Why Poker Is a Safe Bet for Marketers
Gambling is considered a major sin in many parts of the country (just try placing a bet in Utah, for instance). Yet marketers are stepping up to back poker on television, a spectacle where millions of dollars can be at stake in a single hand. The reasons that Moral Majority-type groups have not been picketing poker sponsors’ headquarters or calling for product boycotts could be of interest to marketers considering involvement with other “sinful” content.
Poker has enjoyed a successful run on a handful of cable networks for several years, and now CBS has become the first broadcast network to step up. Beginning on Christmas, CBS Sports will televise eight ProJo Poker tourneys.
Mainstream advertisers are known for going out of their way to avoid offending customers, so why has poker now reached the broadest market of them all: the broadcast networks? And it’s not just beer and babes in terms of advertising. Besides the expected Anheuser-Busches and “FHM”s of the world, mainstream advertisers such as Toyota are sponsoring ESPN’s taped “World Series of Poker” coverage that began last week, and Coca-Cola is a World Series of Poker (WSOP) backer.
Yet the same networks and advertisers steer clear of other forms of gambling entertainment. And even when, say, horse racing is featured on TV, the gambling aspect is all but ignored.
“TV networks are clearly embracing poker and don’t mind showing people wagering thousands and tens of thousands of dollars on a single card. What we are not able to do is show horse racing in the same vein,” says Ken Kirchner, executive vice president for product development for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. “Anytime we approach them in doing more the department of covering handicapping and wagering, the answer is always no.”
Network officials say privately that there are differences between the two pastimes. First, poker has evolved to become a socially acceptable activity that expands far beyond the smoky-backroom crowd to reach “grandmothers from Peoria,” in the word of one TV executive.
Second, don’t discount the power of money and reach. Poker has become a national phenomenon among teen-age boys and the highly elusive male 18- to 34-year-old crowd. Coverage of the 2004 WSOP on ESPN drew household ratings in the 2.0 range, higher than those of the pre-strike National Hockey League.
Executives cite Chris Moneymaker as the catalyst for poker’s ascent among marketers. Moneymaker, who won the 2003 WSOP, was a poker neophyte who had honed his skills through thousands of hours of practice and play on the Internet. “By showing that … a solid amateur player would hold his own against the pros, it focused and gave attention on the game and the possibility that an average guy could actually win,” says Tony Gerund-Rosa, president of ProJo Poker Enterprises, which is producing and selling the ad time for CBS’s upcoming poker series.
“You’re hitting a very attractive demo in a very focused manner,” Gerund-Rosa adds, “and I think that the perception of marketers dovetails with the public’s perception, that it has become a mainstream socially acceptable sport with very significant social overtones.”
But what about disapproval in the Bible Belt?
There has been almost none, Gerund-Rosa insists. “We’re discussing and exploring opportunities for an off-network window for our show, and we’ve found very little resistance in the Bible Belt states. We have not found what I think we would have encountered a couple of years ago.”
