Capitalizing on the popularity of poker and previous poker broadcasts
on NBC, NBC Sports in May will air the first poker tournament to appear
on a major television network.
The 2005 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which is also the first
poker tournament to be produced by a television network, will feature
a $1.5 million purse and air on four consecutive Sundays beginning
May 1, concluding with a two-hour finale May 22. The tournament will
take place at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.
The invitation-only championship will include poker pros such as Doyle
Brunson, Howard Lederer,
Johnny Chan, 2003 World
Series of Poker Champion Chris Moneymaker and last year's World Series
of Poker champ Greg Raymer.
Unlike most other tournaments where the winners of each poker table
gather for a run-off, players in NBC's tourney will play each other
one-on-one. The event will start off with 64 players who will be paired
off and eliminated over time, similar to the way the National Collegiate
Athletic Association structures their tournaments, NBC officials said.
"This is a unique and exciting format" that lends
itself well to television, NBC Sports Senior Vice President
of Programming Jon Miller said.
The tournament stems from the success of previous one-time poker
broadcasts on NBC around the past two National Football League Super
Bowl games, Miller said.
In 2004, NBC aired a "Battle of the Champions" poker
event featuring the best players in the World Poker Tour, but the
new event will be the first multi-day, tournament-style event on a
major network.
This month, the network aired the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament,
an event pitting eight poker pros against one another at the Palms
resort in Las Vegas. Each of the players bought in for $400,000 for
a game of no-limit Texas Hold 'Em and a collective prize pool of $3.2
million. That event attracted 8.6 million viewers, Miller said.
The two events were the highest-rated poker shows of all time, he
said.
Ratings were especially strong among men 18-34 and men 18-49, a "very
difficult demographic to reach consistently," Miller said.
The tournament would compete with the World Series of Poker, a Las
Vegas-based tournament owned by Harrah's Entertainment Inc. that airs
on ESPN. It also would compete with the World Poker Tour, a worldwide
series of poker tournaments broadcast on the Travel Channel.
Harrah's last month said it had retained the former president of CBS
Sports as a consultant to renegotiate its agreement with ESPN to televise
the historic poker tournament.
ESPN has aired the World
Series of Poker, held at Binion's Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas,
for the past seven years and has broadcast poker on television since
1994. Harrah's took of the tournament last year, the same year of
record turnout for the event as well as ESPN's highest ratings for
the tournament.
The World Series of Poker championship is an open event, with entrance
allowed for anyone 21 or older with the $10,000 buy-in. Miller said
poker pros have said the invitation-only, 64-person field of the National
Heads-Up Poker Championship will include many of the world's top players.
Miller said NBC affiliates have welcomed the high-rated poker events
and don't appear to be concerned about a potential backlash from states
that have fought programming and advertising featuring gambling.