Not a single card has been dealt at the World Team Poker Inaugural event in the Golden Nugget Casino this week, yet already the tournament has begun making unexpected headlines.

According to a recent article from PokerNews.com- seemingly confirmed by members of the Twitterverse- World Team Poker (WTP), a team style poker competition featuring top pros banding together to represent their home countries in a league style format, has officially landed a television deal with Fox Sports Net.

Frequent visitors to the World Team Poker website (www.worldteampoker.com) have been reading hints for some time that a television deal announcement of this kind was fourth coming, though what kind of deal and with who, until tonight’s WTP welcome party, was largely unknown. 

According to the article, FSN- already the home to the World Poker Tour- has committed to airing the full 13 episode season of the new WTP starting this July, which this year will feature such long established pros as Phil Hellmuth (Team USA), Men “The Master” Nguyen (Team Vietnam), Johnny Chan (Team China), David “Devilfish” Ulliott (Team England), Allen Cunningham (Team USA), Scotty Nguyen (Team Vietnam), Robert and Michael Mizrachi (Team Israel), Mel Judah (Team Australia) and many others.

Wednesday’s (5/19) inaugural WTP event at the Golden Nugget Casino begins at noon Vegas time, and is a $50,000 buy-in (per team), shoot-out style tournament featuring not only No-Limit Hold ‘em, but also Limit Hold ‘em and Pot-Limit Omaha. 

For more information, or to watch a livestream of the action visit www.worldteampoker.com.