ESPN Hits Jackpot With "Plausibly Live" Poker Finale

(From The USA Today -- By Michael Hiestand)

ESPN grabbed some pretty good ratings for an event that ended July 16th.

But producer BOB CHESTERMAN, overseeing ESPN's 32-episode WORLD SERIES OF POKER coverage, including the winner getting $7.5 million in the finale, sees parallels between TV poker and Olympic TV to explain why viewers will tune in for taped card games.

Chesterman says the idea is to cover the shuffling as if it's "plausibly live" -- a term that's been applied to taped Olympic coverage -- as 2,500 hours of footage of 5,175 hands are pared down. But unlike taped Olympic coverage that uses announcers' live calls, ESPN's poker announcers watch edited footage and call it as if it were live.

Says Chesterman, "At the events, people always ask where the announcers are."

His tack echoes the game plan of Olympic broadcasting, which needs to compel Americans to watch taped action of sports they normally don't watch -- "While people might already know who won, you still want to cover the journey, the stories.
You're always looking for great storytelling."

Chesterman, who worked on NBC's coverage of four Olympics, including the 2000 SYDNEY GAMES, had a personal Olympic flashback as Australian JOSEPH HACHEM's hometown buddies cheered him on in the poker finals -- "They were chanting, 'Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie! Oy! Oy! Oy!' I never thought I'd hear that again."

But the parallels with the Olympics have their limits.

This WORLD SERIES is held in a Las Vegas casino. And when just three players are left out of the original 5,618 entrants, Chesterman says, "an endless sea of guards bring out
$7.5 million in cash and dump it on a huge table -- it really is a great moment."

Last year's poker finale drew 2.8% of cable TV households, making it a bigger draw than nearly everything else on ESPN except NFL games, postseason baseball and marquee college football and basketball.

Next year, Chesterman will add a SKYCAM to hover above the poker action, and he expects the winner's prize money will be
$10 million.

Also next year, he'll help launch ESPN coverage of another Everyman sport being readied for TV -- THE WORLD SERIES OF DARTS.