In the aftermath of last week’s controversy regarding Poker Flops distributing WSOP clips on their channels, which led to Poker Flops being blocked by the World Series, as we covered in the previous article, a WSOP spokesperson reached out to pokerfuse to clear the air.
Originally, Poker Flops came out guns blazing, accusing the WSOP of falling behind the times and basically hindering the growth of the game by not allowing creators and influencers to share their content via shorts, a format that’s become hugely popular in recent years.
As it turns out, these allegations were quite inaccurate, and Poker Flops wasn’t blocked for sharing the content but rather for not following very clear media guidelines governing the circumstances under which the content can be distributed.
Looking to bring clarity to this matter and for the full story to come out, the WSOP spokesperson told pokerfuse the following:
“The rules governing clip rights have never been more favorable for the media. However, the guidelines were not respected in this case. Under the rules, they must wait six hours after the content has aired before using the clips. This is the standard across all sports and does not affect or alter our content.”
The WSOP Is Not “Gatekeeping” Anything
Following on that statement and looking at the official WSOP media guidelines, it is clear that Poker Flops got in hot water for doing things the wrong way.
The guidelines are very clear and not hard to follow. Creators wanting to use WSOP content to create clips (shorts) need to wait at least six hours after the original footage has aired. Additionally, clips can’t be longer than 90 seconds.
Even a quick glance at the Poker Flops X page makes it clear that these guidelines were not respected. Clips were often published shortly after airing of the original footage, and almost all of them are longer than 90 seconds.
Looking at all this information, it is clear that their accusations about the WSOP hindering the growth of the game are baseless. The official guidelines are actually quite creator-friendly and more relaxed than anything we had in the past.
For the Game or for the Personal Gain?
If the WSOP really did not allow creators to use any content to spread the word around, there’d be more room for some of the arguments submitted by Poker Flops.
As it stands, though, this looks like a very standard practice across industries. The six-hour delay makes sense as the World Series wants fans to experience those big moments at official WSOP channels first, be it YouTube streams or their own clips on X.
The creators not following these guidelines are not doing it for the love of the game. They are trying to compete with the WSOP for views on the content that’s often only a few minutes old.
Once outside of that six-hour restriction, creative minds can look for those nail-biting and controversial moments to turn into short clips and generate the buzz.
So, to sum it up, there is no real “controversy” whatsoever in this story. There is just a site that decided that the rules don’t apply to them and they could do things however they see fit, and then complain about the consequences.
This is a good warning to anyone thinking about doing the same and a guide of sorts on how to do it the right way. It is in everyone’s interest to get the excitement of poker in front of as many eyeballs as possible, but when it comes to propriety content, some (rather simple) rules must be followed.
