This news will make some of you jump for joy, but I personally find it depressing: ESPN has pulled all of its poker programming in the wake of the federal goverment’s indictments of the big online poker sites. The logic here is obvious; if the poker sites aren’t able to buy airtime for those shows, and nobody else is, the shows aren’t profitable.
“We are aware of the indictment only through what has been announced publicly,” Bristol, Connecticut-based ESPN said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “For the immediate future, we are making efforts to remove related advertising and programming pending further review.”[..]
ESPN, the most-watched U.S. sports network, which airs the “World Series of Poker,” declined to elaborate beyond its statement, according to Chris LaPlaca, a spokesman.
Certainly it’s only a matter of time before NBC and GSN follow suit and pull their shows, “Poker After Dark” and “High Stakes Poker”, respectively. So the poker sites are being shut down and yet Farmville and Mafia Wars roam free. That’s not the kind of world I want to live in.
