Poker News

In what was an unprecedented length for renegotiating a deal, the World Poker Tour and FOX Sports reached agreement on what is essentially a five-year extension of the contract between the two entities.

After previously having deals for two or three years, the five-year commitment from FOX Sports harkens back to the early years of the WPT. The first broadcast home for the tour, the Travel Channel, gave a five-year deal for broadcasting the WPT, but this was during the heyday of televised poker in the mid-2000s. Since leaving the Travel Channel, the WPT has spent some time on the cable channel GSN before landing with FOX Sports in 2009, where it has performed well for the sports giant.

Since its premiere in 2009, nearly 215 million viewers have partaken of WPT broadcasts in the United States, with almost half of that total coming within the last two seasons of action. Averaging almost a million viewers per week, the WPT has been able to deliver solid programming for FOX Sports over the years. With the new contract, the WPT will continue to get valuable airtime over FOX Sports and its regional affiliates (including two WPT marathon broadcasts, with the first this Labor Day) that includes 13 hours of “original” programming that is a step outside the normal tournament fare.

The head of the WPT was naturally excited by the extension of the partnership between the companies. “This unprecedented, five-year deal with FOX Sports elevates WPT into an elite and exclusive group of shows that have aired on television for nineteen seasons,” said Adam Pliska, President and CEO of the WPT. “This announcement is great for fans of the WPT and provides extensive, guaranteed exposure for our mainstream sponsors, including Hublot, Monster Headphones, Royal Caribbean International, and FIAT. We are proud of our new deal with FOX Sports, and we thank the network for its continued support and promotion of our content across its television and digital platforms.”

FOX Sports returned the compliments, with Josh Oakley, the Executive Director of Acquisitions and Programming, commenting, “The WPT remains a highly rated, regularly scheduled program on FOX Sports Regional Networks, and it’s a key part of our primetime lineup each Sunday. WPT is the perfect complement to our other sports programming, including MLB, NBA, NHL, and college football and basketball. We are excited to have this partnership through 2021.”

In this day and age of televised poker, any airtime for the game is valuable. When it originated in 2003, the WPT joined the World Series of Poker (and, arguably, the United Kingdom’s Late Night Poker) as the ONLY televised poker programming on the airwaves. Partially because of the success of the WPT – and partially because of the success of a young Tennessee accountant with the unlikely moniker of Chris Moneymaker at the WSOP Championship Event – televised poker boomed in the mid-2000s, with such made for television fare as High Stakes Poker, Celebrity Poker Showdown, Face the Ace, Poker Royale and the Ultimate Poker Challenge all appearing during that time span.

After the crackdown on poker in 2006 with the signing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, these shows disappeared for the most part. The WPT, the WSOP and the syndicated Heartland Poker Tour continued on with the banner, even after the “Black Friday” indictments of 2011. It is only recently, with such programming as Poker Night in America and some other entries, that poker has been attempting to reestablish its place on cable television.

If the political climate changes with online poker (not something to hold your breath over), then more poker programming could be brought to the public. It is good to know, however, that one of the stalwarts of the poker world in the WPT will have a solid home for the near future.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *