I think it’s still pretty big now. In Vegas at the wsop they have 100 bracelet events going on. The Main Event had 9,200 entries, 4th largest field in WSOP history. The coverage of the Main is currently on ESPN + and the final table will be on ESPN in August so yeah I think that is pretty big. It’s good for poker that it’s back on ESPN, more eyes watching means more people will want to play.
I think it definitely has room to grow, but becoming as big as golf will be tough. Poker is a skill game over the long run, but the gambling label still holds it back. With streaming, online platforms, and younger players getting into it, I can see it becoming much more mainstream over the next few years.
It's important to compare prize pools. The WSOP Main Event alone offers a prize pool comparable to or exceeding the richest golf event (the Tour Championship). Top poker tournaments (especially the WSOP and Triton) regularly surpass golf in prize pool size. If you compare top events, poker wins. If you compare sports as a whole, golf is also very rich, but individual poker tournaments outperform individual players in terms of payouts.
They see it that way because that is what it is. Same as the stock market and commodities exchanges are basically highfalutin casinos where people gamble. The difference is that those things are something the Puritans and other busybodies approve of. There is nothing wrong with gambling so it is nothing to be ashamed of for anyone who likes doing it. 🙂veryluckyfish7k said:
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This comparison doesn't make any sense at all, you can't compare mental games with physical games, Poker will never be taken seriously as a sport precisely because it depends on Casinos for it to happen, it's not like Chess. Besides, sport varies from country to country, in some countries Baseball is the most popular sport, in others football, and so on.
I think poker can definitely keep growing, but reaching the same global level as golf would be difficult. Golf has a much broader mainstream appeal and is easier for casual fans to follow.
That said, poker has a huge advantage with online platforms and streaming. If the industry keeps making the game more accessible to new players and viewers, I think there is still a lot of room for growth.
That said, poker has a huge advantage with online platforms and streaming. If the industry keeps making the game more accessible to new players and viewers, I think there is still a lot of room for growth.
Poker definitely has the potential to keep growing, but I don't think it'll become as big as golf anytime soon. Both involve skill, strategy, and mental discipline, but golf has broader mainstream appeal and a much larger global infrastructure
Poker definitely requires a lot of skill, just like golf, but at the end of the day, it’s still gambling. You can be the better player and still lose because of variance, so that will probably always limit how mainstream it can become compared to golf.
