The Third Most Watched Sport
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Thanks to the never-ending broadcasts of celebrity and professional poker tournaments, poker is now the third most-watched televised sport on cable TV—behind only car racing and football.
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COMMENTS / 5 COMMENTS
Tapin added these pithy words on Aug 10 05 at 11:58 amI’d like to see where they got their numbers from, if only to see what else qualifies as a “sport”. Cheerleading competitions? World’s Strongest Man?
Poker’s a game. That’s not a knock — poker tournaments certainly take an amazing amount of endurance, and I’ll chose to watch a good televised poker tournament over the best golf or NASCAR broadcast ever, every day of the week. But I just can’t get behind the redistricting of poker as a sport, when there’s so little physical dexterity involved.
(Of course, on the other side of the spectrum you’ve got judge-controlled exhibitions like ice skating and most of the X-Games, which require amazing amounts of physical dexterity but without objective goals — like, say, winning all the chips on the table or scoring the most runs or being the first to the finish line — can never be considered sports, either.)
Easycure added these pithy words on Aug 11 05 at 9:04 amThe point is not whether it’s a sport or not, but how many people are watching it. They get their numbers from Neilsen type ratings and such, and use regional factors to apply it viewers across the whole country.
It sure beats watching men’s tennis or figure skating.
Drizztdj added these pithy words on Aug 11 05 at 12:16 pmNote to the TV Execs: PLEASE stop the current trend of over-kill of poker programming. That or increase the quality of the programming.
I’d hate to see poker viewing go the way of TV game shows did about 3-4 years ago when there was a sudden explosion of them, and 95% of them died out and got sent back to morning/afternoon viewings.
Dannomatic added these pithy words on Aug 11 05 at 7:11 pmPoker is being *overplayed* - I have cable TV here at work and everyday on at least 5 different cable channels there is some sort of tournament playing. Sure it’s popular but too much of a good thing is just that. Too much of a good thing.
Easycure added these pithy words on Aug 12 05 at 8:59 amA follow-up:
It has brought more fish to the tables….online poker is still booming! The increase in players (and bad play) is staggering.
The biggest drawback, the biggerit gets the greater the chance the government will no longer be able to ignore it. Regulation is coming, it’s just a matter of when.
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