It looks like this time there's going to be an all-out war between partypoker and PokerStars in the form of Twitch sponsorship.
In the previous years it was PokerStars that was ultimately the dominant poker website on Twitch due to the fact that they sponsored most of the prominent Twitch streamers.
However, that was only until last week when they let go of some of their ambassadors, namely Jeff Gross and Jaime Staples.
As PokerStars seem to weaken their grip in poker streaming, partypoker enters once again the Twitch world (they joined initially in 2016) and they're upping their game this 2019. On Wednesday (February 13), partypoker announced they will be sponsoring ‘The Thirst Lounge', a Twitch channel by Bill Perkins, which appears to be Perkins' outlet for his business life and shows his experiences about high-stakes poker and other things related to the game. The Thirst Lounge is described to be a show in Twitch about ‘poker, having fun and living life to its full potential'.
As usual, partypoker's style of announcing these kinds of things appear like they are subtly trolling PokerStars in some way - even though he wasn't mentioned anywhere in their blog article or press release, their former ambassador Jeff Gross was shown alongside Bill Perkins in a picture in their announcement. Savvy, eh?
Even if the full details of the official sponsorship deal isn't revealed for now, it looks like the combined forces of the hedgefund manager's influence and one of the world's major poker sites could see both of them reach new goals and attain new audiences.
The philanthropic hedgefund billionaire Bill Perkins who has a passion for poker and anything that is related to the game (he's well-known for engaging in crazy prop bets), launched ‘The Thirst Lounge' in 2016 and it has grown into a popular Twitch TV destination. About the deal he said, "I am thrilled that partypoker is "thirsty" to come on board and support this exciting venture with us!"
The ‘Thirst Lounge 10' is composed of a diverse group of ten content creators of various walks of life from across the United States and Europe, and according to the partypoker announcement, they ‘all enjoy a shared passion for producing quality, poker-related content'.
Here are the ten members:
Adam Klein
Cat Valdes
Drew
Ebony Kenney
Jon Pardy
Justin Kelly
Kelly Minkin
Matt Forsythe
Priestley Leng
Voislav Ivanovski
Only a week after he parted ways with rival site PokerStars, incoming new member of The Thirst Lounge is Jeff Gross, who posted this in his Twitter feed:
Not only Jeff Gross, but it also looks like Jaime Staples will be onboard The Thirst Lounge as a new host as well.
In a constant effort to surpass other sites, partypoker has been diligently working and has been seen as one of the most active poker sites in the last six months. Not only their MILLIONS Online has become the biggest MTT in poker history, but also their revamped Diamond Club Elite VIP program has now become a noteworthy competitor to PokerStars Star Rewards.
Bill Perkins expressed his gratitude to the poker site, "Thanks to partypoker for putting their faith in The Thirst Lounge. We work with a fun, outgoing group. It will be a pleasure to watch them grow and develop The Thirst Lounge as well as their own brands."
Source:
https://poker.partypoker.com/en/blog/partypoker-becomes-official-sponsor-of-the-thirst-lounge.html
