Poker fans will no longer have to wait for months to find out who wins the World Series of Poker’s Main Event.
Under a new four-year deal with Poker Central and broadcaster ESPN, the November Nine is being scrapped and the cable broadcaster will televise the tournament from start to finish on tape delay.
The November Nine format had the final table of the WSOP $10,000 Main Event—the most prestigious and one of the richest tournaments in poker—played in November, even though the tournament is held in July. The format ostensibly allowed ESPN to air taped sessions of the tournament capped off by the live final table.
According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Poker Central announced it had acquired the global television and digital media rights to the WSOP and also reached an agreement with ESPN to broadcast the event from the first day of the tournament July 8 to the conclusion of the final table July 22. The tournament can’t be broadcast live, but will air on a 30-minute tape delay.
Under the agreement, ESPN and ESPN2 will broadcast about 40 hours of play July 8-17. Final-table competitors will begin play July 20 with a winner to be determined July 22. ESPN has committed to 130 hours of main-event coverage a year and any coverage not aired by ESPN would be streamed through Poker Central’s digital distribution channels, the paper said.
“ESPN has been our home since 2002 and we’re delighted to extend the relationship into the next decade,” Ty Stewart, executive director of the World Series of Poker, said in a press statement. “Having every day live coverage of the WSOP Main Event is truly a huge commitment on behalf of ESPN and Poker Central and we look forward to delivering to our faithful audience wall-to-wall action from the outset for the very first time.”
Seth Palansky, vice president of corporate communications for Caesars Interactive Entertainment and the World Series of Poker, told the Review Journal that the decision to end the November Nine format was based on ESPN’s commitment to provide additional live coverage.
“We found that live poker worked so it makes all the sense in the world to have a two-day delay from a 100-day delay to the final table,” he said.
