In case your Friday night included something more interesting than watching TV (mine didn\’t), I\’m here to tell you that the summer Olympics \”started\” with the Opening Ceremonies tonight. Actually, the ceremonies took place about half a day ago in Beijing, but NBC is presenting them in a \”plausibly live\” format during prime time. Hmmm … where have I heard that term (\”plausibly live\”) before?
For 17 days, the Olympics will dominate NBC\’s networks here in the United States, and fill up enough news coverage to finally give Americans a break from the seemingly endless presidential election. (Other countries are fortunate in the fact that they generally get less nationalistic — and often more interesting — coverage than NBC provides here in the U.S.)
During that time, I\’ll be writing about some things the poker industry can learn from the Olympics. Not the game itself, or the silly notion that poker should be added to the Olympics. I\’m mainly concerned with the media coverage, and what we as poker reporters can learn from it.
No analogy is perfect, but the World Series of Poker has some interesting similarities to the Olympics. It\’s a multi-week festival that comprises a lot of different events featuring thousands of competitors from around the world. And both the WSOP and the Olympics are much, much more than the sum of their parts.
What do I mean by that? Well, the story of the Superbowl (NFL) or baseball\’s World Series is ultimately the final score. The same goes for a major WPT or EPT event — it\’s all about the players at the final table, and which one claims the title and the million-dollar prize. Sure there are other stories along the way, but they all feed into the overarching narrative of \”Who wins?\”
At the WSOP (like the Olympics), there are a lot of stories that aren\’t tied to specific events, like multi-bracelet winners, the POY race, and Vinny Vinh. There are also threats of dealer strikes, stories of competing media outlets, and various poker press conferences — movie announcements (ex: \”Lucky You\”), lawsuits (ex: players vs. the WPT), and industry deals (ex: Full Tilt signing Patrik Antonius). You even have the Gaming Life Expo, with less eye candy than previous years because there are fewer hookers strippers female models in the booths.
I\’m not suggesting that we should change the WSOP to mirror the Olympics. But WSOP coverage has felt lacking in certain areas to me, and those who cover the Olympics face similar problems — multiple events going on simultaneously, unknown winners, and side stories that often have nothing to do with a specific event.
I\’ve competed in been to the Olympics twice, Atlanta in 1996 and Salt Lake City in 2002. Both times, I went all out, attending multiple events every day and spending as much time as possible in the thick of the crowds. Since 2004 I\’ve been spending my summers at the WSOP, and I\’ve observed some things that I think could be improved. That\’s what I\’ll be writing about here at Pokerati the next two weeks. Stay tuned.
I\’ll close out this first Olympic-themed entry with a few basic stats:
2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing
Competitors: 10,500
Events: 302
Unique sports: 28
Total prizepool: $0
2008 World Series of Poker
Competitors: 58,720
Events: 55
Unique games: 16
Total prizepool: $180,676,248
