The Growth of the World Series of Poker

Originally, the World Series of Poker was known as the Gambling Fraternity Convention. It was an invitational held in Las Vegas, in 1968, and sponsored by gambling professional Tom Moore. The event was a disappointing failure. It was in the Second Annual Gambling Fraternity Convention, in 1969, that the first ever poker tournament was held. In 1970, casino owner Benny Binion got the rights to the convention, and the World Series of Poker was finally born. Harrah's Entertainment purchased the rights to the WSOP, and since then the event has continued to grow even more quickly than before. It has even begun a sort of tournament circuit throughout the United States, at Harrah's-owned properties where players can qualify for a made-for-television event called the "Tournament of Champions."

Known today as the WSOP, it had a slow start, with only eight entrants participating in 1972. Recently though, perhaps thanks in part to the internet and the proliferation of online poker games, the number of World Series of Poker participants has grown exponentially. In 2000, the WSOP had four thousand, seven hundred and eighty entrants. By 2005, there were twenty-three thousand participants, and the numbers have continued to grow ever since.

Today, the World Series of Poker has corporate sponsors as well as licensed products that pay in order to market themselves as official licensees and/or sponsors of the WSOP. Harrah's Entertainment and its properties cover the bulk of these marketing tasks, but other major sponsors include United States Playing Card's Bicycle Pro Cards, Bluff magazine, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox, and Sony PlayStation 2. With the exception of the Discovery Channel, which had covered broadcast the World Series of Poker in 2000 and 2001, ESPN has provided exclusive coverage of the event since the late 1980s.

While the World Series of Poker was covered throughout much of its existence, little was actually shown of the games, until much later, since the "pocket cam" or the "hole" camera had not yet existed. This kind of camera allows spectators to see players' "hole" or "pocket" cards; which are the cards that players usually conceal. It paved the way to making poker a spectator sport.

The earliest coverage of the World Series of Poker in 1973 was sponsored by its original host, Binion's Horseshoe, which was also the venue for the event. It was narrated by Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder. Later in that decade CBS began covering the World Series of Poker, broadcasting each event as a special, especially during the early eighties.