When the big three poker sites were indicted on what is now called Black Friday, the big networks were on edge. The big networks have been promoting poker shows for some time now and in many cases they were receiving advertising money from the indicted poker sites. As a result ESPN has cancelled the NAPT (North American Poker Tour) shows while Fox has cancelled the PokerStars Big Game & Million Dollar Challenge.
One of the biggest poker programs is the World Series of Poker and many poker enthusiasts were worried that ESPN might drop the series. ESPN has come out and confirmed that they will still in fact cover the WSOP this year. Another highly watched poker show is High Stakes Poker which puts big money on the table (millions). That show will continue as GSN has come out in support of the program. The World Poker Tour has been featured on Fox Sports Net and as of this article they still plan to air shows around the WPT.
Don’t be surprised if going forward you start to see less and less poker content on US cable TV. The cable industry was increasing poker content tenfold since 2004 and this might be the first time since then that poker content goes on the decline.
