In a sporting market where many of the larger events in terms of popularity have already super-saturated the marketplace, the World Series of Poker has continued to gain popularity, creating a bigger and bigger cash cow for ESPN every single year of its broadcast on television.

Now, the results are in for the better part of 2009 and once again those results have given ESPN cause for celebration.

Overall, the ratings for the parts of the 2009 World Series of Poker that have already aired on ESPN are up 11% from the same parts of the 2008 World Series of Poker that had aired on television at the same time last year. What is more important however is the fact that males aged 18-49 have tuned in 12% more often to the 2009 WSOP and that males aged 25-54 have tuned in 16% more often.

These two age/gender groups represent the vast majority of people that play online poker and their tuning into the ESPN WSOP more often is good news for sponsors on the show. Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker and Ultimate Bet poker, arguably the three most important online poker sites within the US market, all advertise during the ESPN coverage of the World Series of Poker. Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker both sponsor segments that actually appear during the show and Ultimate Bet is responsible for paying for their commercials to be aired in between segments of WSOP coverage on ESPN.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the most significant of the ratings increases from 2008 can be maintained in 2009. That ratings increase, of course, is the playing of the final table. Holding off the finalization of the winner to November in 2008 allowed it to coincide with ESPN’s airing of the event, giving them a whopping 50% increase in viewers.

In 2009, not only will the same thing happen, but heads-up play will be delayed even more at the final table to heighten the anticipation as much as possible. In the end, that could mean that ratings increase even more. On that point however, we will just have to wait and see.