SCOOP pays out $185 million
It was the biggest tournament series in online poker history by an order of magnitude, but are things slowing down now?
The Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) has always been one of the most popular online MTT series, usually the second biggest of the year, but the 2020 offering has just finished as the biggest online series of all time.
At the start of the year there had never been a tournament series boast a $100 million prize pool, but at the start of June three have done just that. PowerFest, the GGPoker WSOP-C series and the biggest of them all the 2020 SCOOP.
$185,136,133 has been awarded across 371 tournaments (each with a low, medium and high variant), which is a full $100 million more awarded than the original guarantee of $85 million. This is, of course, due to the global lockdown which has meant more people are at home with time on their hands, as well as the decision by PokerStars to extend the series.
Big festivals are everywhere
It may have been the biggest series but it doesn't mean it had all the biggest tournaments. Not only did GGPoker host two tournaments during the WSOP-C that awarded seven-figure prizes, tonight partypoker has the final table of the online Super High Roller Bowl, which has a $102,000 buy-in and two seven-figure prizes. It has been a huge few months for all three operators.
PokerStars have now announced a two week $25 million guaranteed 'Summer Series' to follow SCOOP (more details on that here shortly) which curiously has put the Sunday Million back to its pre-lockdown guarantee of $1.5 million for the next two weeks. A sign perhaps that online traffic is returning to normal as lockdowns are being lifted and people are enjoying the warm weather. Either that or a sign of the poker economy not being able to take so many big online festivals.
It looks like there might not be any live poker tournaments from PokerStars in 2020 which means that perhaps the next big question for them will be whether the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), usually their marquee series in September, will attempt to break the $200 million guarantee barrier?
Will we see an even bigger WCOOP? Let us know in the comments:
