ESPN Gets Emmy Nomination for 2009 WSOP Final-Table Coverage

For the second consecutive year, ESPN’s final-table coverage of the World Series of Poker main event has been nominated for a Sports Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Just like last year, it is up for the award for “Outstanding Live Event Turnaround.”

In 2008, in an effort to energize and raise the stature of their most prestigious event, Harrah’s decided to delay the playing of the final table of the World Series of Poker main event until November so that viewers could catch up on the major storylines and personalities of the final players. They held the final table at the Rio in November, and ESPN quickly produced it so that viewers could watch it “nearly live.”

While the ratings for the 2008 WSOP final table rose a significant 46 percent over 2007 with the new format, some fans were upset that the network chose to only air two hands of a long heads-up battle between Ivan Demidov and eventual winner Peter Eastgate.

Ultimately, while it was nominated for the award in 2009, it lost out to NBC’s Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

Last year, ESPN seemed to take the criticism to heart and even made the late decision to add an additional half-hour of coverage to its originally scheduled two-hour broadcast to show more heads-up hands between 2009 WSOP champ Joe Cada and runner-up Darvin Moon.

Although the ratings were down slightly compared to the 2008 final-table coverage and some fans were miffed that their DVR didn’t record the end of the heads-up match due to the added coverage, reviews of the coverage were generally positive, and fans were happy to see more hands in the broadcast.

For the 2010 award, ESPN and the WSOP are up against the 2009 Bass Master Classic (ESPN2), the 2009 Tour de France (CBS/Versus), Inside the Headsets: The 25th All Star Race (Speed — NASCAR Media Group), and Inside the PGA Tour: The Deutsche Bank Championship (PGA Tour Entertainment).

ESPN, Inc. was nominated for an industry-leading 54 Sports Emmy nominations this year. It is the ninth time in the past 10 years that it led all competitors in nominations.

In 21 years, ESPN has won 128 Sports Emmy awards.

The winners of this year’s awards will be announced Monday, April 26.

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