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BACKGAMMON IS COMING TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU

Sport in all its glory is appreciated by performer and spectator alike, “there’s no substitute for being there”, there’s nothing like the real atmosphere of an event to bring home the thrills and excitement and feel of a live event. Unless, that live event is televised.

The creation of television sport has eclipsed entertainment as the modus operandi of television; more budgets are spent on sporting events and advertising in all its glorious forms, than probably anything else. Witness the recent World Cup in Germany where every stadium game was sponsored by one beer, and that one beer was the only one allowed at the stadiums. This demonstrates the power of television as a mass media tool to the watching public. Given the enormous power of this media tool, the thirst for content is undying, more and more sports of all types and shapes are hitting the screens from surfing to curling, to beach volleyball to mud wrestling, from the pure bizarre to the ultimate dangerous and death defying varieties, whatever the sport someone somewhere is going to cover it.

This is the case with indoor games as well, firstly snooker was transmitted (incredibly in black and white too), then billiards and pool and darts, bowls too has a huge television following, but it was the really the internet and its ability to attract poker players to its virtual casinos that set the media moguls minds into overdrive with the first showings of televised poker.

The poker genre was an obvious draw for the television viewer with its high stakes and cosseted excitement, the intimacy of the poker table could be reenacted in your own sitting room, at a safe distance knowing that you weren’t going to lose out, and probably the only chips you had to worry about were the potato ones.

Now with poker established as a sport entertainment, the unrelenting thirst for content goes on, enter backgammon, which in its own right is enjoying not just a revival more a revolution in online gaming. Backgammon is seen as the next poker, and could even surpass poker as the definitive online game. But for now it is stepping into the spotlight through the combined resources of www.gameaccount and pokerzone who will together bring backgammon to a new audience starting in the fall, broadcasting for three hours a day, over a twelve episode run, with repeat showings at the weekend.

The difference between this and other broadcasts will be that the programme will use live in-game footage taken from the online site and focus on the gamers online, in a effort to promote the game to a much wider audience, demonstrating a range of expertise and knowledge that will appeal across the board from amateur to master.

Sky Channel 843 will broadcast these games and hopes to persuade a few poker players to swap their chips for some checkers. We shall have to wait and see.