888 To Sponsor New TV Show ‘Poker Night in America’

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Thursday, July 3rd, 2014 | Written by Lucy Brown

In the coming weeks a new TV show called ‘Poker Night in America‘ (PNIA) will run for 26 weeks on the CBS Sports Network. Following Black Friday poker shows nearly died out completely as sponsors shunned the advertising dollars of unwanted offshore sites, notable exception being the World Poker Tour. Now, however, the latest poker show will be attempting to reclaim the glory days of televised poker, and has already picked up its first sponsor the 888-led All American Poker Network (AAPN).

After the deal was announced, Poker Night in America president Todd Anderson, said: “This agreement represents the perfect symbiosis between poker as televised entertainment, and the growing market of online gaming led by one of the world’s premier providers. With 888’s deep poker experience and AAPN’s strong US-market positioning, we can bridge from live-action to a much larger market of players, consumers, and viewers.”

Poker Night in America

The revolutionary new show is scheduled to air on June 29th and has been using the catchy tagline “bringing personality back to poker.” Just as the human interest story behind Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 WSOP Main Event victory helped launch the poker boom, industry experts have long warned that ignoring the personal stories behind players risks turning off mainstream viewers from watching poker on television.

Consequently, Heartland Poker Tour creator Todd Anderson is aiming to capture the charm and eccentricities of the players in his new poker show and provide viewers with unique glimpses into their back-stories, while at the same time presenting a well produced TV poker show. As a press release explains:

“Instead of watching tournament final tables with anonymous players hidden beneath hoodies and silenced by ear-phones, PNIA is stacking the deck in favor of fun by using hand-picked pros joined by amateur players in a real cash game environment at select venues throughout the US. In addition to poker action, behind-the-scenes comedy and drama promises to make PNIA compelling must-see television for all poker players and fans of the game.”

Recapturing pre-Black Friday audiences

Before the US Department of Justice pulled the plug on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker stateside, countless poker shows were running on TV around the clock, including High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, and the NBC National Heads Up Championship, to name but a few.

That all changed after the Black Friday indictments, highlighted by once popular show ‘High Stakes Poker’ being axed in 2012 by GSN after a six year run. Since then TV networks have expressed little interest in airing poker shows, but with a reinterpretation of the UIGEA in 2011, legal online poker sites now appear motivated to reenter the space once held by unlicensed, offshore websites. Poker Night in America, for instance, has the potential to reach over 99 million households in American via the CBS Sports network, and help recreate the enthusiasm once held for the game by bringing a new audience to the USA’s legal online poker rooms.

888’s involvement a big deal

888poker is currently the second largest online poker room in the world with an average of 2,100 cash game players over a seven-day period. PokerStars with 18,000 cash game players may be way ahead of its nearest rival in terms of traffic, but 888 has been welcomed back to the USA’s regulated igaming markets, whereas PokerStars is still considered a ‘bad actor’ and has been refused gaming licenses.

Currently, 888 provides its product in New Jersey, operates the sole network in Delaware, and provides the software for Caesars Interactive Entertainment’s WSOP.com in Nevada. Its All American Poker Network (AAPN) has also been granted a Nevada interactive gaming license, but has yet to launch its Treasure Island skin.

Having a company involved in all three regulated US igaming markets represents a major coup for ‘Poker Night in America’ and represents a golden opportunity for 888 to boost its marketing campaign to educate the public about legal US online poker, and the different brands available in the market.

Furthermore, TV poker shows may once again experience a resurgence as networks are more inclined to renew shows with built-in advertisers, while there will likely now be extra pressure on other US online poker websites to purchase their own TV time or advertise during breaks in the show. Hopefully this will eventually help the country’s nascent igaming industry gather the momentum it so desperately needs to regain its former glory and become a viable business concern, once again.