888 Poker Announced As Official Sponsor of WSOP 2016
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) has announced that 888 Poker will be their official sponsor of the 2016 series when it begins in May later this year. The contract which was signed by both parties is an extension of the previous deal from 2015, which effectively allows 888 Poker to offer their registered players opportunities to qualify for the WSOP in Vegas via their online satellites. Winning a seat at a big WSOP game table is as simple as entering an online tournament on the 888 Poker site.
The WSOP is one of the world’s biggest and most lucrative live poker tournaments. It has been running every year since 1970 and offers coveted gold bracelets for winners of each of the events. This year the series has promised that there will be 69 bracelet events, and that the 2016 tournament will have ‘the most ambitious and diverse schedule in the 47-year history.’
Organisers of the WSOP have released their much awaited 2016 schedule, which has some notable changes from previous years including a few new events. The final bracelet event of the series will not be the Main Event, as has always been the case, but instead it’ll be the $1,111 Little One for One Drop event which begins on the 12th of July. Daily Deepstack action will start on the 31st May and run throughout the entire series. When the press release was delivered for the 2016 WSOP schedule, the popular Big One for One Drop event was not mentioned as part of the summer 2016 tournament in Las Vegas.
888 Poker have made some new appointments recently, including hiring Kara Scott as their new poker ambassador. Scott acts as an anchor for the ESPN coverage of the WSOP.
As part of the 2015 agreement between 888 Poker and the WSOP, the online poker giant was given the opportunity to also sponsor the World Series of Poker Europe tournament (WSOPE) in Berlin. The Europe and Asian branches of the WSOP alternate each year, so 2016 will be the year of the World Series of Poker Asia-Pacific (WSOP-APAC). It’s unsure whether 888 will also sponsor the Asian WSOP series this year or not.
Whether other sites such as PokerStars will be able to send players to the WSOP via online qualifiers now that sole sponsorship of the series has been taken by 888 Poker, is unsure. They might be out of the running when it comes to holding online satellites for customers.
The WSOP website has been updated to reflect their 2016 sponsor. The renewed agreement between 888 and the WSOP is a strong sign of the online gambling site’s growing popularity amongst poker players and within the global poker industry.
