Ultimate Bet’s ambitious plans to televise its Ultimate Poker Challenge over weekends at the famous Binion’s Casino in downtown Las Vegas have been impacted by the paucity of advertising from online poker sites feeling the heat of the UIGEA.
Poker News reports that posted notices at Binions and on the web advise that all future television tapings have been cancelled, although several previously scheduled Ultimate Gamble Cash Poker events on February 21st and March 15th will also be taped.
Originally scheduled to be a year long series of events hosted by Binion’s, the Challenge was to have featured three regular weekend tournaments, which originally were all to be taped for television; there were also the Ultimate Gamble Cash Poker events, which were designed to be a smaller and more inclusive game than the higher buy-in High Stakes Poker events run at the Palms Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas. The third part of the Ultimate Poker Package was the Binion’s Ultimate Poker Challenge Championship Series, which is still scheduled to take place March 9th through the 18th.
It appears at this time that the $10 000 event on March 16th – March 18th will still be televised. How many of the preliminary $660 buy-in events that were also scheduled to be taped will be now is unclear.
According to Binion’s spokespeople, the tournaments themselves will still be played, it is only the television aspect that remains in doubt.
The televison portion of the UPC was sponsored by several online poker rooms. With the enforcement tactics of the American government escalating, online poker rooms are pulling out of the US market and when Absolute Poker and others pulled their advertising dollars, the Ultimate Poker Challenge producer was left with no choice but to pull the plug on the television cameras.
This comes in the wake of the postponement of previously scheduled tapings of both High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark. Poker News reports that each of these televised specialty poker shows had the sound stage at the South Point Casino scheduled for a week or more of tapings this month but were put off to an “indefinite future date”.
Industry observers are pondering the likely effect that a decrease in online poker site advertising might have on television coverage for major tourneys such as the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker