Has Poker Peaked?
4/10/2006 12:00:00 AM
As someone who’s been in the industry and been a player for the last twenty years, I’ve seen it all, including the huge boom poker has experienced over the past four years. It’s kind of strange that the number one question on everyone’s mind is, “How long will it last?” While it’s a valid enough question, it’s one I personally am tired of having to answer.
Poker has gone through a mind-boggling explosion that few could have predicted. This phenomenon is largely due to televised poker and the ability to play online.
These two factors alone were catalysts vaulting poker to where it is today. Obviously poker cannot keep exponentially increasing in popularity and participation, but is there an end in site?
Poker is going through another boom right now, similar to the one that started four years ago. This boom however is a little harder to measure on a national and even international basis. There was an article in the New York Post at the end of March 2006 which discussed the peak, as well as decline of poker that it suggested was already well under way. Their argument using television ratings as a barometer for poker’s popularity sounds convincing, which (according to Nielsen Media Research) have fallen for the 2005 World Series of Poker broadcasts. At first glance, it might appear that the popularity of poker is starting to drop off, but are these statistics really accurate?
While the number of viewers may be down for the 2005 W.S.O.P. broadcasts, let’s take a closer look. First off, at least twelve of the events were covered in 2005; just a few years ago it was only the $10,000 buy-in main event that was televised.
The W.S.O.P circuit events were also televised in 2005, which is another five events. The 2005 W.S.O.P. produced approximately twenty different programs for ESPN alone. Couple the amount of episodes with the amount that each episode is re-run, and you can see how the stats are diluted.
Then you also have to take into account the success in the past four years of the World Poker Tour, the NBC Heads-Up Championship, and the new real-money High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network.
What it boils down to is this – that’s a hell of a lot of poker on TV! While the numbers may be down per individual episode, there are a lot more people watching poker, overall. And what has all this poker on TV produced? New poker players, that’s what!
It really bothers me when some journalist who has a huge venue to get his message out doesn’t do his homework. You can’t just take one stat and say, “Here’s all the information, and that’s the way it is.” What I’m seeing, as well as everyone in the industry is seeing is this - walk in to your local poker room; notice anything?
For starters, most rooms have expanded in the last three years, and why is that? It’s because the amount of poker being played at the grassroots level has tripled, at least. Where I live, there are four casinos with poker rooms and a new one being built, which will open shortly. There are tournaments every night of the week, and if you haven’t paid and registered at least the day before, you won’t get in. What does that tell you? It screams that poker is booming and here to stay.
What the NY Post journalist failed to take into account is that the more new players who start playing the game, the less poker they’ll end up watching, because, as anyone would guess, they’d rather be playing. Internet poker sites have also increased dramatically. A couple of the bigger sites have recently broken the 100,000 player mark.
That’s astounding! Over 100,000 players are playing for real money at any given time. I remember a time not that long ago when the site I was playing on was having trouble because they had over 10,000 players playing at once.
They simply weren’t prepared for the logistics of organizing tournaments with over 1000 people registered. Today you can play in tournaments online with upwards of 5000 players, and play that whole tournament in one day, too!
The thing that really made me chuckle as I finished reading the article in the Post was the news that Diet Pepsi has shot a poker commercial. The commercial features Scotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu and the poker brat himself, Phil Hellmuth, in which that cute little Diet Pepsi Can takes on three of the best. Hmmmm, I wonder who’ll get all the chips?
More recent headlines heralding the “demise” of poker include the casinos expanding their poker rooms, like the Venetian and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Casinos would not be taking away the valuable square footage from slot machines if poker was on a down slope. Foxwoods Casino has recently accepted sponsorship from the World Poker Tour and expanded their room to 114 tables and branded it the WPT World Poker Room. What this tells us is that poker is generating revenue for these companies. Let’s not kid ourselves, it is a game, but first and foremost it’s a business, and a multi-billion dollar one at that.
Is there an end in sight? Will the fad fade away?
It’s a fact that poker cannot keep exponentially increasing in popularity, but it’s not going to die. Its growth may be slowing down a little, but I don’t believe it has peaked.
With all of the TV coverage, there are legions of teenagers growing up watching poker, just waiting for their 21st birthdays (18, in some places) when they can legally set foot in a card room.
Rather than heading out to a strip club or the local pub, the new rite of passage may just be sitting down in a poker room for the first time.
It’s easy to figure out why poker is so popular; where else can a beginner learn to play a game, and if the cards fall right, win a satellite and be playing in a world championship against the best you see on TV every week?
Sports fans love to root for their favorite players and teams, but the closest any of us get to actually competing against those same players is usually snagging an autograph.
Not so with poker. The favorites are guys and gals that you can relate to, that you can imagine sitting down at your weekly home game and throwing back a beer or two.
For me the reality that poker is here to stay came last Christmas when my 16 year old nephew brought up a set of chips and cards from his room and my entire family, aged from 14 to 70 years old played a series of no-limit Hold’em freeze outs. Too bad the Nielsen ratings can’t measure that.
Keep on raising,
I’m Johnny T