Improving the WSOP in 3 easy steps Part 3: The Sponsorships

I have to admit that the 2011 World Series of Poker coverage has made it near impossible for me to indulge in my cynical side and unlike in years past it took a great deal of thought to find three small faults in the ESPN coverage of the 2011 WSOP. But fear not, I have found faults, and here they are!

• Just kill all sponsorship deals

How nice was it to see what clothes the players at the final table of the Worlds Series of Poker Main Event were wearing! Only a few players were able to land allowed sponsorship deals that required wearing a patch, and overall the aesthetics of the telecast were noticeably better.

It was bad enough that the final table players were basically walking billboards in years past, made all the worse by the fact that they were TACKY walking billboards; wearing hastily crafted “patches” that were made to be portable and interchangeable.

Since only a few players were wearing any type of sponsor logo why not just nix all blatant sponsorship deals. Let Ben Lamb and Phil Collins rep their Bellagio and Aria shirts, with their very muted and classy looking logos, but disallow the Paddy Power Poker shirts and 888 Poker patches that made some of the other players look more like a poorly integrated product placement in a TV show.

Basically I’m calling for a ban on any advertisement that is an addition to a piece of clothing, or is an article of clothing specifically made for advertising at the WSOP final table. That includes but is not limited to poker sites, poker software and training sites, the tacky GoDaddy.com clothing Vanessa Rousso is wont to wear, or any other blatant piece of advertising.

If we want people to look at poker players seriously, and take the game seriously, the people who are basically representing the poker world to the masses can’t look like they would sell their mothers for $5,000. Slapping tacky, blatant, ads all over oneself makes you look cheap -even in NASCAR and GOLF, where logos are everywhere, they are at least done in a tasteful manner, and deals are not struck as the event is proceeding, with a contract signed and a Velcro patch placed on a hat.

In fact if it were up to me I would disallow all logos of any kind. Make the players dress like Matt Giannetti or Martin Staszko.