Live Pay per View on the Main Event Final Table?

[Reel Deal]

Heres' some additional info I found at the SportsBusiness Daily website:

ESPN To Offer Live PPV Showing Of WSOP Main Event

ESPN will offer a live PPV showing of the World Series of Poker Main Event final table on August 10 that will be available both on TV and on ESPN.com, according to Bill Ordine of the Baltimore SUN. Also, the net’s usual edited airing of the Main Event will begin on August 22; last year’s event ran about three months after the finish. ESPN “hopes that the quicker turnaround” on the edited version will “bolster ratings that sagged” in ’05. The live PPV show will cost $24.95 and will begin at 3:00pm ET. The rail camera that shows players’ hole cards to the home audience on the taped shows “will not be part of the live broadcast.” ESPN Producer Dave O’Connor said that not showing the rail camera “is for security purposes.” O’Connor: “The difference between first and second will be worth millions. Any information that might trickle back to the players, we have to be concerned about.” Ordine noted ESPN’s live telecast will feature “pre-recorded features and a parade of poker pros and analysts commenting on the final table” (Baltimore SUN, 6/20).

- - Published June 21, 2006