- Five of the first six overlays were in the $500 buy-in tier.
- That is concerning for an industry only just starting to gear up for what will be the biggest summer ever seen online.
- Similar GG WSOP events include the $400 COLOSSUS and PLOSSUS on July 26, with $3 million and $1 million guaranteed.
- Partypoker’s WPT has a string of similar-sized buy-in tournaments with big guarantees.
- It is too early to extrapolate from the first week of Stadium Series.
- No one really knows the appetite, or wallet sizes, of the online poker playing community after a mammoth spring.
PokerStars’ ambitious new online summer festival Stadium Series, has by many metrics, got off to a decent start. The first week, which comprised eight “heats” and a Weekly Final, each split into three separate buy-in tiers, attracted over 250,000 individual entries and generated a combined prize pool in excess of $7 million.
Of the 28 tournaments in Week 1, 22 covered their guarantees. In total, there has been more than $1 million in additional prize money on top of what was guaranteed.
PokerStars made close to $700,000 in rake, more than making up for the comparatively minor $130,000 in overlays seen so far.
As one has come to expect from PokerStars’ online festivals, some sailed passed their targets. For example, the mid-tier Heat 3, a 6-Max PKO that needed 4000 entrants to cover the $200,000 prize money, ended up attracting north of 7000 to build a prize pool of over $350,000. Many others in this mid-tier went 30% to 50% over, and there were similar successes in the low tiers.
However, of the six events that missed, five of them were in the high stakes, $500 buy-in tier. In fact, all but one of the nine high tier events in Week 1 either had an overlay or only just covered.
That should be a concern for an online poker industry that is only just starting to gear up for what will be the biggest summer of poker ever seen online.
Along with Stadium Series—which has three more weeks of tournaments, each bigger and more ambitious than the last—there is the international WSOP bracelet series on GGPoker as well as the $100 million-guaranteed WPT World Online Championships.
Both of these are filled with events in the $500 to $1500 range.
