Poker Night in America: A Great Opportunity for NJ Online Poker
Poker Night in America, a televised tournament /cash-game with plenty of behind the scenes footage is slated to begin its run on network television after being picked up by the CBS Sports Network.
The show is the brainchild of Heartland Poker Tour creator Todd Anderson, who enlisted the help of poker media maestro Nolan Dalla to act as point man for the project.
It is supposed to differ from past poker programming in that it offers a look not only at a tournament, but also some side game action as well as a glimpse into the life of the professional players who are featured during the episode.
While PNA does fly their celebrity poker guests out to the event, players do have to play the tournament and the cash game on their own dime. This dynamic was not always present in previous televised poker shows, yet would dramatically change the intensity of said shows.
“We’re making poker fun again – that’s our real goal,” said Todd Anderson, the show’s creator and president. “We think poker players and fans have been looking for something new and fresh for a long time. We believe ‘Poker Night in America’ will soon become must-see television for all serious players and fans. Our tag-ling says it all “bringing personality back to poker.”
According to a press release the first episode will be on June 29th at 10 PM EDT, and will run for 26 weeks. The show is using the catchy, Sunday Night Is Poker Night in America tagline.
NJ Marketing Possibilities
Online gaming providers in New Jersey, Nevada, and even Delaware could find Poker Night in America an excellent vehicle to get their message out, and let the world know (or more precisely residents in their particular states know) that online poker is once again available and this time it is 100% legal at every level.
I’m sure the World Series of Poker will be chock full of advertisements for PartyPoker, Ultimate Poker, 888 Poker, and WSOP.com but with Poker Night in America these online providers will have a weekly vehicle that will almost certainly have extremely reasonable ad buy rates – perfect for these small, nascent markets.
Black Friday Killed Online Poker and Poker On TV
During the Poker Boom years it seemed like you could turn on the TV at any hour of the day and find a poker show. This presented operators with countless opportunities to market their products, and the availability of so many reasonable outlets rates.
But following Black Friday poker shows nearly went extinct, with the only ones surviving being the World Poker Tour and the seasonal World Series of Poker – on a smaller scale, the Heartland Poker Tour and other local events are still receiving airtime as well.
Poker Night in America will be the first show trying to recapture the glory days of televised poker. The glory days included High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, the NBC National Heads Up Championship, and a myriad of other shows ruled the cable dial.
Since Black Friday offshore sites advertising dollars have been unwanted by networks, and the only televised poker you were likely to see was little more than purchased time slots, and certainly no better than an infomercial.
Now legal online poker sites can step in and fill the shoes of the offshore providers.
Poker Night in America could turn this around (depending on the finished product) but it will also take the help of the legal online poker rooms in the US who will have to be the shows main advertisers until it catches on.
Thoughts on Poker Night in America
I like the people behind the program, but I’m always leery of “new” poker shows that are billed as something different.
There are lots of different ways to package a chocolate bar (in a box, in a wrapper, in fancy foil, hell you could put in a marble tube full of confetti if you wanted to) but in the end it’s still a chocolate bar. I tend to feel the same way about poker shows.
Be it cash-games or tournaments, high-stakes world-class players or rank amateurs, cards are dealt and players interact to varying degrees.
My hope with PNA is that the show will somehow capture what the early episodes of the WSOP had: the charm and eccentricities of the players and their back-stories, and pair that off with a well produced game of poker.
I haven’t seen enough of PNA to make that determination as of yet, but with Anderson and Dalla steering the ship I’m hopeful that they are on a better course than a lot of their predecessors.
The only worthwhile poker programming I’ve seen in recent years was the short-lived PokerStars Big Game, which sadly fell victim to Black Friday.
Maybe, just maybe, PNA can pick up where PokerStars left off and turn out a good televised poker program.
