Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, Welcome back to a new episode of the
Speaker 1: Poker Go Podcast. My name is Donny Peters. It is Thursday,
Speaker 1: August twentieth. It's gonna be at least Friday when you
Speaker 1: guys are listening to this thing, because I'm recording this
Speaker 1: late before I get it off to producer Rich to
Speaker 1: get out there on the airwaves for all of you. Fun.
Speaker 1: Episode ahead, I'm joined by my friend and veteran poker
Speaker 1: media member, Lance Bradley. We're going to discuss the w
Speaker 1: s AP being back on ESPN. We're going to discuss
Speaker 1: the ratings from the final table. Lance broke those ratings,
Speaker 1: so we'll get into that, and then a bunch more
Speaker 1: stuff from my conversation with Lance. Great guy, love him,
Speaker 1: and you know we've we've been through We've been through
Speaker 1: a lot together in terms of these poker media streets,
Speaker 1: right We've been in the trenches. So it's good to
Speaker 1: have Lance on. I also have some thoughts later on
Speaker 1: in the episode on something that I'm missing in poker.
Speaker 1: You know, I was having this feeling the other day
Speaker 1: when I was in the car, so I'll touch on that.
Speaker 1: I do want to hit on the health of live
Speaker 1: poker and then we got today the full schedule for
Speaker 1: the WSP Paradise series down in the Bahamas taking place
Speaker 1: in December. We knew the dates, okay, we didn't know
Speaker 1: the full schedule. We have that now and I've got
Speaker 1: some thoughts there. Before we get into all of that,
Speaker 1: a quick note that High Stakes Poker is going live
Speaker 1: for seven straight days on poker Go August twenty fifth
Speaker 1: through thirty first. It is presented by Coin Poker. We'll
Speaker 1: be live from the Poker gro Studio in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: There are some big names in the mix. A bunch
Speaker 1: more of these names are to come, you know. I
Speaker 1: just can't give them out just yet. You're going to
Speaker 1: have to see him as they roll out in these
Speaker 1: next couple of days, or tune into the live streams
Speaker 1: to see who is in the seats. But I can't
Speaker 1: tell you that Andrew Robol is back. He's bringing his
Speaker 1: crew for a bunch of the days. Alejandro Lococo is
Speaker 1: going to be in the mix. Rick Solomon is returning
Speaker 1: to High Stakes Poker. Rick is always a lot of
Speaker 1: fun and a lot of action, so be sure to
Speaker 1: check that out. It's not the first time that High
Speaker 1: Stakes Poker has gone live, but I do believe it
Speaker 1: is the first time that it will be live streamed
Speaker 1: for seven consecutive days. Every single day is live. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be freaking awesome. Plus yours truly has got the
Speaker 1: call to do some commentary for the first couple of days.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I know you guys probably want to hear Nick Schulman
Speaker 1: in the booth and I am nowhere near Nick Schulman,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna have a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 1: The live version is different than you know, the post
Speaker 1: produced episodes, which we're going to get Nick on all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Aj and Nick will continue to
Speaker 1: do that, so I think I think we're planning on
Speaker 1: Ali Najade and Nick Shulman for the bulk of the
Speaker 1: live streams over this week of upcoming live streams, but
Speaker 1: myself and Brent Hanks will be handling the first I
Speaker 1: think two or three of them, and I'm pretty pumped
Speaker 1: about that. You know, it's going to be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. So if you guys like high stakes action,
Speaker 1: if you like poker, tune the hell in. Let's go
Speaker 1: August twenty fifth through thirty first high Stakes Poker. We're
Speaker 1: doing it live seven days straight. First up on today's show,
Speaker 1: We've got Lance Bradley. I wanted to get his perspective
Speaker 1: on this new era of the WSP. That that new
Speaker 1: era this is now. You know, poker has returned to ESPN.
Speaker 1: We went through an entire summer under this new era.
Speaker 1: We got the w s AP main event ratings. We
Speaker 1: had the first part of the ratings. Now we have
Speaker 1: the rest of the ratings come out of the final table.
Speaker 1: Lance and I talked about, you know what worked, what
Speaker 1: can get better? He put an article out there that was,
Speaker 1: you know, his biggest winners and losers. I asked him
Speaker 1: about his favorite stories, all that sort of stuff. That's
Speaker 1: all in the conversation with Lance. So let's get into that,
Speaker 1: all right. I'd now like to welcome in Lance Bradley,
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, longtime colleague of mine as well,
Speaker 1: and who many of you in the poker world likely
Speaker 1: know as veteran poker media member, award winning journalist, now
Speaker 1: author of the Overlay newsletter on Substack. I am a subscriber.
Speaker 1: You guys should be too, Lance. You also spent the
Speaker 1: summer writing or covering the WSP for ESPN. You handled
Speaker 1: a bunch of feature writing there throughout the series. How
Speaker 1: are you doing? Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's good to be here. It's you're in the
Speaker 2: middle of the Vegas desert at one hundred and ten
Speaker 2: degrees with no humidity, and I'm in one hundred and
Speaker 2: five degrees here in Atlanta with like one thousand percent community.
Speaker 2: So on the heat a little bit, but glad to
Speaker 2: be home from Vegas, for sure.
Speaker 1: I think I would take one ten no humidity, maybe
Speaker 1: even one fifteen. No humidity versus humidity.
Speaker 2: Depends on what you're doing. I play in a roller
Speaker 2: hockey league here in town, and it's outdoors, and we
Speaker 2: have a game tonight at nine o'clock that it will
Speaker 2: be like skating in a swamp, like you're skating through gravy.
Speaker 2: It's awful.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's sounds like torture. Absolutely sounds like torture.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're going to talk about you know,
Speaker 1: ws AP on ESPN. This is why I wanted to
Speaker 1: have you on. You were by everything that I can see,
Speaker 1: the person who broke the ratings for the for the
Speaker 1: final table. You know, there's been a there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of different stories out there, you know, picking up
Speaker 1: what you initially wrote. First, you know, these are the
Speaker 1: ratings for the EPISODEV Men Event Final Table on ESPN,
Speaker 1: So we're going to touch on that and yeah, just
Speaker 1: have a general conversation.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you'd be surprised how hard ratings information is
Speaker 2: to come by in twenty twenty six. It's uh. It
Speaker 2: took a lot of uh prodding to get it out
Speaker 2: of a few people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I obviously work in the content side
Speaker 1: of things, being with Poker Go, and pretty much every
Speaker 1: day since the Final Table ended, I was searching around
Speaker 1: online trying to find it. I was on social media
Speaker 1: going to you know, awful announcing see if they might
Speaker 1: have posted something. I'm doing, I'm doing everything, and then
Speaker 1: finally I saw your thing pop up, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: finally somebody did the heavy lifting for me. So thank
Speaker 1: you for doing that for all of us out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you saw the numbers. I know we're
Speaker 2: going to get into it in a little bit, but
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of conversation out there about it,
Speaker 2: and I think some of it lacks a little bit
Speaker 2: of context, which I think is the hard part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll get into the ratings. I do want to
Speaker 1: start with, you know, kind of just just general overarching
Speaker 1: WSB's return to ESPN, because because that was a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of talk heading into the summer, It's
Speaker 1: going to be back on ESPN throughout the summer, of course,
Speaker 1: obviously during the lead up to the Final Table and
Speaker 1: during the final Table. So you know, now that we
Speaker 1: have had, you know a little bit of time to
Speaker 1: digest everything from the summer, you know what are kind
Speaker 1: of just your overall thoughts about the dubs it be
Speaker 1: making its way back to ESPN.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me put a bit of a qualifier on this,
Speaker 2: just so that everybody listening is understands the what I
Speaker 2: did for ESPN the summer. I was ready for ESPN
Speaker 2: dot com, which is an entirely different beast an organization
Speaker 2: than the ESPN broadcast group. Like they're they're the same brand,
Speaker 2: and they definitely have some interaction, but for the most part,
Speaker 2: like I was separate from the production, so I don't
Speaker 2: have any inside information on the production or on the
Speaker 2: TV show. But I think the overall return to ESPN
Speaker 2: was wins and losses, right, I think there was. I
Speaker 2: don't think it was ever going to live up to
Speaker 2: the hype of returning to ESPN in its first year.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to get there. I think there's
Speaker 2: potential to get there. But I think anybody on the
Speaker 2: production side is probably looking at twenty twenty six as
Speaker 2: what did we learn? What can we do better?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's interesting because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people I'm talking just kind of general poker audience, whether
Speaker 1: that be fans or players, once they saw WSP back
Speaker 1: on ESPN leading into the summer, everyone just kind of thought,
Speaker 1: at least at least in my opinion, from reading some
Speaker 1: of this stuff on social media, like we're back, almost
Speaker 1: as if like we're back in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and you know, we know that, like no, first of all,
Speaker 1: poker's changed. Second of all, everything in the world has
Speaker 1: changed since that heyday of you know, the boom days, right,
Speaker 1: and you know, ESPN isn't as big as it once was,
Speaker 1: but but you know, cable in general isn't as big
Speaker 1: as it once was. Like it's there's a whole separate
Speaker 1: side topic with everything, you know, but it is interesting
Speaker 1: that you know, just so many people just I guess
Speaker 1: kind of expected it to be what it once was,
Speaker 1: and it's it's I almost just want to tell them
Speaker 1: like you're setting yourself up for a letdown because you're
Speaker 1: you're keeping these expectations when something has just changed so drastic,
Speaker 1: and we want this to be positive. We don't want
Speaker 1: to look at it and say, hey, this wasn't what
Speaker 1: it once was, because then that's a negative thought process
Speaker 1: coming out of it. When at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's almost like, yes, it is back on ESPN. But
Speaker 1: it's almost like you'd rather say it like the ws
Speaker 1: AP is going to ESPN, because back on makes you think, Okay,
Speaker 1: back on this is what it once was. That's what
Speaker 1: I expect it to be versus this one where I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of a new era and in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. So you know, I guess long and
Speaker 1: short of it is, you know, how how different do
Speaker 1: you think it felt compared to you know, previous times
Speaker 1: and if people want to, you know, look back on
Speaker 1: you know, the old days of it.
Speaker 2: I mean when you mentioned two thousand and eight, two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, that those being the like glory days, right,
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, too million people watched Jokada Win.
Speaker 2: They may have event on ESPN, but that was seventeen,
Speaker 2: eighteen years ago, like we're in a different world now.
Speaker 2: It's a There are kids born that year who just
Speaker 2: moved into their college dorm room for the first like
Speaker 2: it was forever ago. In poker timelines. The way that
Speaker 2: I think you have to look at it is that
Speaker 2: the WSOP of twenty twenty six is a startup. It's
Speaker 2: a startup with a fifty six year old brand, fifty
Speaker 2: seven year old brand attached to it. So I understand
Speaker 2: that it's not just like a brand new company launching
Speaker 2: and coming out of nowhere. But there's a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of new people on the ESPN side, there's a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of new people on the WSOP side, and they
Speaker 2: brought in a new production company to produce the product.
Speaker 2: So for the most part, it was probably seventy five
Speaker 2: to eighty percent sort of new thinking, new people handling it.
Speaker 2: That being said, everybody understood the assignment at the base
Speaker 2: level was that you've got to tap into the nostalgia
Speaker 2: of those glory days in the broadcast product. So Long
Speaker 2: and Norm are back and they're carrying on the things
Speaker 2: they did. You know, in twenty nineteen, it was still
Speaker 2: on ESPN, that's that's not that long ago. Pre COVID.
Speaker 2: The end of that run, right was the twenty I
Speaker 2: guess the twenty twenty WSLP main event was on ESPN,
Speaker 2: But twenty nineteen was the last full production year where
Speaker 2: we had a full main event, so I think they
Speaker 2: tapped into the nostalgia just enough. I think they listened
Speaker 2: to a bunch of people that said, hey, you've got
Speaker 2: to bring back things like the Nuts, and they did.
Speaker 2: They figured out ways to get poker players away from
Speaker 2: the table in an effort to tell the story of
Speaker 2: somebody you want to cheer for or somebody you might recognize,
Speaker 2: like Chris Moneymaker was involved in that Nuts segment specifically
Speaker 2: because a vast majority of the casual flip and channels
Speaker 2: what's on ESPN tonight audience is going to recognize Chris Moneymaker,
Speaker 2: So they figured out that they had to tap into
Speaker 2: that sort of the old school way of doing things
Speaker 2: on ESPN, and they are trying to modernize it a
Speaker 2: little bit with bringing Nick and Ali almost full time
Speaker 2: by the end of the main event broadcast. So I
Speaker 2: think the score you get on an overall is like
Speaker 2: a C plus because I think they did some things
Speaker 2: really well, but I also think they missed the market
Speaker 2: a bunch of things. But the overall like does this
Speaker 2: feel like it did on ESPN ten years ago? Yep,
Speaker 2: that's an a for me.
Speaker 1: How important do you think it is to I guess,
Speaker 1: sort of split the audiences and then pick one that
Speaker 1: you're going to go after, Meaning, you know, are they
Speaker 1: sitting in the production room saying like, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: to tap into the nostalgia side of things. We need
Speaker 1: to bring it back to what it once was, to
Speaker 1: capture that casual viewer, which in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: is going to I guess, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: alienate like the current hardcore viewer, which I think you
Speaker 1: saw some of on social media. On the other side
Speaker 1: of things, if you lean into the hardcore is too much,
Speaker 1: you then might turn off the casual viewer. So trying
Speaker 1: to walk that line has got to be I would say,
Speaker 1: next to impossible. So you know, like, how important do
Speaker 1: you think approaching just attacking one side of it is
Speaker 1: in this overall thing.
Speaker 2: I think it's really hard to tackle one side because
Speaker 2: you can't ignore the other side. When I was writing
Speaker 2: my features for ESPN dot com with an editor before
Speaker 2: I even did the first interview or put the first
Speaker 2: question down on paper. And this editor, Pierre, he was fantastic.
Speaker 2: He was the voice in the room of the person
Speaker 2: who watched the WSPN ESPN ten years ago, five years ago,
Speaker 2: seven years ago. And you know, a lot of my writing,
Speaker 2: you know this, A lot of my writing, a lot
Speaker 2: of my work over my career is for the hardcore
Speaker 2: poker fan. Someone who's reading bluff, reading pocket vives is
Speaker 2: already into poker in a big way, and they're finding
Speaker 2: my stuff that way. So this was a real change
Speaker 2: for me. And it was eye opening in the sense of,
Speaker 2: like Pierre was saying to me, like, you've got to
Speaker 2: write to me the people who read your stuff before,
Speaker 2: they're going to find your stuff. But we've got to
Speaker 2: find a way to get the guy who watched he
Speaker 2: didn't even know that it moved to CBS Sports where
Speaker 2: no one could see it, right, and he's rediscovering it
Speaker 2: on a Wednesday night in August or in July for
Speaker 2: the first time. What can you write to make that
Speaker 2: guy feel re engaged with the product, re engage with
Speaker 2: the WSP, with the players. So I think you've got
Speaker 2: to find a way to thread the line. It is
Speaker 2: tricky because you don't want to ignore things that have
Speaker 2: happened in the last six eight years, right, the players
Speaker 2: that have emerged, the stars that have come out. But
Speaker 2: you also know that the people that are at home
Speaker 2: in late July or on vacation and just flicking the
Speaker 2: TV on to put something on and find Poker, they're
Speaker 2: going to recognize helping you, Nigra on you, Ivy money Maker,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So you've got to find a way to
Speaker 2: do a little bit of a little bit of that
Speaker 2: balancing act between sticking with those guys but also telling
Speaker 2: stories of new people so that next year you can
Speaker 2: reinforce that story.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean I agree, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: certainly very hard, you know, to walk that line and
Speaker 1: do both things. I mean, especially in today's world when
Speaker 1: everyone has a trigger in their hand ready to just
Speaker 1: fire off takes on social media and let you know
Speaker 1: how they they think about things. And you know, you
Speaker 1: and I both know as as the audience knows, you know,
Speaker 1: the the poker social media globe is. I mean, they
Speaker 1: fire off takes like it's their job, you know, so
Speaker 1: we we see all that you know, in like right
Speaker 1: in front of our faces all summer long. There was
Speaker 1: you know a lot of talk from from the w
Speaker 1: SP side of things, you know, like from Jeff Platt
Speaker 1: or whoever it may be, even Daniel Legrand, et cetera,
Speaker 1: saying things like, you know, this is kind of just
Speaker 1: year one of this new era that we're bringing back.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be a lot of improvement going forward. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be some growth, you know, just stick with us.
Speaker 1: We're in this for the long haul. The ESPN deal
Speaker 1: itself is a multi year deal like all of that.
Speaker 1: So I guess how much of what we saw this
Speaker 1: year year was really just that, as you called it,
Speaker 1: which I think is a great term, a startup, you know, Like,
Speaker 1: how much is it just this this is the year
Speaker 1: one product, This is what we first put out there
Speaker 1: in front of the consumer, and we're still going to
Speaker 1: have to figure it out.
Speaker 2: As we go. Yeah, I'd say it's probably fifty to fifty, right.
Speaker 2: I think the voices in the room that are that
Speaker 2: have been around for years, we're probably hurt. But I
Speaker 2: also think that the new people that you know, the
Speaker 2: gg's poker side brought in, we're also very very very hurt,
Speaker 2: almost to their detriment, maybe a little bit. I think
Speaker 2: what you're going to see moving forward is the attitude
Speaker 2: that we can be dedicated to doing things the way
Speaker 2: we want to do them, but also understanding that our
Speaker 2: audience is may have a different opinion, and we've kind
Speaker 2: of got to walk back a little bit, and we've
Speaker 2: got to have the audience reciprocate a little bit and
Speaker 2: meet us closer to the middle. I think next year
Speaker 2: you're going to see, in terms of just the live streaming,
Speaker 2: not just the ESPN product. With the live streaming, you're
Speaker 2: going to see all the bracelets on on livestream. I
Speaker 2: think it's they learned quickly that people are more interested,
Speaker 2: particularly the WSP in watching people in bracelets, watching final tables,
Speaker 2: watching the stars at these final tables, as opposed to
Speaker 2: watching day two of yet another high roller. So my
Speaker 2: hope is that the audience comes forward a little bit,
Speaker 2: that the production side moves back a little bit, and
Speaker 2: we eventually, you know, year two, Year three, really are
Speaker 2: landing in a place where not everybody's happy, because that's impossible,
Speaker 2: but there is, you know, some admiration from both sides.
Speaker 1: Let's get into these ratings a little bit here. You know,
Speaker 1: you wrote about the ratings over on your newsletter on
Speaker 1: substack the overlay, great name, by the way, I always
Speaker 1: always loved it. You talked about, you know, Night one,
Speaker 1: which so for those that you know may have been
Speaker 1: living under a rock, Night one of the final Table
Speaker 1: was on ESPN two. Nights two and three were on
Speaker 1: ESPN one or just ESPN as they call it, correct
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, But couldn't find ratings for the first night
Speaker 1: because they were off the sheet or too low, so
Speaker 1: you kind of estimated it.
Speaker 2: So the way that the ratings information that I got
Speaker 2: works is they just show you the top one hundred
Speaker 2: shows by viewership in the eighteen to forty nine demographic.
Speaker 2: Now that doesn't mean those are the top one hundred
Speaker 2: most popular shows. It just means that in the demographic
Speaker 2: that advertisers really genuinely care about, that's where they fall.
Speaker 2: And the ESPN two broadcasts of Night one didn't hit
Speaker 2: the top one hundred, so sort of estimated based on
Speaker 2: where the bottom of that list was and what an
Speaker 2: ESPN two product would normally do on that night, and
Speaker 2: really just said it's somewhere between one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand viewers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess my thought there the first thing
Speaker 1: that stuck out to me just you know, again, I've
Speaker 1: been in this industry long enough. On the content side
Speaker 1: of things, I know, the ratings side, I would say
Speaker 1: that just looking at the eighteen to forty nine, I
Speaker 1: know that's what's available, but the poker audience also skews
Speaker 1: generally a little bit older.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that number is actually the entire audience, not
Speaker 2: just the eighteen to forty nine. It just means that
Speaker 2: the number didn't fall within the top one hundred eighteen
Speaker 2: to forty nine. The number that I'm projecting in there,
Speaker 2: that is the entire audience, which is what the next
Speaker 2: two numbers also are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it moves over to ESPN. You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's the main channel. That's what everyone knows, you know.
Speaker 1: So and the numbers jump. Of course, they also jump
Speaker 1: because there's fewer people in the tournament, there's more money
Speaker 1: to be won. It's a little bit you know, it's
Speaker 1: deeper in the final table like all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: And they jump at least three x you know, based
Speaker 1: on the estimation, if not a little bit more foreigner
Speaker 1: in fifty one thousand, and then the second or sorry,
Speaker 1: the third night or the second night on ESPN, they
Speaker 1: jump up to almost six hundred thousand, So you know,
Speaker 1: I guess, just what are your thoughts on the jump?
Speaker 1: And then kind of when you first saw those numbers,
Speaker 1: like what was your reaction? Is this good? Is this bad?
Speaker 1: Were they what you expe I did you know all that?
Speaker 2: So the first thing I thought was like, how does
Speaker 2: ESPN think? And I didn't. I didn't have any inside information,
Speaker 2: nobody told me anything. But when I looked at the
Speaker 2: night one numbers, not being in the top one, hunters
Speaker 2: like that can't be good, Like that's not a good start.
Speaker 2: But then I was able to go back and look
Speaker 2: at previous Monday nights on ESPN two, and barring a
Speaker 2: situation where they get something running over from ESPN onto
Speaker 2: ESPN two, traditionally doesn't fall in the top one hundred anyway,
Speaker 2: ESPN two somewhere is I've been told somewhere between one
Speaker 2: hundred and one hundred and fifty. So it's it's really
Speaker 2: not going to drive huge ratings anyway. You're not going
Speaker 2: to get that casual viewer who lands on it and
Speaker 2: stops there right, So even the previous week and it
Speaker 2: didn't fall within the top one hundred. Whatever was on
Speaker 2: the air on ESPN two that night didn't hit. Now,
Speaker 2: the move to ESPN was significant, obviously because it gives
Speaker 2: you a good lead in the third night. I think
Speaker 2: it was we had a Major League Baseball game, was
Speaker 2: the lead in. It was a Brwise game, if I'm
Speaker 2: not mistay, or a Pirates game, yeah.
Speaker 1: Because I recall you putting it out there that the
Speaker 1: sweat is on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't want to seggs in nine innings because
Speaker 2: extra innings would have moved to ESPN two, right, or
Speaker 2: stalled the broadcast, which means that the end might have
Speaker 2: to get moved to final if it falls outside the window.
Speaker 2: So thankfully they got done pretty quick there. But that
Speaker 2: lead in is is certainly significant. To think anybody who's
Speaker 2: spent time talking to somebody in TV knows that what's
Speaker 2: on right before my show is almost as important as
Speaker 2: Mutt show. If there's no one watching, there's no one
Speaker 2: there to stick around and at least check out the
Speaker 2: first ten to fifty minutes of the WSP. So, but
Speaker 2: I think the you know that four hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand number. It doesn't sound great like you compare it
Speaker 2: to Joe Kata in two thousand and nine, which is
Speaker 2: the one that I mentioned in the newsletter, but one
Speaker 2: that was in November two. There was no such thing
Speaker 2: as streaming back then at the scale that it is now, right,
Speaker 2: No one was let me throw on Netflix or Hulu
Speaker 2: or Disney Plus or Apple TV and watch something else, right,
Speaker 2: So the choices were a little bit more restricted back then.
Speaker 2: That being said, the number the week after on the
Speaker 2: Tuesday night on ESPN was a WNBA game, and it
Speaker 2: was a record setting WNBA game for ESPN at the time,
Speaker 2: which was two million viewers. So if you think about that,
Speaker 2: the WSOP in its first year back in five years
Speaker 2: on ESPN, with frankly not a lot of promotion from
Speaker 2: the WSP or ESPN in terms of like hyping up
Speaker 2: this particular broadcast moment other than a little bit of
Speaker 2: social media, it did a quarter of that. And the
Speaker 2: WNBA has highlights on ESPN constantly and they're constantly talking
Speaker 2: about the product. So the fact that we hit like
Speaker 2: one quarter of that record audience, I think is like,
Speaker 2: it's not I'm not saying it's it's a parallel, but
Speaker 2: it tells me that it's got some potential to really
Speaker 2: turn into something for ESPN.
Speaker 1: I think yeah, And I mean I think also, like again,
Speaker 1: we're in a way, we're resetting. Poker's resetting. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: it is back on ESPN. But I think you're I mean,
Speaker 1: a fool for thinking it's just going to pick up
Speaker 1: right where it left off. Right, It's just just not
Speaker 1: going to do that.
Speaker 2: There was years where the broadcast on CBS Sports, the
Speaker 2: live broadcast at the final table, got fifty thousand people watching.
Speaker 2: We're ten x that. Right now, we're twelve x that.
Speaker 2: I mean, we should be at least feeling a little
Speaker 2: bit of relief that there's no longer just a fifty
Speaker 2: thousand person audience for this.
Speaker 1: Well, that's where I have my bone to pick with you.
Speaker 1: It was never live on CBS. It was always edited.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true. Yeah, the main event was always that prepackaging.
Speaker 1: So I think the benefit my only gripe is comparing
Speaker 1: live ESPN versus edited CBS Sports Network is not exactly
Speaker 1: Apple staffles.
Speaker 2: That's fair. I think the I mean the benefit and
Speaker 2: this is one of the things I wanted to mention
Speaker 2: about the two products on ESPN. One is the live
Speaker 2: product of those three nights. The other is those one
Speaker 2: hour post production Lawn and norm As the Stars. I
Speaker 2: think they did two episodes out of the final table.
Speaker 2: The value of those is not in the first time
Speaker 2: they air. The value in those is in the fact
Speaker 2: that they're going to air on a random Wednesday night
Speaker 2: when baseball gets rained out in September or when there's
Speaker 2: ESPN two is going to put it on when there's
Speaker 2: hockey on ESPN and they don't want to have some
Speaker 2: massive competing thing, but they're going to put this on
Speaker 2: and anybody who doesn't want to watch Hockey Team prod on.
Speaker 2: It's that repetition that's going to get the audience back
Speaker 2: over time. That's the investment that you have to make
Speaker 2: in the short to near term is getting that show
Speaker 2: back on in September, in October, December, January, and then
Speaker 2: next year when they return to the live product when
Speaker 2: we're promoting the live streams on YouTube. They've got that
Speaker 2: sort of audience that is like, oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: remember watching Lucas Junelan when the main event on ESPN,
Speaker 2: So they're a little bit more in tune and a
Speaker 2: little bit more comfortable to tune in.
Speaker 1: I guess my question where my mind goes next? And
Speaker 1: I don't even know if we necessarily have an answer
Speaker 1: for this right now, but just thinking out loud, is
Speaker 1: what's the end goal with it? Right?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Where what do we hope comes out of a successful
Speaker 1: WSP on ESPN partnership, Because there are two sides of it,
Speaker 1: right Like, I think the playing community would want a
Speaker 1: lot of people to see it back on ESPN and
Speaker 1: then a lot of people to get their butts in
Speaker 1: seats to ultimately play right, But that might not necessarily
Speaker 1: be the goal from the business side of things, because
Speaker 1: on the business side of things, I can make the
Speaker 1: argument that all you want to do is raise the
Speaker 1: ratings and the viewership numbers so that you can sell ads,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really matter ultimately if the WSP main
Speaker 1: event stays stagnant at nine two hundred and eight entries
Speaker 1: year over year, like that doesn't really matter. That said,
Speaker 1: I think the playing community might look at it being
Speaker 1: like like, if next year, let's say the WSP miniment
Speaker 1: gets nine thousand, so two hundred and eight less entries,
Speaker 1: the playing community might be like, why are we back
Speaker 1: on ESPN if we got fewer numbers. But like, it's
Speaker 1: they're two different things, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: I think I don't think the playing community necessarily looks
Speaker 1: into the business side of things versus the business side
Speaker 1: of things trying to do obviously what's good for the business.
Speaker 1: I get it, you want to drive revenue, right, So
Speaker 1: I guess what is the end goal? What is the
Speaker 1: hope that like poker can achieve from them?
Speaker 2: I think it's it's a little bit twofold, right if
Speaker 2: you understand how let's say the NFL TV rights deals work.
Speaker 2: ESPN goes the NFL and says we're going to give
Speaker 2: you a billion dollars for five years of NFL rights
Speaker 2: and we get one game a week. It didn't work
Speaker 2: that way with the WSP on ESPN, Right, It's the opposite,
Speaker 2: where the WSP basically buys airtime from ESPN to put
Speaker 2: their product there. And the hope is that you make
Speaker 2: that investment now and over time you turn it the
Speaker 2: other way so that you've got the opportunity to go
Speaker 2: to espnsa let's do a revshare deal where we don't
Speaker 2: pay you to put it on, but we're gonna split
Speaker 2: the cost fifty to fifty, and we'll split the AD
Speaker 2: revenue fifty to fifty. Your AD sales team can go nuts.
Speaker 2: Our ad sales team can go nuts, and we'll actually
Speaker 2: try and turn this into a profitable TV entity. I
Speaker 2: think if you can get it to break even, I
Speaker 2: think GG poker does backflips up and down the Las
Speaker 2: Vegas Strip. That being said, it's got to drive interest
Speaker 2: in the overall product. And you and I both work
Speaker 2: for a rold Poker tour, and so we know that
Speaker 2: the broadcast on TV without even trying, ultimately leads people
Speaker 2: to the website. It leads you to the internet. You
Speaker 2: go to wsp dot com to read a story, look
Speaker 2: at stats, look up your favorite player or whatever, and
Speaker 2: you end up clicking the play online button or play
Speaker 2: poker button, whatever it is, and you go to a
Speaker 2: product that monetizes that audience. Online poker, sweepstakes, poker for
Speaker 2: some people, free to play poker, like the Zingas of
Speaker 2: the world. I think, as long as there's there's conversion
Speaker 2: there and then you can show growth in WSOP events.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be in the main event, right,
Speaker 2: It can be in the thousand dollars, the six hundred dollars,
Speaker 2: the three k whatever. As long as you're showing growth
Speaker 2: in those I think everybody's going to be happy. But
Speaker 2: I don't think that GG wrote the check with the
Speaker 2: understanding that they would constantly be writing the check. I
Speaker 2: think they want to grow it into a viable broadcast
Speaker 2: entity while also continuing to sort of push the WSP
Speaker 2: further and further into the mainstream. And that's why it's
Speaker 2: on ESPN and not CBS Sports Again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, this
Speaker 1: is this is marketing, right, Like, this is like putting
Speaker 1: it on ESPN or any large network, like this is
Speaker 1: ultimately marketing for your brand, your tournament series, but also
Speaker 1: the game in general. You know, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: the WSP is a steward for poker overall. Also, I
Speaker 1: do want to point out that, you know, we have
Speaker 1: these ESPN ratings. We're talking about the WSP on ESPN,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily that's only a piece of the
Speaker 1: puzzle because it's international, it's on other networks, it's streaming
Speaker 1: in other places, like so these ratings, you know, these
Speaker 1: aren't just all the people that watch the w is
Speaker 1: AP main event, like there was many, many more of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we're ever going to get the
Speaker 1: full ratings number. We likely won't.
Speaker 2: Rite it's funny. I'm trying to actually track that down
Speaker 2: this week, and getting the US number was really challenging
Speaker 2: as it was because I guess the group that has
Speaker 2: the data licenses it out to people, and so you
Speaker 2: can't just be like, hey, I remember the media, can
Speaker 2: you help me with this? And they're like, yeah, it'll
Speaker 2: be fifteen thousand dollars for three weeks worth of reports,
Speaker 2: and you're like, yeah, that's just not going to happen.
Speaker 2: And so like even trying to find the international ratings,
Speaker 2: like some countries don't do ratings the same way that
Speaker 2: the American market does ratings. So it's it's proven to
Speaker 2: be a challenge. But I have been told by people
Speaker 2: that would know that the ratings in some of the
Speaker 2: international markets are really good and they're really happy. Some
Speaker 2: it leaves a little bit to be desired. But I
Speaker 2: think if they're they're hitting in key markets, like I
Speaker 2: know they're they're you know, hopeful that the Asian markets Japan,
Speaker 2: Korea does well, that some of the European markets where
Speaker 2: they have partnerships are doing well, and of course Brazil.
Speaker 2: So I think there's there's there's data that I got
Speaker 2: to find, but it's it's proving a little bit more
Speaker 2: difficult to track down than I thought it would.
Speaker 1: How important do you think ESPN, you know, the outlet,
Speaker 1: the brand, all that sort of stuff is important to
Speaker 1: growing poker.
Speaker 2: That's a tricky question because I think if if we're
Speaker 2: just thinking in a vacuum of is esp and important, Yes,
Speaker 2: because it's uh, it's got great brand recognition, it has
Speaker 2: a big audience. But if you came to me and said, hey,
Speaker 2: NBC wants to put it on NBC, that's much more valuable.
Speaker 2: We're going to have it on on Sunday night leading
Speaker 2: in from an NFL exhibition game. Yeah, that audience is
Speaker 2: going to be huge. Man Like, they're going to do
Speaker 2: great numbers. So I think it's important that we get
Speaker 2: it in front of the largest audience as possible, and
Speaker 2: in this day and age, that is ESPN right now. Now,
Speaker 2: going back to what I just said about turning this
Speaker 2: into a viable broadcast inventory, if they do that in
Speaker 2: three years with ESPN and their contract is up and
Speaker 2: they go looking that's when maybe ABC wants it or
Speaker 2: NBC wants it, you know, and they want to put
Speaker 2: it on the main network three nights in August. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you like watch a lot of TV, Donnie,
Speaker 2: but there's not a lot on TV in August, Like,
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of competition for those nights. So
Speaker 2: it seems like if you could turn this into a
Speaker 2: profitable entity, the bigger networks might come Crong or maybe
Speaker 2: a bigger streaming service. I mean, there was whispers, rumors,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, that the WSP was
Speaker 2: like really looking hard and trying to convince Netflix to
Speaker 2: maybe do something. So who knows where it ends up.
Speaker 2: But I think ESPN is the first step in getting
Speaker 2: it back to the mainstream and turning it into that
Speaker 2: that profitable The Black.
Speaker 1: Project, Yeah, I would agree, you know, I think ESPN ultimately,
Speaker 1: while it might not be the final destination for this
Speaker 1: whole new era of the WSP, but it's a stepping
Speaker 1: stone and it provides a lot of legitimacy. Whether you know,
Speaker 1: whether whether you want to dump on ESPN for what
Speaker 1: it is today or not versus what it once was, right,
Speaker 1: it's still a legitimate mainstream network that is displaying the
Speaker 1: game of poker, and it's displaying the w SIP, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's been it's been hard to come by
Speaker 1: in more recent times, you know, I get it. Yes,
Speaker 1: it has been on Poker Goo, it has been on
Speaker 1: various channels, CBS Sports Network, et cetera. But you know,
Speaker 1: for as great as I think CBS Sports Network is
Speaker 1: and in terms of their appetite for poker, ESPN is
Speaker 1: definitely like a step up, right, So I think you
Speaker 1: need that sort of legitimacy, even if it's just the
Speaker 1: casual viewer turning tuning in and be like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is on ESPN. Now, oh this must be like a
Speaker 1: big deal, right, you know, So like I think that
Speaker 1: that helps things out overall. And again I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know, this is like I think it's like
Speaker 1: a three year deal or whatever. It is usually multi
Speaker 1: year deals, meaning right around three years. I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is going to stay on ESPN. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's going to go somewhere else, but getting
Speaker 1: it on ESPN is a step in the right direction.
Speaker 1: If it ultimately stays there, cool, fine. If it goes
Speaker 1: somewhere else, great, cool. The last thing that we want
Speaker 1: to see though, is obviously this multi year deal to
Speaker 1: end and then it just nowhere because then it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean we tried, and it's obviously we all want
Speaker 1: to try, but maybe poker just doesn't have the draw
Speaker 1: that it once was like and that I mean it
Speaker 1: sucks to say for somebody like me who loves the
Speaker 1: game and believes that it should be out there, especially
Speaker 1: when you see some of the stuff that is on
Speaker 1: TV and I'm like, what the heck is going on?
Speaker 1: Especially and as you pointed out August when there's nothing
Speaker 1: on like you know, like poker is legit, like let's go.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I think it's I think it's
Speaker 1: a good step, and you know, I guess we'll see
Speaker 1: what next year brings ultimately, right yep.
Speaker 2: I think like I'm going to lean into the startup
Speaker 2: thing as long as people are listen to me talk
Speaker 2: about it, because I think it's important to realize that
Speaker 2: there are smart people in charge who are taking notes
Speaker 2: throughout this. And does that mean that they're going to
Speaker 2: fix everything that people think was wrong this year? Absolutely not,
Speaker 2: but they're going to make improvements. They're going to want
Speaker 2: to grow the audience. They're going to want me to
Speaker 2: have to write next year, but the million person audience, right,
Speaker 2: So I think that the strategy is get it on ESPN,
Speaker 2: Let's see what the audience is like, and then let's
Speaker 2: figure out the ways to grow it.
Speaker 1: Is there a number that you would want to target
Speaker 1: next year, like, like you know when these ratings come
Speaker 1: out again a year from now, that you would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: it hit this number. It's clearly working.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've written enough press releases in my time
Speaker 2: to know I can make any numbers sound like a win, right,
Speaker 2: Like we hit six hundred thousand. It was five hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety three thousand, but we hit six hundred. It's
Speaker 2: an improvement. I think internally, on a whiteboard somewhere they
Speaker 2: have a million written down somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a million would be great, right, you know,
Speaker 1: you basically get two x the viewership. The number itself
Speaker 1: a million. It's a headlining number, right, you know that's all.
Speaker 1: That's all great.
Speaker 2: So much of it is kind of out of their control. Right.
Speaker 2: If Phil Ivy and Daniel mcgrond you make the final
Speaker 2: table next year, forget a million, there's gonna be five
Speaker 2: million people watching on ESPN on the first night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree that. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of run good that needs to happen.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I have been in obviously on
Speaker 1: this side of things for long enough that you get
Speaker 1: you're down to the final two to three tables and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my gosh, setting up for the best
Speaker 1: final table ever and whatever this event is, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, boom boom boom, everyone just busts
Speaker 1: out and you're just left picking up the pieces. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it is what it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll get some run good, maybe we won't.
Speaker 2: But if they could get it like exact final table
Speaker 2: that they had this year, the same types of stories,
Speaker 2: the same types of people, without those headliners that I
Speaker 2: just mentioned, those marquee names, and they get a million
Speaker 2: in the audience, I think they'll be thrilled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I mean, let's hope for onward and upward.
Speaker 1: You also wrote about your winners and losers from this
Speaker 1: summer's WSP. You had six people listed. I'll just tell
Speaker 1: the people quickly who you had listed on the winners side,
Speaker 1: holding trophies Sean Deep, David Williams, Ty Stewart, and then
Speaker 1: on the loser side you had Phil Helmuth, Jared Blesnik,
Speaker 1: and stream watchers, which you grouped into kind of one
Speaker 1: category there. If you had to pick like the biggest
Speaker 1: of the bunch, like who was either like the biggest
Speaker 1: winner or the biggest loser, who you.
Speaker 2: Got, man, that's interesting. I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 2: pick on Phil Helmies. I think it's bizarre that every
Speaker 2: year he goes after Sean Deep and the Player of
Speaker 2: the Year ratings, despite the fact that it's.
Speaker 1: Changed every year. Friends, it's very weird.
Speaker 2: Like they're on Poker Night in America together, like they're
Speaker 2: they're yeah, they're friends. I don't know if they're friends.
Speaker 2: They're friendly.
Speaker 1: They say how much they love each other. They're like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah I love Phil, Oh yeah, I love Sean
Speaker 1: you know ball and then they're just going at each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's that's a little unusual. I really didn't
Speaker 2: like Blessnik going after the some of the players in
Speaker 2: the fan table. I kind of get what he was saying,
Speaker 2: but at some point some producer in the backshit have
Speaker 2: like turned the microphone off because he was just digging
Speaker 2: a grave. But for me, like and it's it's a
Speaker 2: little bit personal. But I've known David Williams. He was
Speaker 2: the like, the first poker pro I ever met was
Speaker 2: David Williams at the Blago in two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: maybe four, two thousand and four, and seeing him go
Speaker 2: from you know, the the young brash hip poker pro
Speaker 2: to at one point I interviewed him for Bluff Magazine.
Speaker 2: He was like, I want out. I just want to
Speaker 2: do something different with my life. I want to go
Speaker 2: do something else. He kept drining, he kept playing, he
Speaker 2: made final tables, he won some events. But to see
Speaker 2: him on day one of the pregame show on YouTube
Speaker 2: for the WSP and then grow throughout the WSP into
Speaker 2: like being really really good at what he was doing
Speaker 2: was pretty cool. So I really like that. That was
Speaker 2: one of my favorites from the summer.
Speaker 1: I think I would agree. I I loved David on
Speaker 1: the broadcast. I know him well also, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's extremely well spoken, He's articulate. He's also not gonna
Speaker 1: shy away from sharing his thoughts or takes, which I
Speaker 1: think is great too. You know, you need that, like
Speaker 1: I think to use Jared Bleusnik, who's also on this list,
Speaker 1: as an example, Jared went a little bit too far
Speaker 1: where you know, David has shared some takes, whether it
Speaker 1: be on the Countdown show, through some of the broadcasts
Speaker 1: even during the summer on social media, where they were
Speaker 1: just a little better worded or better pointed. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if there was a negative thing
Speaker 1: for David, people might people said that, you know, his
Speaker 1: strategy talk maybe has a little bit left desire to
Speaker 1: be desired there that said, I don't think you fully
Speaker 1: need super hardcore strategy talk, solver or talk all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. I think you need just like a
Speaker 1: guy or a girl who's been in this game forever
Speaker 1: has sat in those seats talking through what they would
Speaker 1: do in the moment. Like I think that that is
Speaker 1: what resonates with people. And I think that's like one
Speaker 1: of David's best things is like, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, he's just another poker player. Yes, he's got
Speaker 1: a great personality, he's able to talk on TV and
Speaker 1: be in front of the camera and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, but like he's just a guy who loves
Speaker 1: the game and that comes through in the broadcast, which
Speaker 1: I think wins, So that's why I'd agree.
Speaker 2: I think the the pregame show worked because you had
Speaker 2: such a great balance of different sort of people and
Speaker 2: different roles. But David Filing the you know, the known
Speaker 2: pro able to talk about the game from what the
Speaker 2: player they're talking about is thinking in this moment. I
Speaker 2: think that was super valuable, and I think David was
Speaker 2: just like natural at it.
Speaker 1: Was there anyone that narrowly missed the.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about is some of my favorite stories.
Speaker 2: But I think the Fox AND's like narrowly missed the
Speaker 2: cut on being the winners. I think that's just such
Speaker 2: a cool story that it like almost to the point
Speaker 2: of being underreported, which is wild because they get a
Speaker 2: lot of attention. But the fact that a husband and
Speaker 2: wife won bracelets at the same WSP was just I
Speaker 2: think it's just such a cool story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess a lot of is hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, I fall victim to it too, where I
Speaker 1: want to talk about things more, but the WSOP machine
Speaker 1: is just ghost at one hundred miles an hour and
Speaker 1: you kind of have no time to talk, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get it. Out there, that Kristen one or that
Speaker 1: Alex one. But then the next thing, you know, Dani
Speaker 1: Greno's making a deep run or whatever. There's a hundred
Speaker 1: other tournaments happening. It's like, how much longer can I
Speaker 1: just keep talking about this? So it sucks that, yeah,
Speaker 1: some stuff does it just has that short shelf life
Speaker 1: you know, at the top of the headline rankings. But
Speaker 1: it's that it's not deserving for sure, like it deserves
Speaker 1: to be talked about. It's just it's hard with so
Speaker 1: much going on. It really is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, covering the WSP. I think people that do it
Speaker 2: the first time are like, they get about two weeks in,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh my god, when does this stop? And
Speaker 2: it's like the phrase you'll hear is, oh, it's a marathon,
Speaker 2: not a sprint. The WSP is neither. It is twenty
Speaker 2: six point two miles of sprints one hundred meters stop,
Speaker 2: hundred meters stop, hundred meters stop for twenty six miles
Speaker 2: over fifty days. And covering it and trying to give
Speaker 2: like that additional context that you normally would do something
Speaker 2: is almost impossible because by the time that you get
Speaker 2: an interview with Kristin and Alex and sit down to
Speaker 2: transcribe it and write the story. Seven other people have
Speaker 2: won Bracelest and it's only been two days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and every single person, whether they're a big name
Speaker 1: or a new person to the scene, you know, everyone's got.
Speaker 2: A story, got a story.
Speaker 1: I know you love the story and tell you ask
Speaker 1: storytelling aspect. I love it too. You know, whether it's
Speaker 1: some I don't know teacher from Idaho who took some
Speaker 1: time off and is blasting in the summer that won
Speaker 1: their first bracelet, or whether you know it's a hard
Speaker 1: and pro who hasn't won a bracelet now just won
Speaker 1: their first, or whether it's Danil mcgron who winning number eight.
Speaker 1: Well whatever it is, like, there's there's stories to be
Speaker 1: had there. And yeah, I mean we hear it all
Speaker 1: the time, like you're focusing on this too much. You're
Speaker 1: not focusing on that too much. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: it's difficult. It really is difficult. Any other stories, I
Speaker 1: mean you talked about the Fox's and anything else stick
Speaker 1: out to you as some of your your favorites from the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think my favorite, my number one. Well, there's
Speaker 2: a there's a one B to the fox and thing
Speaker 2: and that's that. In the immediacy after Kristen won her bracelet,
Speaker 2: we had a brief, you know, one of those undameter
Speaker 2: sprint conversations in the community. We had a conversation about
Speaker 2: Kristin Foxen is one of the best no limit holding
Speaker 2: players in the world period. We're no longer talking about
Speaker 2: Kristin as the best female player in the world. We're
Speaker 2: talking about her as just the best player in the
Speaker 2: world that no liman holding tournaments potentially, And I think
Speaker 2: that's super valuable and something that probably again, like we
Speaker 2: had that conversation and then we moved on to whatever
Speaker 2: happened two days later and we were doing other things.
Speaker 2: But I think my favorite story of the summer is
Speaker 2: probably the return of brad Booth. For people that grew
Speaker 2: up in the era of poker that I grew up in,
Speaker 2: brad Booth is an og gangster like rolling up on
Speaker 2: high stakes poker, dumping cash on the table and being like,
Speaker 2: let's go. The fact that he came back after ten
Speaker 2: years away, dealt with a whole bunch of personal issues
Speaker 2: and was transparent and talking and like doing his own
Speaker 2: social media throughout. I thought that was really special, and
Speaker 2: I just think that hopefully there's more to come from
Speaker 2: from Brad in that sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the listener's out there on a little bit
Speaker 1: more on Brad's story, I would encourage them to go
Speaker 1: check out the Table one podcast. You know, a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago he was on there. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think that stuff still holds pretty true, and you know,
Speaker 1: not to get all witty about it, but you know,
Speaker 1: his story kind of got lost in the wilderness in
Speaker 1: a way this summer. You know, it's again there's just
Speaker 1: so much going on. But yeah, Brad Booth being back
Speaker 1: is awesome. You know, he's the guy who took the
Speaker 1: bricks of cash stuck them in the middle of the
Speaker 1: table against Phil Ivy with five high Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's Brad Booth, you know, Like it's just he's incredible.
Speaker 1: And I think having characters like that is what makes
Speaker 1: poker so great. And then just bringing that part back
Speaker 1: to the ESPN side of things, highlighting those characters more
Speaker 1: versus focusing on just the poker play, I think that's
Speaker 1: going to be ultimately a win, right, Like, the characters
Speaker 1: are what drive the interest in the game. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: You're right, The only thing you need in poker to
Speaker 1: be able to play is money. That's all you need.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't need to qualify by some sort
Speaker 1: of skill level or whatever it is. You just need
Speaker 1: the dollars to get in there. And you can be
Speaker 1: anyone from any walk of life. And yeah, I just
Speaker 1: wish we can just continue to tap into that, you
Speaker 1: know more as we go. You covered poker forever, you
Speaker 1: know you've been I don't know writing for Bluff pocket Fives.
Speaker 1: By the way, I wanted to ask this, do you
Speaker 1: miss Pocket Fives because I fucking miss pocketphies Man every day.
Speaker 1: I just missed the rankings, rankings.
Speaker 2: Like when I got that gig, you know, Bluff closed
Speaker 2: down and Pocketphile's was like nice enough to bring me
Speaker 2: on board, and like it was one. It was a
Speaker 2: whole new world because I had followed it, but not
Speaker 2: like not the way the Pocketphy's audience expected their top
Speaker 2: writer to be following it. So the first like three
Speaker 2: months was uh, was a lot of getting into it.
Speaker 2: But once you're into it, yeah, I miss it. Like
Speaker 2: it's the leaderboard aspect of just seeing who the top
Speaker 2: online player in the world is or who's who's rising,
Speaker 2: Who's falling, et cetera. That was so fun, and you know,
Speaker 2: I got to see and know a little bit of
Speaker 2: the players in there. Nicholas Hostile when he made his
Speaker 2: big run if you years ago in the main event,
Speaker 2: Everyone's like, oh, this guy's legit, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been writing about it for seven years, and I've
Speaker 2: been writing about him because I think he's the number
Speaker 2: one or number two online player in the world. During
Speaker 2: that almost entire time, he was one of the like
Speaker 2: the biggest bad asses on Pocketphy's rankings. Patrick Leonard, who
Speaker 2: got a whole bunch of love for helping Lucas Jumalan
Speaker 2: this year, was another guy who was, you know in
Speaker 2: the mix, Christy Union, like all those guys, Sean Deeb.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I genuinely miss it. I understand why it
Speaker 2: went away, but I wish there was a way that
Speaker 2: we could get in the way back machine and go
Speaker 2: back to having it on a full time basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I I think there's a giant void
Speaker 1: in the industry without it. I just the online side
Speaker 1: of things is so important, and having that ranking system
Speaker 1: to be able to provide some sort of legitimacy to
Speaker 1: it put more eyeballs on it, you know, really serve
Speaker 1: as that scoreboard for who who's doing well, who's not.
Speaker 1: You know, I think is is great and every I
Speaker 1: just I brought it up because the other day I
Speaker 1: was listening to the Skill Game podcast with Johnny Vibes
Speaker 1: and he had pads on Patrick Leonard, and Patrick Leonard
Speaker 1: brought it up, you know, like wanting to be wanting
Speaker 1: to improve his ranking every single week when the rankings
Speaker 1: used to come out, and it just I was like
Speaker 1: in my car and like I paused the podcast and
Speaker 1: I was just like, I think I audibly said, damn it,
Speaker 1: Like I wish Pocket Vives was back, like I did,
Speaker 1: Like I wish or some form of it or whatever
Speaker 1: the next generation of it is like just the idea
Speaker 1: of tracking online poker, the wins, the losses, the triple crowns,
Speaker 1: you know, all that sort of stuff is like you
Speaker 1: just really have you're kind of flying blind, like who's
Speaker 1: doing well, who's not doing well?
Speaker 2: Like who are the top players? Right now? Let me
Speaker 2: give the listeners a quick rundown of why it went
Speaker 2: away and why it's probably not going to come back.
Speaker 2: The when Pocket Phyle's was first born. There was three
Speaker 2: guys in a dorm room at Vanderbilt who figured out
Speaker 2: a way to track online results. They literally had people
Speaker 2: writing in emails with who they thought the top ten
Speaker 2: players were. That's where the rankings came from. But then
Speaker 2: they figured out that they can get those results, put
Speaker 2: them in their database, come up with a ranking system,
Speaker 2: and display those And that worked great for years until
Speaker 2: right after even Uiga was sort of a bit of
Speaker 2: a bump, but sites stopped providing the feed, and the
Speaker 2: feed wasn't It's not like a USB plug that everybody
Speaker 2: gives you with their feed in it. This site had
Speaker 2: did it this way, this site did it that way,
Speaker 2: this site did something totally different, This site was completely different.
Speaker 2: And this site only gave you an exit an ex alfa.
Speaker 2: So there was, you know, our development team was constantly
Speaker 2: trying to figure out ways to make all of this
Speaker 2: data come in cleanly, display the same and it was
Speaker 2: super challenging that way. And then when they would break,
Speaker 2: like sometimes feeds would break, you'd go to the site
Speaker 2: and say, hey, can I get can you guys help
Speaker 2: us reset that feed? Like, yeah, it's on our list,
Speaker 2: but like we have a thousand other things that were
Speaker 2: more interested in, and over time, it just got to
Speaker 2: the point where those feeds were held together by bubblegum,
Speaker 2: duct tape and a toothpick. And I felt bad for
Speaker 2: development team because you know, we'd lose you know, eight
Speaker 2: eight New Jersey would just like go away, And suddenly
Speaker 2: our rankings from New Jersey were garbage because quarter of
Speaker 2: the results weren't being tracked. So it got to the
Speaker 2: point where sites, I won't mention them, some sites just
Speaker 2: said we're just not going to supply the feed anymore.
Speaker 2: We're done. We just don't think there's any value in
Speaker 2: giving this to you and exposing the player data. And
Speaker 2: then European privacy laws got tricky, and a whole lot
Speaker 2: of things just sort of converged at once to make
Speaker 2: it almost impossible to keep the rankings in their peer form,
Speaker 2: in their real you know, up to date form alive.
Speaker 2: And I don't think you're ever going to see a
Speaker 2: scenario again, unfortunately, where all the online poker sites say, hey,
Speaker 2: random site that we have no affiliation with other than
Speaker 2: being an actual affiliate, here's our data, please use it
Speaker 2: to make money for those other sides.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I would push back to the site
Speaker 1: saying that there's no value in it for them, because
Speaker 1: I think if you as long as you're not getting
Speaker 1: into like plus minus, which these sites never really were,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, the only thing that you could
Speaker 1: gleam from the rankings is like, oh, so and so
Speaker 1: hasn't cashed in forever. Maybe he's on a downer type
Speaker 1: of thing. But if you kind of just treat it
Speaker 1: like Hendon Mob does with Live, where it's only like
Speaker 1: up up, up up up, so every cash you just
Speaker 1: earn more points on the leaderboard and that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: then I think ultimately it just puts more eyeballs on
Speaker 1: your players, which is then your platform. You know, people
Speaker 1: want to possibly tune in to watch stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I remember, like back in the days when Pocket fives
Speaker 1: was flying, you know, you would check the leaderboard out,
Speaker 1: you would see some names. Then you would probably sweat
Speaker 1: the end of the Sunday Million or the big tournament
Speaker 1: on full tilt that weekend or whatever, and you'd say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: Pads is at the final table. Oh Leana nine hunter
Speaker 1: is at the final table. Guys ranked number one on
Speaker 1: Pocket fives. I want to be like that guy, and
Speaker 1: like so I think it all can work in everyone's favor.
Speaker 1: And then to the point of like driving traffic elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, a rising tidele lists all boats
Speaker 1: in some ways. I don't think it's going to be
Speaker 1: that much of a big deal, right. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, if you if you're a platform
Speaker 1: and you work on having the best platform, the best
Speaker 1: tournament offering that sort of stuff, then people are gonna
Speaker 1: come to your site versus elsewhere, right. So it's there's
Speaker 1: that competition aspect, and if you're if you're staying true
Speaker 1: to that and building the best product that you can,
Speaker 1: They're like, who cares? Right, So I think I would.
Speaker 2: I don't disagree. I just know that people on the
Speaker 2: business side of those sites do.
Speaker 1: No. I get it, and I agree with you. It's
Speaker 1: not coming back, you know. I'm just saying like if
Speaker 1: I was able to try and argue with somebody like
Speaker 1: almost like if I was if I was put in
Speaker 1: charge of an online online site today, I would be
Speaker 1: actively like building out ranking.
Speaker 2: The first thing you do is build a leader board
Speaker 2: that is publicly accessible and feels like something you can.
Speaker 1: Now maybe maybe pocket five. The idea of a pocket
Speaker 1: five's online leaderboard thing. You know, maybe that never happens
Speaker 1: because sites just take it upon themselves right to do
Speaker 1: it on their own platforms, like Okay, i'm coin poker,
Speaker 1: I'm w s A P, I'm GG whatever. So if
Speaker 1: you want to see the WSOP ones, you go to
Speaker 1: WSP dot com. You navigate to the online section, there's
Speaker 1: the rankings, same with GG, you know, same with this
Speaker 1: and that and the other thing, right, like like maybe
Speaker 1: you could do it that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, there's like some of the sites do
Speaker 2: have their own their own leader boards and their own
Speaker 2: contest built around them. But yeah, I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody's going to have a different opinion on whether or
Speaker 2: not they want to do those, and I I just
Speaker 2: long for the days of uh sweating the rankings update
Speaker 2: every week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you get the whole like this guy's
Speaker 1: the best in the world. Now. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I just have no idea. Did you know writing about
Speaker 1: poker or writing about the WSP specifically for ESPN change
Speaker 1: the way you thought? I mean, I know you got
Speaker 1: a little bit into it when you talked about working
Speaker 1: with your editor earlier, you know, just about how you
Speaker 1: kind of had go through that process and and you know,
Speaker 1: make things a little bit differently. But did it make
Speaker 1: you think about, like, you know, what makes a good
Speaker 1: poker story versus what doesn't make a good poker story,
Speaker 1: And did you have to kind of rework your brain
Speaker 1: in that regard.
Speaker 2: Not really, because I think I've always thought of what
Speaker 2: makes a good and you can take the word poker out,
Speaker 2: but I think what makes a good story, a good
Speaker 2: feature story is finding the humanity in the person that
Speaker 2: you're speaking with and relaying that to the to the reader,
Speaker 2: and framing that in a way that they can relate
Speaker 2: to or empathize with, or sympathize with, or even in
Speaker 2: some cases hate, Like I don't like the way that
Speaker 2: guy thinks about the world. That's fine, but that you're,
Speaker 2: as the reader, you're still finding a way to relate
Speaker 2: to the humanity of that person, so that that was
Speaker 2: still very much there, you know. I wrote about Greg
Speaker 2: Mueller and Sean Buchannon and the tough conversation that they
Speaker 2: had the ultimately led to Greg, you know, putting his
Speaker 2: best foot forward in the main event this year, I
Speaker 2: wrote a little bit about Lucas and some of the
Speaker 2: things that have gotten him to the point where he
Speaker 2: is now or was heading into the Final table. Wrote
Speaker 2: about the grinder and the year that he had, but
Speaker 2: it was always about like who is this person and
Speaker 2: how can I make the most people care about him
Speaker 2: in a way that will leave some of an impression
Speaker 2: with them and get to the end of the article
Speaker 2: and be like, okay, like I didn't reading that was
Speaker 2: worth my time, and now I know a little bit
Speaker 2: more about this person and care more about this person
Speaker 2: in some aspect. So it didn't really change that much.
Speaker 2: Maybe the thing that changed the most was sort of
Speaker 2: the some of the language and maybe being a little
Speaker 2: bit more explanatory in some areas where I know the
Speaker 2: poker audience gets this when I say X y Z,
Speaker 2: whereas the super recreational reader who maybe watches poker once
Speaker 2: every couple of years or can recognize five players, that
Speaker 2: was a little bit different for sure.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on Lucas Jummelan as a WSP
Speaker 1: main event champion.
Speaker 2: So there's a moment during the lead up to the
Speaker 2: Final Table where I think it's the start of day six,
Speaker 2: Day seven maybe where Jeff Platt pulls his boys aside
Speaker 2: his rail and they're a group of twenty one, twenty two,
Speaker 2: twenty three year old kids, and he's talking to Hayden Hetland,
Speaker 2: who's his best friend's poker pro also, and you know,
Speaker 2: Hayden just said he's built for this, and there was
Speaker 2: something in the way he said it that struck me.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't the way that a frat boy talks
Speaker 2: about his buddy who's running deep in the main, like, oh,
Speaker 2: my boy's built for this. It was different, right. He
Speaker 2: was genuinely like, my guy has my guy eats, sleeps,
Speaker 2: and breezes poker. And he was specifically thinking about this
Speaker 2: moment for multiple years in his life. And the more
Speaker 2: that I spoke to Lucas and the more that I
Speaker 2: spoke to people around him, I genuinely believe that he
Speaker 2: was like the real deal. You know. You think back
Speaker 2: to the O. I think it's the three oh four
Speaker 2: Dewas Uinneamt coverage where we get a lot of the crew,
Speaker 2: Dutch Boys, Scott Fishman, et cetera. And like, there's this
Speaker 2: scene where Dutch Boy busts out of the main and
Speaker 2: he's walking out opinions and I think Scott Fishman looks
Speaker 2: into the camera He's like, we're taking over the poker world,
Speaker 2: and like two years later, no one had heard from them. Right,
Speaker 2: That's what I mean when like that is not Lucas
Speaker 2: and his friends. The more I spoke to Lucas, whether
Speaker 2: it was in the lead up to the final table,
Speaker 2: we're at the final table, the more I realize that
Speaker 2: this is a super humble kid who is dedicated to
Speaker 2: being very good at, if not the best, at what
Speaker 2: he does, and that happens to be playing poker. I
Speaker 2: think if he had gone into you know, he's got
Speaker 2: his degree in data analytics or whatever it was, if
Speaker 2: he had gone into an office job nine to five,
Speaker 2: I think whoever hires him gets a guy who wants
Speaker 2: to just like put in the work. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, Lucas is not walking around Spokane, Washington to
Speaker 2: day telling people that he's the best poker player in
Speaker 2: the world. He understands that. You know, he won the
Speaker 2: biggest turnam in the world. He got a massive amount
Speaker 2: of shine for two weeks, and the only thing that
Speaker 2: we're going to judge him by moving forward is what
Speaker 2: he does next. And I think that he's a he
Speaker 2: comes from a good family, he's humble, kid, He's surrounded
Speaker 2: by good people. I think that there's you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of like where he's going to be in four
Speaker 2: or five years. I think he's a good kid, and
Speaker 2: I think he's going to still be playing poker and
Speaker 2: probably having some deep runs on some final tables.
Speaker 1: I really would like his crew to take off and
Speaker 1: be in the spotlight. I like the idea of having
Speaker 1: cruise in poker. Now it's not that we don't have
Speaker 1: cruise in poker. You know, there are little clicks here
Speaker 1: and there, but you have to have that front runner,
Speaker 1: that headliner, that person that's sort of leading the charge
Speaker 1: carrying the tour. And in this case, that is going
Speaker 1: to be Lucas, right because he just won the biggest
Speaker 1: tournament in the world. Right, So now, I like if
Speaker 1: he's got big Red Hayden, hetln you know, behind him,
Speaker 1: Rand and Sunshine, those guys, you know, just like travel
Speaker 1: in the circuit having some success. You know, even if
Speaker 1: Lucas plays the more like low key personality, maybe Hayden's
Speaker 1: the guy who's out there kind of a little bit
Speaker 1: more brashing in your face or whatever it may like,
Speaker 1: just have like those different personalities in it. I think
Speaker 1: that's ultimately good, you know, so I want to see it, Like,
Speaker 1: I hope these guys have a lot of success. And
Speaker 1: it does seem like a bunch of them went to
Speaker 1: Cherokee and won some rings and won some big stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's great, Like we need a
Speaker 1: crew like that to be sort of at the top
Speaker 1: or near the top in the spotlight, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the fact that they're all, you know, like
Speaker 2: I said, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, and they're
Speaker 2: playing on the circuit and like quote unquote paying their dues,
Speaker 2: but you know, they're they're playing, they're going to these
Speaker 2: these serious circuit stops where they can you know, you
Speaker 2: get a lot of reps and then you get a
Speaker 2: lot of opportunity to learn and get better. And they're
Speaker 2: they understand what they're doing, like they are building towards
Speaker 2: being bigger and better players, not just being circuit crushers
Speaker 2: for this year and then maybe next year we'll figure
Speaker 2: something else out. They definitely seem like they have a
Speaker 2: plan and they're well, they're well thought out and how
Speaker 2: they're approaching the game, which I certainly appreciate.
Speaker 1: All right, buddy, that's all I got for you. Tell
Speaker 1: everyone where they can follow you.
Speaker 2: Well, you can get me on Twitter at lance underscore Bradley.
Speaker 2: I'm not there as often as I used to, let's go,
Speaker 2: but mainly you can get me on substack at theoverlay
Speaker 2: dot substack dot com and uh, just follow me there.
Speaker 2: It's free. For now, it's free and we'll see where
Speaker 2: I land next. But hopefully some more stuff on ESPN
Speaker 2: and in your future.
Speaker 1: I won't I won't go too much into it, but
Speaker 1: I will tease it here. You have a story on
Speaker 1: your substack again theoverlay dot substack dot com where you
Speaker 1: dug up the man behind the WSP's music from the
Speaker 1: old Days.
Speaker 2: One of the favorite things that I've written in a
Speaker 2: long time. And the reaction from it from people in
Speaker 2: Vegas when I was there covering the final table blew
Speaker 2: my mind. I had strangers coming out to me and
Speaker 2: being like, I read your story on the guy that
Speaker 2: wrote the song. I thought that was really cool, and
Speaker 2: I I was like, man like. I started that as
Speaker 2: like a hey, let's just see if I can find
Speaker 2: this guy, and it turned into this really cool piece.
Speaker 2: So yeah, by all means, check it out. It's uh,
Speaker 2: it's worth the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely check that out.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: It is an awesome read. And if you're a poker
Speaker 1: nerd like like I am, like Lances as well, you
Speaker 1: guys are gonna love that story. So Lance Bradley, I
Speaker 1: appreciate you coming on as always, great catching up. Hopefully
Speaker 1: it's a not too long before I get to talk
Speaker 1: to you again, but I appreciate it, sir.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Don big thanks to Lance Bradley for joining me. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to subscribe to the overlay on a substack. I
Speaker 1: am an avid reader. Lance does some digging for some
Speaker 1: great great stuff. As always, I still have a few
Speaker 1: more things that I want to hit on on this episode.
Speaker 1: I know Lance and I at length, but you know,
Speaker 1: the other day I was driving. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things where I can still picture exactly where I was
Speaker 1: when I was driving, kind of the moment that it
Speaker 1: hit me. I don't know exactly what triggered it. Oh,
Speaker 1: actually no, I do. I saw a resource World, okay,
Speaker 1: kind of off in the distance I was. I was
Speaker 1: getting onto the highway and I saw it, and you know,
Speaker 1: something popped into my head in that moment, and I said, man,
Speaker 1: I really miss that and that. I mean, I miss
Speaker 1: the North American Pop Tour. I miss the NAPT, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know if maybe I'm changing a
Speaker 1: little bit. You know, as I mentioned with Lance, I've
Speaker 1: been missing Pocket fives. I mean that's been a feeling
Speaker 1: of mine and I bring it up every once in
Speaker 1: a while, but you know, every every month or so,
Speaker 1: maybe every two months, I have this feeling like, man,
Speaker 1: I wish Pocketfhives is back. I always have that feeling.
Speaker 1: Now I started having this feeling as it relates to
Speaker 1: the NAPT. You know, it's different because unlike Pocket Fives,
Speaker 1: you know, which which hasn't been around for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, Like we got a taste of Poker Stars
Speaker 1: bringing the NAPT back. And now I just I can't
Speaker 1: help but think that it's just quietly gone again without
Speaker 1: really any sort of word. Now, maybe that gives me
Speaker 1: some hope that there's a chance it comes back, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't heard anything by this point
Speaker 1: on the calendar. You would think that we would have
Speaker 1: heard if it was happening right now. I know that
Speaker 1: Resorts World closed its poker room, yes, but I don't
Speaker 1: see why you know, you can't just go to the
Speaker 1: venue and have a poker festival. I mean, that happens
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the world, right, you know, they go to
Speaker 1: places where they don't necessarily have poker rooms, right, and
Speaker 1: I think they do just fine. And it's a bummer,
Speaker 1: you know. I really liked what the NAPT was doing
Speaker 1: in this return, bringing it back to Las Vegas. I
Speaker 1: thought it occupied a really really good spot on the
Speaker 1: poker calendar, you know, took place in that that early
Speaker 1: part of November for the large majority of it. Resorts
Speaker 1: World itself was a great venue for it, you know,
Speaker 1: I know, Resorts World, there's a lot of talk that
Speaker 1: it's not doing the best. They obviously had to close
Speaker 1: the poker room, you know, fairly recently, like all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But it's a great property. It's spread
Speaker 1: out if you're if you're somebody who's like you know,
Speaker 1: the was ap moving down to the Las Vegas Strip.
Speaker 1: It was better at the rear, like if you're in
Speaker 1: that sort of camp because you like the fact that
Speaker 1: you can get in and out of the parking lot easier.
Speaker 1: It's not crammed onto the strip like all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean, that's kind of what Resorts World
Speaker 1: felt like. Like it's, you know, right off the highway,
Speaker 1: right there, in and out, you're not into the strip,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's pretty great, to be honest. So
Speaker 1: you know, a small part of me, I guess, was
Speaker 1: just kind of holding out hope that they would find
Speaker 1: a way to bring it back. I wouldn't say that
Speaker 1: they would need to find another home even after Resource
Speaker 1: World did close its pokeroom. I think you still go
Speaker 1: back there and you just bring people in, just like
Speaker 1: when you go to some of these venues for an
Speaker 1: EPT or something else. You know, you just bring in
Speaker 1: your staff, you hire dealers and do the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, maybe I'm being a little bit
Speaker 1: premature here. Maybe something does change, Maybe we see the
Speaker 1: napt again down the road, and I hope we do.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's a great series. I think
Speaker 1: it's a great brand. They put on great events, you know,
Speaker 1: so I think there's certainly a place for it in
Speaker 1: North American poker. Which is it's interesting that I'm bringing
Speaker 1: this up knowing what I'm about to get into next,
Speaker 1: just because you know, we have talked at times about
Speaker 1: how much poker there is, and it's almost like there's
Speaker 1: too much poker. But listen, I genuinely miss having the
Speaker 1: Poker Stars an apt on the calendar. I miss having
Speaker 1: it here in my city that I can just you know,
Speaker 1: head on over to Resorts World and play a really,
Speaker 1: really good event. So that's a bummer. And I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about that the other day, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope it comes back, but who knows, we haven't
Speaker 1: heard anything. My next thought is that there's there's something
Speaker 1: happening in live poker right now that I think is
Speaker 1: pretty damn encouraging overall. You know, we hear constantly, whether
Speaker 1: it be in some inner circles within poker, you know,
Speaker 1: media members talking, players talking, whatever it is. We see
Speaker 1: it on social media, et cetera. But we just hear
Speaker 1: constantly about the health of poker. Is poker booming? Is
Speaker 1: there too much poker?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Are there too many operators, too many events, too many
Speaker 1: tours to compete for the player pool? Are there are
Speaker 1: there too many events out there like all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. Our numbers declining? You know, we often look
Speaker 1: at numbers year over the year. I do that plenty myself,
Speaker 1: you know, and just compare things to what they were,
Speaker 1: and you know, listen, I do think that there is
Speaker 1: probably too much poker in some respects, or maybe I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say too much poker, but too many events that
Speaker 1: are competing for the player pool. So you know, maybe
Speaker 1: there can be some scaling back in that regard. There
Speaker 1: are so many options now that players and prize pools
Speaker 1: are inevitably getting spread around. I don't think that's something
Speaker 1: that can be ignored, right, But you look at some
Speaker 1: of these fields. You got the Arizona State Poker Championship
Speaker 1: drawing more than four thousand entries. I think it was
Speaker 1: the twentieth annual Arizona State Poker Championship down at Talking
Speaker 1: Stick that just wrapped up. And when I saw that
Speaker 1: it got more than four thousand entries, when I saw
Speaker 1: some of the community that was traveling that I don't
Speaker 1: think traveled there before, I was like, hmm, this is interesting,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what spawned this is this whole
Speaker 1: thought process. Let me start looking around, you know what
Speaker 1: else is happening, Because I'm like, okay, this this event,
Speaker 1: which always was a pretty big event, drew pretty well.
Speaker 1: You know, even like in my circle, people were telling me, hey,
Speaker 1: you should try and make a trip down all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. I was thinking, Hmm, isn't there a
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff happening right now? Like how is
Speaker 1: this one able to draw more than four thousand entries?
Speaker 1: For I think it's an eleven hundred dollars buy and
Speaker 1: when I think, like, for example, WSP Circuit is running
Speaker 1: in Cherokee, and that's always a huge turnout in the
Speaker 1: Cherokee side, Right, So having those two things kind of
Speaker 1: competing against each other, that doesn't really make you think
Speaker 1: that both of these events are going to do extremely well,
Speaker 1: but it ends up that they did do extremely well. Right,
Speaker 1: So you got this Arizona State Poker Championship drawing more
Speaker 1: than the four thousand entries. You got that WSP Circuit
Speaker 1: main event at Cherokee draws almost seventeen hundred. I think
Speaker 1: the number was sixteen eighty or sixteen eighty one, which
Speaker 1: is the fourth largest WSP Circuit main event in that
Speaker 1: venue's history, right, so doing very well there. You just
Speaker 1: had the MSPT Illinois Poker State Championship drawing more than
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred entries, which was reported as a state record.
Speaker 1: Shout out to my guy mon, no war for taking
Speaker 1: that damn thing down for two hundred and five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: You know you want to go outside the US. You
Speaker 1: got ept Barcelona the Poker Stars Open. I think it's
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty euros is the buy in there? That thing
Speaker 1: draws more than forty three hundred entries, so very very good,
Speaker 1: very very big numbers. From what we've said many times,
Speaker 1: is probably the elite price point for poker. You know
Speaker 1: that that one K to like one to two k,
Speaker 1: right probably. I mean the circuit stuff is seventeen hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: so it's like one K to seventeen hundred like that
Speaker 1: price point. It's high enough that if you do get
Speaker 1: good turnouts, it's big enough stakes to draw some some
Speaker 1: bigger players in because you know they're willing to play
Speaker 1: that win that much money, et cetera. It's also small
Speaker 1: enough that it's accessible for a lot of people, right,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not I'm not trying to do a
Speaker 1: year over year analysis here on every single one of
Speaker 1: these tournaments that I just use as some examples, because
Speaker 1: some of these might be up, some of these might
Speaker 1: be down. Like I get it, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into that, that's not my point
Speaker 1: with this whole thing here, But what these numbers do
Speaker 1: seem to tell me, and the feeling that I get
Speaker 1: from it, is that there is still a very very
Speaker 1: very healthy appetite for live poker when again, the price
Speaker 1: point is accessible and when the event feels meaningful. I
Speaker 1: think these events, these brands that I've mentioned, they've all
Speaker 1: done a really really good job of making their event
Speaker 1: mean something, stand out to the crowd, want to be attended,
Speaker 1: want people to travel for them, all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: And that ultimately is what I feel is important. Because
Speaker 1: we do spend a lot of time talking, especially on
Speaker 1: this podcast, about the higher buying stuff, the ten k's,
Speaker 1: the fifteen k's, the twenty five k's, heck, the hunter k's,
Speaker 1: you know, because those are the tournaments that frequent our
Speaker 1: space at poker Grow on the PGT a little bit
Speaker 1: more right, Those are also the tournaments that are more
Speaker 1: likely to be live stream. They draw in more of
Speaker 1: the star players, the big names, right, and then that
Speaker 1: all can lead towards headlines. So we talk about that
Speaker 1: a lot, but the health of live tournament poker probably
Speaker 1: tells you a lot more when thousands of people are
Speaker 1: playing the game in these events, and they're willing to
Speaker 1: put up you know, one K, eleven hundred and twelve
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen hundred, in the case of the WSB circuit,
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred dollars to play. You know. So these events
Speaker 1: that I touched on, and there's probably something that I
Speaker 1: even left out here. I just kind of did a
Speaker 1: quick look around. I didn't want to start going through,
Speaker 1: you know, a dozen events, but you know, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff happening at Seminole. There was all
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, right, you know. So, but those
Speaker 1: are four different events, They're in four pretty different markets.
Speaker 1: You've got Arizona, you got Cherokee, complete opposite sides of
Speaker 1: the country. That Illinois Poker State Championship is, you know,
Speaker 1: not on an opposite side of the country. It's in
Speaker 1: the middle, but it's up much more north, right, So
Speaker 1: you're kind of covering the whole US. And then I
Speaker 1: talked about the Barcelona one because I wanted to take
Speaker 1: it outside and get a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: global outlook as well. You know, so we're talking about
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of entries across the board, and I
Speaker 1: don't care if you want to slice it between uniques,
Speaker 1: re entries, whatever, but overall that looks pretty damn healthy
Speaker 1: to me, and I think it's pretty great. And then lastly,
Speaker 1: here this news did drop on Thursday, big tournament news
Speaker 1: in that the full schedule being released for WSP Paradise.
Speaker 1: We already knew Paradise was coming back, right that that
Speaker 1: is is not news. You know, December two through December seventeenth,
Speaker 1: those were the dates that were announced. We were waiting
Speaker 1: to hear the schedule, and now we know what the
Speaker 1: festival looks like. There are twenty Bracelet events, one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million dollars in total guarantees, and of course
Speaker 1: the WSP Super Main Event, that WSP Paradise Super Main
Speaker 1: Event is back, and it comes with a fifty million
Speaker 1: dollar prize pool guarantee. And I was going through the
Speaker 1: schedule and there are a few things that jump out
Speaker 1: to me. Right, Ultimately, everything kind of led me to
Speaker 1: one bigger question with it all. You know, before I
Speaker 1: get to that question, let me just point out that
Speaker 1: you got the WSP Superman event being at a fifty
Speaker 1: million dollar guarantee that is down from last year. When
Speaker 1: they had it at sixty million. Remember they came out
Speaker 1: with fifty, then they bumped it to sixty. Now it's
Speaker 1: going back to fifty. And they didn't miss last year.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would say that they comfortably cleared the
Speaker 1: sixty million dollar guarantee when I know there was a
Speaker 1: lot of push, especially late, to get people down there.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of conversation whether or not they
Speaker 1: were going to hit the sixty million dollar guarantee because
Speaker 1: it was quite a lofty goal, and kudos to them
Speaker 1: for sticking their necks out to achieve that. But they
Speaker 1: did get more than I think it was more than
Speaker 1: seventy two million dollars in the prize pool at the
Speaker 1: end of it all, So they cleared up by twelve million.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's ultimately pretty comfortable. So I would say
Speaker 1: that they could have just ran it back at sixty, right.
Speaker 1: I feel like it wasn't in jeopardy of being missed,
Speaker 1: you know, unless they're kind of projecting what's to come.
Speaker 1: And maybe part of that is at least in this
Speaker 1: announcement that we got on Thursday, the partnership with Triton
Speaker 1: Poker series that became a major part of w CP
Speaker 1: Paradise last time around. It isn't a part of the
Speaker 1: announced schedule this time now. Of course that can change.
Speaker 1: Maybe that it's just TBD. I don't know, but you know,
Speaker 1: right now it's not there. So maybe they're they're baking
Speaker 1: in some of that. Hey maybe if we don't have
Speaker 1: this partnership with Triton, maybe they have ideas that they're
Speaker 1: going to run their own series, maybe somewhere in Europe
Speaker 1: or Asia, whatever, So there's some competition, so that's going
Speaker 1: to force us to scale back on the Gearty. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm just saying that the Triton stuff is
Speaker 1: not involved, at least from what I can tell at
Speaker 1: this time. At the same time, you have the w
Speaker 1: CITB Circuit Championship is once again built into this schedule.
Speaker 1: They have the WSB Circuit Championship Mystery Bounty A twenty
Speaker 1: seven and fifty dollars buying that is event number one
Speaker 1: on THESP Scared Paradise schedule. I almost it's Scared Ice
Speaker 1: for some reason, be Paradise schedule. Five million dollar guarantee there. Now,
Speaker 1: this this event itself did hit the news in some
Speaker 1: recent weeks because there was a lot of pushback on
Speaker 1: social media from online WSB circuit ring winners saying that
Speaker 1: they weren't getting packages of this tournament when they were
Speaker 1: under the assumption that they were, because the WSP came
Speaker 1: out and said, Hey, all w s B circuit ring
Speaker 1: winners get a package of this events. At first, WSP
Speaker 1: seemed like they were saying, you know, no, we only
Speaker 1: meant live not online stuff too. Anyway, WSP ends up
Speaker 1: correcting itself. Good on them for doing that. They end
Speaker 1: up honoring the fact that all these ring winners are
Speaker 1: ultimately going to go down there. Okay, So there's that
Speaker 1: all of this set right. I'm not not really saying
Speaker 1: like these are good decisions, bad decisions, or whatever they are.
Speaker 1: That's not where I'm trying to go with this. The
Speaker 1: question that I'm ultimately left wondering, if I'm being completely
Speaker 1: honest with you guys out there, is what does WSP
Speaker 1: Paradise ultimately want to be? You know, what does it
Speaker 1: want to be as a series? What does it want
Speaker 1: to be as a brand within the bigger brand? Right?
Speaker 1: You have obviously the big brand is ws A P
Speaker 1: then you have the WSP in Vegas is probably the
Speaker 1: takes up the biggest piece of the big WSP brand puzzle.
Speaker 1: You have WSP Europe, you have WSP Paradise, you have
Speaker 1: Wasity Circuit, et cetera, et cetera. You know, where does
Speaker 1: WSP Paradise see itself within that ecosystem and what does
Speaker 1: it want to be? You know, is this a premiere
Speaker 1: high stakes festival similar to Triton? You know, I feel
Speaker 1: like last year when they partnered with Triton, you know,
Speaker 1: you really got that feeling like, Okay, they are really
Speaker 1: going for high stakes, premiere elite, ultra high buying competition,
Speaker 1: the show, all that sort of stuff. That's why we're
Speaker 1: partnering with Triton, you know. So is that what you're
Speaker 1: going for here at the end of the poker calendar
Speaker 1: or is this supposed to be more of a winter
Speaker 1: version of what the ws AP is in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is, yes, it's in
Speaker 1: a different location, but is it supposed to be something
Speaker 1: where it's like, listen, we still have a decent offering
Speaker 1: for everybody. You know, the was to be in the summer,
Speaker 1: of course, has something for everyone for sure? Are they
Speaker 1: leaning more into that? Are they really leaning into the
Speaker 1: circuit thing, and is that going to be become a
Speaker 1: bigger part of the overall identity for WSP Paradise, you know,
Speaker 1: making it when you're kicking it off with this Circuit Championship,
Speaker 1: are you really trying to celebrate the w CP circuit,
Speaker 1: you know? Or is the answer overall that that simply
Speaker 1: they're they're trying to be all these things and that's
Speaker 1: the right answer. I don't necessarily know. I don't think
Speaker 1: I have an answer at this stage. But and I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to bring this as as criticism. I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm trying to wonder, like what this is trying to
Speaker 1: be and what's trying to be achieved. I'm generally, genuinely,
Speaker 1: excuse me, genuinely interested in seeing what sort of identity
Speaker 1: WSP Paradise develops this whole thing. This is still a
Speaker 1: young event, right, it has still growth to do. But
Speaker 1: where is it ultimately gonna end up? The identity of
Speaker 1: the WSP in Vegas during the summer that that's incredibly clear.
Speaker 1: You know, that thing's been running for you know, decades.
Speaker 1: We know exactly what it is. We know pretty much
Speaker 1: what it's going to be and what it wants to
Speaker 1: be every single summer, right, I would say the same
Speaker 1: thing with WISP Europe. But even WSP Europe is kind
Speaker 1: of transitioned in some recent years to be what it
Speaker 1: is now, which is which is fine, you know, and
Speaker 1: I think Europe certainly has a great place within the
Speaker 1: the overall poker calendar and within thes ap ecosystem. Heck,
Speaker 1: you could even extend that to the Waspy circuit. You know,
Speaker 1: that has a pretty clear identity. We know where that lies.
Speaker 1: And now that you know they have like the super
Speaker 1: circuits as well that they're working in, they have one
Speaker 1: coming up at Playground which is going to be absolutely giants.
Speaker 1: You know, we know what the circuit is too, you know,
Speaker 1: So Paradise is still evolving. I still think that I
Speaker 1: don't think this is any sort of like finished product.
Speaker 1: I'm just interested into ultimately, you know, what they want
Speaker 1: its place on the poker calendar to be and what
Speaker 1: they want it to be thought of, you know. I'm
Speaker 1: just I guess my feeling from it is is, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing the schedule and seeing the buy ins, the events themselves,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Like I'm curious. I'm genuinely curious to see
Speaker 1: how this evolves. So that's from where I sit. You know,
Speaker 1: that's my takeaway from seeing the WSP Paradise schedule. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be vague. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be giant. The next balt drop right, as it
Speaker 1: relates to WSP Paradise is obviously the big clash of
Speaker 1: the two brands WPT and wis a b in December.
Speaker 1: We know and we talked about that the WPT World
Speaker 1: Championship is coming back to the Win in December.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That came out through the Poker News podcast through Chad Holloway.
Speaker 1: He talked with the representative at the win early during
Speaker 1: the summer. Right said, yes, it's coming back. Don't know
Speaker 1: exact dates, don't know schedule yet, but it is coming
Speaker 1: back in December. We knew the WSITP Paradise dates December
Speaker 1: second through seventeenth. Okay, cool, Now we have the WSP
Speaker 1: Paradise schedule. Next ball to drop for December is going
Speaker 1: to be the WPT World Championship schedule. So let's see
Speaker 1: what they bring and how it works around this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean, I know that the WSP Paradise schedule,
Speaker 1: looking at it at what's on it, Like they have
Speaker 1: that twenty seven to fifty Circuit Championship, they have a
Speaker 1: fifty three hundred dollars Big Bet Mix, they have a
Speaker 1: fifty three hundred dollars Monster Sack, they have a twenty
Speaker 1: seven to fifty double board bomb pot. They got a
Speaker 1: fifty three hundred dollars Closer event on there. But then
Speaker 1: everything else is you know, ten K, twenty six K,
Speaker 1: fifty two hundred and fifty five K, they got a
Speaker 1: couple hundred and three ks on there, Like this is big, big,
Speaker 1: big buyance. I know it doesn't have the Triton brand
Speaker 1: attached to it, but it's still big, big, big buyans. Right,
Speaker 1: So is WPT going to continue to push things more
Speaker 1: kind of the other way and try and be the
Speaker 1: more accessible option in the winter?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: WPT does great with the WPT Prime Championship at the win.
Speaker 1: That one K event is one of the absolute best
Speaker 1: events you know, of the year, but also like ever
Speaker 1: in poker, and you know, I know they have the
Speaker 1: ten K WPT World Championship as the flagship headliner for
Speaker 1: that series, but everything else within that series is like
Speaker 1: they got just elite price points from I think eight
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to three k like in that sort of
Speaker 1: you know, kind of mid major wheelhouse. So are they
Speaker 1: just going to lean into that quite a bit more.
Speaker 1: We'll see, and we'll see what's to come, of course
Speaker 1: from the WPT World Championship schedule. But I'm anxiously awaiting
Speaker 1: that one so we can kind of compare and contrast
Speaker 1: the two the two pathways, you know, for these two
Speaker 1: brands at the end of the year. We can close
Speaker 1: this episode with a little bit of fun here, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think we've done this in a while. How
Speaker 1: about a family pot, guys. School's back in session. Our
Speaker 1: oldest just started kindergarten. I gotta I guess I got
Speaker 1: a little bit of a thought there. So yeah, let's
Speaker 1: just hit the music and then we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: It's all right. So, as I mentioned, oldest jumped into kindergarten.
Speaker 1: It's been two weeks now, she's loving it. No complaints there,
Speaker 1: It's great. Transition went well. It's just been a giant
Speaker 1: pain in my ass to deal with these drop off
Speaker 1: and pick up times. I mean it's just very very difficult.
Speaker 1: Eight to fifty drop off, three o'clock pickup, just kind
Speaker 1: of right smack dab in the middle of the workway.
Speaker 1: It's just heavily annoying. I gotta go there. You know,
Speaker 1: there's just a thousand people all trying to do the
Speaker 1: same thing at one time. It's like just the absolute
Speaker 1: if you guys know me, I just I can't stand it.
Speaker 1: So that's that. The other thing that that happened that
Speaker 1: that is like a reoccurring theme within my household is
Speaker 1: my wife losing or forgetting her keys, And somehow this
Speaker 1: is like my fault. I mean, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: fully understand how I can get in trouble for locking
Speaker 1: the door to the house when my wife forgets her key,
Speaker 1: but she's the one who forgot her key. I don't
Speaker 1: really get how that works. But yeah, it's I think
Speaker 1: she said she lost her keys two weeks ago, week
Speaker 1: and a half ago. I found out two days ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, crazy thought, maybe just tell me, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and then well we'll solve the problem together, right,
Speaker 1: But like, you know, just the fact that she can
Speaker 1: not now find her keys, so we got to solve
Speaker 1: that situation anyway. I don't know that. It's just a
Speaker 1: little short and sweet family pot here, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's been interesting in the Peter's household, of course,
Speaker 1: to transition into this new school. I'm dealing with this, uh,
Speaker 1: these drop off and pick up times that are just
Speaker 1: driving me absolutely up the wall. It's just it's and
Speaker 1: then I got the whole key thing too. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just ridiculous. It's one of those things when it
Speaker 1: comes to the drop off and pick up that I
Speaker 1: feel like there has to be a better way. I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know what that is. I just you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm probably I'm probably the one that's entirely wrong here.
Speaker 1: I really, I really am. But that's fine. I'm just
Speaker 1: it's late, I've had a long day and i want
Speaker 1: to over exaggerate about something, so I'm going to I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna overreact. That's just how I am. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the podcast. Thank you guys for sticking with us
Speaker 1: if you haven't already. I know I didn't didn't see
Speaker 1: it up earlier, and I should have, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: many of you saw it on the feed. But Lucas
Speaker 1: Jumlan main event champ. He joined my guy Remco Rinking
Speaker 1: on the Face the Ace podcast. They had a lengthy conversation,
Speaker 1: So go check that out. I think this kid's ready
Speaker 1: for the spotlight. You know, that's kind of the spot
Speaker 1: where I'm at with it. So check that out if
Speaker 1: you haven't already, and we'll keep this thing moving. High
Speaker 1: sakes Poker is coming live and it's coming fast. August
Speaker 1: twenty fifth through thirty first. Then we got a whole
Speaker 1: crap ton of PGT stuff that is coming in September
Speaker 1: and October. I think the dates are September twenty fourth
Speaker 1: through October twenty third. Is just PGT straight one straight
Speaker 1: month PGT. There's gonna be a no gamble in the future,
Speaker 1: some live streams for that crammed in there at some point.
Speaker 1: There's a Celebrity Poker Tour event in there at some point.
Speaker 1: Like there's just a lot of stuff happening in this
Speaker 1: second half of the year, and I am super super
Speaker 1: excited for it. So that's gonna do it for the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Donnie Peters, and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you guys next time.
Speaker 2: Express