PokerStars Announces Rebranding Of Live Tournaments Starting In 2017EPT and Other PokerStars Tours To Be Replaced By Global Live Poker Championships and Festivals |
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PokerStars has announced a rebranding of their major live tournament tours, renaming their European Poker Tour and other popular regional tours as PokerStars Championships and PokerStars Festivals. The changes will be fully enacted starting in 2017, with the exception of the PokerStars Festival debut in New Jersey in November of 2016. This means that the 2016 European Poker Tour Prague will be the last EPT event in the tour’s 13-year history.
The rebranding will see PokerStars live events split into two categories, the aforementioned PokerStars Championship events and PokerStars Festival events.
PokerStars Championship events will be the larger tournament series, take place at some of the world’s most prestigious casinos and will typically last 10-11 days. The series will feature huge schedules of up to 100 tournaments, including a €5,000 (or $5,000 as the case may be) main event and a variety of cash games.
The first PokerStars Championship event will be the PokerStars Championship Bahamas (formerly known as the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure or PCA), which will run from Jan. 6-14 at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas.
The Bahamas stop is only the first of five total PokerStars Championship stops already confirmed. The other four stops will take place in Barcelona, Monte-Carlo, Macau and Panama. More stops are expected to be announced over the next few months.
The PokerStars Championship will also feature a redesigned Player of the Year competition with a tournament leaderboard for every stop. The winners from each stop will be awarded a VIP package including accommodation and a PokerStars Championship main event buy-in in addition to entry into a special invitational tournament featuring $100,000 winner-take-all first prize. More information on PokerStars Championships can be found on their website.
PokerStars Festival events are shorter live events lasting 6-7 days which are tailored for recreational players. The events will feature a more concise schedule of tournaments, including a main event buy-in between $1,000 and $1,500. As of the time of the press release there are two confirmed PokerStars Festival stops in New Jersey and London. The New Jersey event will run from Oct. 29 – Nov. 6 and will feature 50 tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $100 to $5,000 at Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City.
“We are always thinking of how to bring the best experience to players, through the variety of tournaments we sponsor, the ease of finding information, how we communicate to players and media, and the overall experience on and off the felt," said Edgar Stuchly, PokerStars’ Director of Live Events. “The PokerStars Championship and PokerStars Festival events are an enhancement of the existing PokerStars sponsored live tours, helping to take our vision for live poker to a whole new level. The PokerStars Championship will include top-tier events that will visit the most exciting and prestigious destinations worldwide, similar to the much-loved European Poker Tour, while the PokerStars Festival events have a more regional feel, positioned as an action-packed poker vacation.”
In addition to the rebranding of the tours there are also some new technological improvements that should help things run even more smoothly at live events. The PSLive registration system has been enhanced with an online platform for players to register for tournaments prior to events, there will be a new mobile app for all PokerStars Championship events, and also self-serve terminals for registration.
A new single-stop website for everything related to PokerStars sponsored live events is also going to launch, while the various live event social media channels related to PokerStars current bevy of tours will be merged in January 2017 and renamed @PokerStarsLive. Check out the PokerStars Live announcement video below to learn more:
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