Major League Poker marries digital radio with the World Series of Poker to complement the online poker-playing experience.
Poker has moved from the felt portraits of card-playing dogs to the digital streamed radio show called “On the Felt.”
The show provided coverage of the World Series of Poker in July. Tony Tomassini, CMO for Major League Poker, said the coverage was designed to complement the online experience for poker players at show sponsor Gaming Club Poker.
“On the Felt” operated smoothly, and reached several thousand players each day. That number could be potentially higher, as Major League Poker continues to analyze data related to the broadcast. Mr. Tomassini also noted they experienced “zero” technical problems.
Major League Poker has planned other online programming for 2005 and 2006. Online radio seems well-suited to the poker playing experience, as Mr. Tomassini noted a video feed would distract players from concentrating on their game.
Though “On the Felt” only had Gaming Club Poker as its sponsor, it will be interesting to see if other advertisers might express a desire to be part of poker-related online media programming.
Poker’s popularity has been reflected in the general online community too. According to Susan Timcheck at AOL, “Texas Hold’em” has been the most popular poker-related search query on AOL Search for the past two months. She also noted that queries for “World Series of Poker” spiked during the week of July 10-16.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
