the end of the day, they speak for us as our representatives and the last thing we need is that old-school stereotyped image of a Wild Bill-type who has an ace up his sleeve and a gun on his lap.”

It was in Las Vegas where he met Henry Orenstein, who is credited with the invention of the hole card camera. Orenstein, a Polish Holocaust survivor who holds over 100 patents (including those for Transformers toys), was a part-time poker player who enjoyed the competition. His hole card cam was able to bring poker into millions of households around the world.

“A lot of the time, a great idea for an industry comes from outside that industry,” Eskandani said. “I think it’s because we sometimes get too wrapped up in ourselves to really take a step back and properly evaluate where there is a need. Henry was great like that. He was just a recreational player, but he was able to see right away that televised poker would benefit from hole card cameras after viewing what he called a ‘boring’ showing of a WSOP final table. Some people thought he was crazy, but he knew exactly what the casual fan wanted to see.”

Poker On Television Explodes In Popularity

Steve Lipscomb, a Dartmouth graduate who quit his law practice so that he could make films, asked Eskandani to play in a documentary about high-stakes cash games at Bellagio in 2001 and used Eskandani’s home as the staging ground for interviews with professional players. Lipscomb and Lyle Berman then licensed Orenstein’s hole card camera for a new project, which led to the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel. The first episode aired in March of 2003 and made the show the highest rated in network history.

After Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP main event a few months later, other shows began to emerge as the demand for televised poker increased. Eskandani saw a need and then formed POKER PROductions in late 2003.

Eskandani partnered with Orenstein to produce the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament on FSN and the Intercontinental Poker Championship on CBS. Later, he went on to produce other shows such as High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, the National Heads Up Poker Championship, The Pro-Am Equalizer, The Doubles Poker Championship and both the WSOP and WSOP Europe broadcasts.

Before long, the Game Show Network, Bravo, NBC, CBS and others joined the Travel Channel and ESPN in airing original poker content.

“The popularity of poker on television really exploded right alongside the boom for online poker, so an obvious relationship between the two was born. I think the early shows did a great job of introducing the game to new players. These beginners would watch the action and want to try it out for themselves. Rather than take a long trip to the casino, they could simply get on their computer and be playing and learning within minutes.”

Millions Gone

When the Department of Justice decided to indict the owners and operators of Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute Poker on Black Friday, the $2.5 billion industry changed completely. The feds labeled Full Tilt Poker a ponzi scheme and assets were seized from each of the three companies.

According to Kantar Media, Full Tilt and PokerStars combined to spend a total of $26 million on television advertising and sponsorship in 2011. After Black Friday, that money was gone and so were the shows they were propping up.

Eskandani was one of the people most affected by Black Friday. He had agreed to take on the Onyx Cup, which would have featured six super high roller events with buy-ins ranging from $100,000 to $300,000 at posh locations across the world, shortly before the indictments closed Full Tilt’s doors. But the eternal optimist remains focused on the future.

“We should be trying, as a community, to learn from that situation, distance ourselves and then look for new ways to improve as a whole. When all is said and done, all of this drama will be a small speed bump on the way to bigger and better things.”

So what is it going to take in order to see a resurgence of poker on television, especially now that the majority of online poker sponsorships have disappeared? Eskandani has ideas that he hopes will surface soon.

“It took a long time for our game to make it into the households of America and now we’re kind of facing the same issues all over again,” said Eskandani. “If we’re not careful, we might lose a golden opportunity to become an even bigger force, not just in the niche markets, but in the mainstream as well.”

From Game To Sport

One of the ways Eskandani is doing his part to keep up momentum in the new era of televised poker is to display poker as a sport, rather than as a game show or reality television. News sites report tournament winners almost instantly, so it became important to present the content in a fresh way to keep those viewers interested long after the outcome was known. Enter live coverage.

Last summer’s production of the WSOP on ESPN was a perfect example of how a live broadcast with professional poker players as commentators could legitimize poker as not only a viable sport, but an engaging one full of drama as well. “We all need to thank ESPN for coming up with the idea and helping us to bring live to life”.

According to the Nielsen ratings, the 10 telecasts on ESPN2 averaged a 0.4 household coverage rating, reaching a total of 415,000 viewers per episode. The primetime broadcast on the ESPN flagship, telecast before the final table, was even more impressive, drawing a 0.5 rating and reaching 646,000 viewers. This doesn’t even account for those who watched all of the broadcasts online at ESPN3, which saw over 23 million minutes consumed by viewers.

“Our goal last summer was to take the game and display it as a sporting event, something that would compel viewers to keep watching. I think that is where the opportunity lies for new viewers, people who want to become invested in the players and their decision making.”

In addition to support from ESPN, the live television coverage was supplemented by the presence of seasoned, veteran announcers Norman Chad and Lon McEachern, along with detailed strategic analysis from pros such as Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, and Olivier Busquet.

Of course, Eskandani did acknowledge the difficulty in appealing to not only advanced players, but beginning players as well.

“Poker is still in its infancy, so catering your show to a highly skilled audience is not enough. There’s a sweet spot there and for the most part, the networks have been very good about guiding us towards a healthy balance to keep majority of the viewers happy.”

Moving Forward

Eskandani’s Poker After Dark will be returning to the NBC Sports Network with previously unaired episodes in the coming months. After that, he’ll be gearing up for his company’s production of the 2012 WSOP. But in the meantime, he’ll be doing what he does best, knocking down doors to find sponsorship and innovating to bring the best original poker programming he can to the viewers.

“You don’t have to look very far to see that online poker is a desirable market for the big casino giants,” said Eskandani. “Nevada has already started and soon you’ll see other states follow suit. These companies recognize the potential market that exists and they are doing everything in their power to make sure it happens. When it does, we’ll be ready to provide them with the proper platform to promote their product.”

Eskandani is convinced that it will happen sooner rather than later, and he’s already working to position himself and his company to be the first called once the industry gets its ducks in a row.

“I’m confident that it’s just a matter of time before the next new shows come down the pipeline. Poker took a step backwards in the last year, but we’re gearing up for a couple giant leaps forward in the coming months.”

Loud and Clear Message

There is a lot of debate out there about the difference between poker and gambling. Poker is ultimately a game of skill, a fact that Eskandani wants the rest of the world to realize.

“The answer is just not that hard. Look, you can ‘gamble’ at anything, I mean anything. I’ve seen people lose money playing monopoly, chess, golf, volleyball, basketball, swimming……and yes, poker. I have played many games in my life, never have I come across any game that required as much skill as poker. As a matter of fact, that is the main reason I encourage most people to learn and play the game. I am not encouraging anyone to become a professional poker player. That road could get rough, but, as recreation, you can’t go wrong. It will keep your mind sharp. If you don’t believe, just ask my buddy Henry. He plays poker every day and at age 88 he can still run circles around most of us. We all need to get this message out loud and clear. That will pave the road to the mainstream”.

A Young Man’s Game

Eskandani is passionate about poker in a way that you don’t see out of many industry lifers anymore. So when his schedule finally cleared up for the first time in eight years, he immediately made the trip to his old office, the high stakes section of the Bellagio, for some cards. There, he took on some of the greats that often appear in his TV broadcasts.

“I’ve had a chance in the last couple of months, more so than in the last few years, to sit down and play a little poker,” he said. “I’m fascinated by what I’ve seen recently. The game has changed so much since I played it professionally, but what’s even more impressive is the young players who are making it happen. There are some really gifted minds in the high limit world now, its good thing I am on the production side of things.”

“We’re not that far away from a better legislative landscape in this country, and the younger players are the ones who will benefit the most from it. If they can handle themselves in a professional manner and be a positive voice for the game, then they stand to benefit when the mega casinos and resorts enter the market looking for the next big thing to be their spokespersons.” ♠