WPT Hits Season Five Milestone TonightMirage Poker Showdown Is on Tap |
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Talk about a wild ride.
Tonight, the World Poker Tour celebrates the launch of its fifth season, a watermark that is rarely reached by most television shows that are aired.
It also recently hit or is about to touch a few notable milestones that not even the most optimistic fans of poker could imagine back in 2002, right before poker stormed America, thanks to the large part the 2003 World Series of Poker played when Internet amateur Chris Moneymaker won the main event.
More than $300 million has been won at WPT events, 68 millionaires were created through WPT events, and it's about to film its 100th episode at the WPT World Championship later this month.
Oh, not to mention the profound effect the WPT had on American pop culture and the poker product industry and how many Americans spend their free time, launching a whole cottage industry of both terrific and horrible poker shows, and legitimizing poker as a true competitors' game that can be played by all.
"Very seldom in your life that you have the opportunity to reinvent something and have the whole market untapped, and that's what happened with the World Poker Tour," says Steve Lipscomb, founder, president ,and CEO of World Poker Tour Enterprises (WPTE). "Now we're literally creating a poker phenomenon in places where they don't even know the game. You don't get to do that twice in your life."
The Show
Season five premieres tonight at 9 p.m. on the Travel Channel with the Mirage Poker Showdown. It's the first of 19 tournaments that will be shown as part of season five.
Fans of the show will notice some changes to both the set and how it was filmed. The set was tweaked and revamped and Lipscomb says the way they shot and edited the players in the fifth season will provide viewers with a stronger storyline and show even clearer how intense a final table can be when the first-place prize is worth more than $1 million.
"It was time to make a next-generation look for poker," Lipscomb says. "It blew us away when we first saw it. After four years of experience, we were able to build a set that functioned the way we actually wanted it to function"
The show, of course, is the skeleton that the rest of the WPTE business hangs on. Because of the show, WPTE was able to try to saturate the market with WPT products. Every mall in America sells something with the WPT logo on it. WPT DVDs and books on how to play poker can be found everywhere. Products range from pinball machines to underwear to jewelry. A WPT-themed cardroom was even opened at Foxwoods.
"I think in some ways it's happened very quickly, but this really was the hope from the beginning," Lipscomb says.
The WPT reinvented the way poker was shown on television and made ESPN step up the way it broadcasts the WSOP. Look into an old broadcast of the 2000 WSOP main event on ESPN Classic, and it looks like it was filmed in 1990. It looks more like a documentary than an entertaining sports show, which is how the WPT presents its tournaments.
It made poker sexy. It's the reason why poker rooms are no longer filled with just salty old men and why casinos like the Venetian and Caesars, both in Las Vegas, built gorgeous, massive poker rooms after years of looking for excuses to get rid of them. It's why tabloid entertainment shows that normally talk about celebrity divorces show up at poker parties.
A Few Bumps
Not everything went smoothly the first few years. WPTE's sister show, the Professional Poker Tour, filmed one season before the Travel Channel decided not to continue broadcasting it, a decision that Lipscomb partially blamed on a business dispute.
Although the PPT is mothballed, Lipscomb hasn't yet counted it out completely. He says the last year or so the poker TV market was saturated with shows, which made the market soft. Now that these shows are evaporating, the market will return to be strong enough to support the PPT, wherever it ends up.
There's also some question as to where the WPT will be aired after this year. The Travel Channel ignored a deadline that just passed last Sunday to commit to another two seasons of WPT. Lipscomb couldn't comment on where WPTE and the Travel Channel stand, and the Travel Channel did not return a phone call seeking clarification.
Also, the WPT is facing a lawsuit brought against it by Howard Lederer, Greg Raymer, Annie Duke, Joe Hachem, Phil Gordon, Chris Ferguson, and Andy Bloch. These players contend that the release form all WPT event participants are required to sign violates the anti-trust Sherman Act, as well as causes them to unintentionally violate exclusivity contracts they've signed with other companies.
The release gives the WPT the right to use any player's likeness anyway it want. These players all have exclusive deals with other companies, and if the WPT used any of their images to market, say, a video game, then the players could be in legal trouble with the first company they signed an exclusive contract with. The case is still pending.
Despite being involved in the lawsuit, Hachem plays in some WPT events.
WPTE also missed out on the European poker TV market that's being dominated by the European Poker Tour, which is currently experiencing its breakout season. WPTE simply missed the window of opportunity that presented itself about two years ago.
The Future
Poker is at the doorstep of becoming a global phenomenon, and WPTE is already getting the party started. An online cash poker site will be launched and available to customers located outside the United States by sometimes around June, and the company will also have an announcement about its involvement in a tour located in Asia, which many see as the largest untapped poker market in the world.
WPTE has had its eyes on the global market since the get-go. The WPT has been broadcast in more than 150 countries and territories and its products are marketed all over the world, but the launch of its online poker site will shift even more focus onto the rest of the world, because online poker dollars are just too good to ignore.
WPTE is working on partnerships with casinos and governments all around the world so that they could host and film poker tournaments that will be aired everywhere. The market is truly untapped, and the WPT is trying to set itself up to be the global leader of big poker tournaments, all of which are now broadcast on TV.
Lipscomb likens running WPTE to riding one of those monster waves that crash against the shores in Maui. The thrill of it is incredible, but one misstep could cause the whole ride to end. But the way the world poker climate is now, and the determination WPTE has, it looks like it will take years and years for that wave to finally break.
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