In the past ten weeks I’ve bounced from Las Vegas, to Biloxi, Mississippi, to Miami, to Temecula, California, listening to gaming operators, experts and others talk about almost every facet of gambling. But there’s one word I barely heard: “poker.”
Granted, the agenda topics, from top to bottom, read something like “Sports Betting,” “More Sports Betting,” “Even More Sports Betting,” and “Breaking Down Blockchain.” Still, I think poker should have been mentioned a lot more. Consider these two questions:
(1) Is there a gambling activity where good players are sitting idle up to 90 percent of the time?
(2) What activity might keep fidgety poker players busy as they await their next hand?
If it’s not already obvious, the answers are: (1) “poker” and (2) “sports gambling.”
If you look around a poker room today, you’ll see players with headphones, players on their cellphones, and players watching TV. (You’ll also see the really good ones – the minority – pay attention to the action, after their hand has folded, to gain information for the next hand and the hand after that.) At racetrack casinos, many poker players study a racing form between hands.
I hope that I’ve made my point: the poker room, while basically ignored in all of those seminars and conferences I attended, is fertile ground for growing a sports-betting business.
I think of this especially now, as the World Series of Poker (WSOP) is running in Las Vegas. Thousands of action junkies are looking for something to do – but they’d prefer that something involve making choices, rather than simply watching.
The Main Event of the 49th Annual World Series starts on July 2, with a format designed for what the public wants today. The approach of playing down to nine players, showing taped action until November, then showing more taped action, is no longer being used. People want their information, and their results much more closer to instantly. That’s why scratch-off lottery tickets outsell Powerball tickets. So now the WSOP Main Event runs without a break.
And the interest is obvious. ESPN and ESPN2 are expected to combine for more than 60 hours of live coverage (on a 30-minute delay). PokerGo will, daily, live webstream around the TV coverage. The Main Event winner will be crowned live on ESPN on Saturday, July 14.
The appeal to online players, too, has been enhanced. The idea of “Shared Liquidity” – the pooling of players from all U.S. states offering online poker – began May 1. The World Series of Poker’s digital poker platform now operates a combined service for players in Delaware, Nevada, and New Jersey. That naturally brought about improvements in the WSOP.com loyalty program, sort of like the way avid slot and table game patrons receive extra love.
The WSOP also now has a partnership with the eSports community. For the first time, poker players and spectators will be able to participate in and compete in a variety of popular gaming titles, such as Fortnite, Hearthstone, and FIFA, on the UMG Esports Stage, not far from the poker action.
I realize that poker brings in only a small amount of gambling revenue. I get that poker players also aren’t the best demographic: nobody drinks $20 margaritas while figuring out the odds on their flush draw. But if you just look at the WSOP, and note their ventures into related products – a path many casino operators speak about as a possibility for maintaining their clientele – then it seems clear that there are things to be learned.
So, please, somewhere, sometime, give me just one poker-related seminar session. I promise that I’ll still attend the seminars on sports-betting stuff.
I promise.
