ESPN / WSOP Live Coverage Ratings Are in
The numbers for Live-minus-30 coverage of the WSOP on ESPN are in. About a half million viewers on ESPN 2, 23 million minutes of click-friendly eyeball time on ESPN 3, and a “cute” little 646,00 viewers for two hours during prime time on ESPN 1.
Clearly poker is no women’s soccer, but still … those returns seem high enough that ESPN will probably do it again — though nothing in the ESPN press release assures as much — and low enough that next year ESPN and the WSOP will easily be able to report massive growth in whatever numbers prove most beneficial for them to deliver.
It’s hard to determine a success with a new type of coverage … but these numbers do set a certain bar, and at a minimum dohelp quantify the size of the true-poker-geek market. And thus, with results of the Pokerati love-it-or-hate-it poll, combined with the television numbers, I’m relatively convinced that if ESPN doesn’t expand their “live” poker coverage in the future … somebody else will.
(It really is all in the announcing.)
Read below for the official Nielsen data presented by Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, er … I mean:
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