On Friday morning, Mediarex Sports and Entertainment announced that they had entered into a sponsorship deal with PokerStars, with the online poker industry’s largest site becoming the lead sponsor for Mediarex’s Global Poker League.
During the announcement of the new deal, the GPL’s Chief Executive Officer and the founder of the league Alexandre Dreyfus stated, “We are optimistic about this partnership, having the support of PokerStars is a crucial step forward on the road to fully establishing the GPL as a real blueprint for poker entertainment in the future. PokerStars offers us a multitude of opportunities to grow our platform and continue developing our two-fold strategy of connecting the League to the poker community and genuinely connecting poker to the mainstream entertainment sector on a large scale.” As a part of the sponsorship deal, poker fans will also see the emblem of PokerStars – the spade – emblazoned on the side of the GPL battlefield, “The Cube.”
For his part Eric Hollreiser, PokerStars’ Director of Corporate Communications, thought that the GPL was an innovation that will help the game overall. “The Global Poker League brings an innovative team-based twist to poker and we are happy to support Mediarex in their quest to bring poker to new audiences”, Hollreiser noted during the announcement.
The partnership between the two organizations seems to be a logical one. PokerStars is in the midst of transitioning to a more “recreational” mode of play for its customers and an expansion of the fan base of the game. The longstanding thought of the GPL was, at least according to Dreyfus, to “sportify” the game of poker and bring it to more casual fans instead of the hard core poker aficionado. With PokerStars on board, there is a huge potential for online promotions that can be done to bring players closer to the GPL product, perhaps in a manner of attending events for the GPL or actually playing in a sanctioned GPL event or on a GPL franchise.
But there could be a little bit of an issue with the signing. Many of the members of Team PokerStars Pro – including Las Vegas Moneymakers manager Chris Moneymaker, Hong Kong Stars manager Celina Lin, London Royals manager Liv Boeree and players Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, Jason Mercier, Vanessa Selbst, Marc-Andre Ladouceur, Felipe Ramos, Randy Lew and Bryan Huang – are on the rosters of teams in the GPL, creating a bit of an incestuous relationship between the GPL and PokerStars already. Would the potential sponsorship of PokerStars have an impact if the GPL was to have to discipline one of the players in the future (at this time, the GPL has no bylaws on player conduct, but it is something that has been mentioned by Dreyfus that could occur in the future)? There is also the fact that PokerStars is already working with Mediarex on two of its other properties, the European Poker Awards and the American Poker Awards.
Critics have also pointed out that this might not be the best investment for PokerStars. Earlier this year, the parent company of the site, Amaya Gaming, announced wholesale changes to their VIP programs, essentially eviscerating them to the point that it wasn’t profitable for grinders to work the games. On Twitter Jason Mo commented, “Solid use of funds stolen from SNE (Supernova Elite) and Supernova players,” with fellow pro Melissa Burr adding in a point where she questioned Dreyfus about why players would take part in the GPL for minimal pay and was brushed off by Dreyfus saying, “It happened. Let’s move on.”
The GPL is holding to their appearance at TwitchCon 2016 this weekend, but it is much more neutered than it was expected to be just a couple of months ago. Instead of conducting their playoffs at the popular convention, the GPL has been reduced to having some players (no schedule has been announced) appear at their booth and, on Saturday at noon (Pacific Time) have Scott Ball of the Moneymakers and Thiago Nishijima of the Sao Paulo Metropolitans play and exhibition match on the GPL software from the floor of the convention (apparently “The Cube” will be unable to make the trip from Las Vegas to San Diego for the festivities).
Whether the partnership between PokerStars and the GPL improves the burgeoning league’s future is unknown. Aligning yourself with the #1 online poker site in the industry, however, is usually a recipe for good things.
