Biggest Poker TV Package Yet

Published: Monday, January 02, 2006 Online-Casinos.com

BIGGEST POKER TV PACKAGE YET

72 hours of poker programming in the biggest UK TV deal to date.

Online poker giant Partypoker's recent deal with the British TV network Five is the largest deal of its kind in the latter's 9 year history according to advertising media reports this week.

The sponsored events-based poker programming sees Partypoker become the sole sponsor of Five's late-night broadcast of three major poker tournaments taking place over the next twelve months. The broadcasts will air weekdays at midnight and begin at the end of December 2006.

Five's spokesman says that 72 hours of poker programming features make this the biggest deal to date for event-programming packages in the U.K. television industry.

Matchroom Sports has been contracted to produce the live tournament broadcasts and will handle all the action for the Partypoker European Open and Partypoker World Open.

"This is a great marriage between the editorial and commercial endeavors of Five's business. We realized very early on that poker programming was significantly outperforming station average audience levels in the late night slot," says Five's head of commercial development, Jonathan Lewis. "We also saw the huge emergence of the online sector and were able to capture this in one overall deal."

Five will work closely with Partypoker to develop a dedicated online site featuring free weekly broadband downloads, poker tutorials, competitions and tournament information.