Future of poker is a challenge to bring new players and at the same time make the game fun to watch. At this point poker is a very boring game for people who don't play it. And it makes all the difference, because no one is really searching for poker to watch but recreational poker player and, maybe, a few professionals.
If the resources from poker still coming from other players and not sponsors, television, streaming, players will be closer and closer in technical terms and ROI and winrates will decrease year by year.
So players will have to bring some new players, entrepreneurs to have fun in the tables. But you can do the math, a rich recreational player don't last too long playing poker without a good reason. And professionals staring them for hours until make a move is not the best option for people to have fun.
In the future we need sponsors from all sources and a game with different mechanics.
Global Poker League tryed to do it, but didn't happen.
No Limit Hold'em is not the best game for a total noob to understand.
So people prefer to watch basketball or something.
The only power of attraction in poker at this point are the prizes. People don't remember the moves, or the boring players playing but the millions of dollars of prizes coming and going. They don't want to know if Negreanu have a negative ROI in the last 4 or 5 years, they just know he did have a few 6 or 7 digits results and is okay.
And most of people live the illusion of hit a big hit in a great tournament. It last just few years, until people realize poker is all about number of
hands played, beat the variance and play your best in regular basis, which most of people won't do.
We need new ideas.
And right now we have very conservative "personalities" in the poker business doing challenges and some other stuff involving their giant egos, and just a few really working to improve the game.
Future of poker is pretty close to the future of chess.
A game built only for players and enthusiasts.