For the first time since 2020, the 2026 World Series of Poker main event final table will air live on ESPN’s networks. But the broadcast won’t take place until Aug. 3-5. During the extended three-week delay, the longest since the ‘November Nine’ era that ended in 2016, ESPN is airing edited episodes to highlight the final nine players and the overall narrative arc of the tournament leading up to the live finale.
ESPN’s return into the poker space, however, has unfortunately struggled to find its audience. The first of two blocks of 2026 WSOP main event episodes, which aired on July 21 at 9 p.m. EST on ESPN2, drew 173,000 viewers for the first hour. The second hour of the broadcast reached 186,000 viewers.
The second set of edited episodes airs on Tuesday, July 28, in the same time window.
A Summer Of Changes
ESPN’s return to broadcasting the WSOP main event happened via Omaha Productions, the media company co-founded by Peyton Manning. Over the course of the 2026 WSOP main event, there was extensive live, daily coverage of the tournament on ESPN+ from day 1A all the way down to nine players. Some viewers struggled to find the live streaming coverage on ESPN platforms, especially during periods in which the WSOP coverage wasn’t listed under ESPN’s ‘featured’ streams.
While ESPN’s coverage of the 2026 series started and ended with the main event, it is also just the last chapter in a summer of viewer issues and concerns.
Throughout the seven weeks of the WSOP, the production team was live streaming daily, often focusing on high-stakes no-limit hold’em action. Issues arose immediately as the delay between the action happening in real time and airing on the broadcast, typically in the range of one hour, stretched to almost three hours. That delay was attributed to the footage being sent to South Korea to be cut together by a separate team before it could be broadcast.
The live updates on PokerNews followed the delay to coincide with the broadcast, and the WSOP Live app, which displayed accurate tournament information on the clock, anonymized player names as ‘featured table player’ and did not reveal finishing position until the broadcast caught up. Due to the action already happening in the pacific time zone in Las Vegas, and the delay, coverage often stretched well into the late night and early morning hours.
Late Hours And Limited Coverage
The WSOP coverage is also tied to new decision makers affiliated with GGPoker, whose parent company acquired the intellectual property rights to the WSOP in October 2024. This was the second summer of WSOP coverage under new ownership, and the first since a direct broadcast deal with PokerGO expired.
There were also complaints about a lack of streaming coverage for mixed game events, which tend to draw some of the biggest and most famous names in poker. (The GGPoker online client does not offer mixed games.) Additionally, some of those mixed game events moved to secondary broadcast tables. With limited, sporadic updates on the live broadcast, all of those tournaments followed identical multi-hour delays in the live updates. Winners were often spoiled on social media hours before reporting could catch up.
Jeff Platt, who signed on with WSOP as an on-air talent in January 2026, became the de facto point of communication between WSOP and the community. He took the brunt of the public scrutiny throughout the summer, and then met critics head-on in the replies of some contentious social media conversations following the first edited WSOP episodes.
He was also the primary public-facing voice to field the criticism about the exceedingly long delays before coverage aired on stream.
Completely understand. And consistently evaluating
— Jeff Platt (@jeffplatt) June 11, 2026
Poker Broadcasts In An Uncertain Era
The ever-shifting broadcast landscape and evolving state of streaming has bounced poker coverage around, especially in recent years. PokerGO held the WSOP rights in the United States from 2017 through 2025, and worked with ESPN, and later CBS Sports to share coverage between their streaming platform and traditional broadcast TV.
In that era, there were different complaints, including a highly publicized conversation about how a paywall restricted audience growth. (In more recent years, PokerGO would livestream secondary final tables for free on YouTube.)
Popular content creator, chess player, and poker player Alexandra Botez was one of many who weighed in on the subject.
Paywalling the greatest spectacle of any sport will inevitably lead to a decrease in its relevance.
50 years ago, half the human population watched Boxing’s heavyweight title (Ali’s most viewed fight had 2 billion viewers). Now the biggest fights are getting just over 1 million…
— Alexandra Botez (@alexandrabotez) July 15, 2023
Of course, ESPN is behind a paywall of its own, but there’s also the matter of a shrinking audience for traditional cable TV. According to data compiled by CableCompare, cable TV subscriptions are down from a peak of 105 million in 2010, to approximately 69 million in 2025.
The next big test, beyond the edited episodes, is the live WSOP main event broadcast coverage on linear TV. The first of three nights of coverage starts at 9 p.m. EST on Aug. 3 on ESPN2. The second session shifts to ESPN, in that same 9 p.m. window on Aug. 4. The 2026 WSOP main event’s finale, on Aug. 5, kicks off at 10:30 p.m. EST on ESPN.
Photo credit: WSOP / Monique Marestein
