Poker gets chance to go straight

TV popularity gives game new respect

Patrick Beach, Cox News Service

Published February 27, 2006 at midnight

Text size

More More Entertainment

AUSTIN, Texas - It's no surprise Steve Lipscomb is too busy to play as much poker as he would like these days. He's bought into a vastly bigger game and sparked a huge culture shift in the process.

You might not recall, boys and girls, but poker used to be kind of associated with gambling, and gambling was bad.

Lipscomb and his World Poker Tour changed that - big time - and he recently spoke about how it happened at the University of Texas' McCombs School of Business as part of the school's Plus Program.

His message: Do what you have a passion for, and what no one but you can do.

In 2001, Lipscomb said, poker was dying. Poker rooms in casinos were closing because it didn't generate as much revenue for the house as other games. But Lipscomb - a former attorney who sold his lawyer-referral business to bankroll a documentary film on the oppression of women by Southern Baptists - had also done a doc on the World Series of Poker tournament.

He saw potential: When the film aired on The Discovery Channel, twice as many people were watching at the end as were at the beginning. And there are an estimated 50 million people playing poker at home.

Casino bigshot Lyle Berman thought the idea of creating a sort of NBA of poker was a neat idea and ponied up cash. Exclusive deals with casinos - with each paying Lipscomb's company a fee for the national exposure - came one after the other. (The deal guaranteed that the show would air at least once, even if producers had to buy airtime themselves.)

It was huge from the beginning - 3 million to 5 million viewers weekly - and generated competition its second year. Strangely enough, poker had been on TV for decades. The breakthrough for Lipscomb and his company was coming up with the graphics palette that allowed viewers to watch poker as a sporting event.

"If you are successful, you will create competition," Lipscomb, 44, of Los Angeles, told a crowd of about 50. "Be careful what you wish for. There's some weird stuff that comes with success." Weirdest of all, perhaps, is the legitimization of a wildly popular game that, according to popular perception, was played in smoke-filled rooms by nefarious characters and invariably ended in knife fights. Lipscomb changed lives, turning rogues into rock stars.

"Professional poker players used to be the black sheep of the family," Lipscomb said. "Now all those guys are walking through airports signing autographs." Having established the World Poker Tour as a sports league, the business is expanding into other ventures such as merchandise, Lipscomb said. And he promised something big on the way.

"We're about to announce our next big franchise, which nobody has even thought of," he said.

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News