Liquidity Sharing Inspires New PokerStars $11 Million ‘COOP Festival

October 17th, 2018 | by Kaycee James

PokerStars has launched its latest ‘COOP and this time the online tournament festival will bring together players from France, Spain and Portugal.

PokerStars launches a new ‘COOP event designed specifically for players in Spain, France and Portugal. (Image: Ecotrans)

Following the liquidity sharing pact that came into effect in July 2017, PokerStars has been at the forefront of designing cross-border events.

Continuing this tradition, the operator announced the creation of the Southern Europe Championship of Online Poker (SECOOP) on October 16.

WCOOP for Europeans

The festival will run from October 28 to November 12 and feature 149 MTTs and a guaranteed prizepool of €10 million/$11.5. Although that’s a far cry from the $116 million PokerStars guaranteed during the 2018 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), SECOOP is designed to be a regional equivalent.

Buy-ins will start at $5 and the two marquee MTTs will take place on October 28 and November 4. Both Sunday Specials will be No Limit Hold’em affairs, with the former boasting a $345,000 guarantee and the latter offering up at least $400,000 in prize money.

Based on previous form, PokerStars will be hoping to surpass SECOOP’s guarantee. Off the back of Portugal joining Spain and France in the shared playerpool, the operator ran the inaugural Trio Series back in June.

PokerStars Controlling Shared Market

Hosting a total of 78 events, the online festival attracted 40, 816 unique entrants and proved that liquidity sharing across parts of Europe can be successful.

With the previously ring-fenced countries now open to more players, traffic across the board has improved. As well as French regulator ARJEL noting an eight percent upswing in revenue during Q1 2018, Spain’s DGOJ recorded a 27 percent year-on-year increase in earnings back in June.

Looking to capitalize on the revitalized markets, PokerStars will use SECOOP to further enhance its presence in Spain, France and Portugal. What’s more, the new ‘COOP should form the foundation for more innovations when Italy finally joins the European playerpool.

Although it’s unclear when the final piece of the puzzle will be put in place, PokerStars has positioned itself as the market leader, something that will make help any future integrations.