PokerStars to sponsor Wembley Masters

Good news today as leading online poker website PokerStars.com has been announced as the title sponsor for next week’s Masters tournament from Wembley…

As reported by the Telegraph, World Snooker chairman Barry Hearn has commented on the deal:

“There’s been a lot of gloom around snooker so it’s a relief to have a sponsorship deal done. The Masters didn’t have a sponsor on it, so thankfully someone has come in at the last minute.

“Pokerstars are a major company and the biggest online operator in the poker industry. It’s potentially a good partnership for World Snooker, and although it’s only a one-year deal, we’ve got a credible brand name on board.

“It’s very difficult to do a three-year deal with the event starting on Sunday but hopefully they will share our enthusiasm and we can sit down to talk about a longer deal afterwards.”

“I can’t go into details, but the deal is an expectable amount of money.

“I think the sponsorship is worth a lot more but it’s up to us to prove our worth to people on the back of the TV ratings for the event.”

It does not take much reading between the lines therefore to work out that the deal is not the most lucrative in the world. Given the last-minute nature of the agreement however, Barry has done very well to secure a sponsor of this calibre and this has to be viewed as positive news.

Hopefully this will be a sign of things to come and more sponsors like PokerStars (and indeed Pukka Pies who recently sponsored the UK Championship), will be persuaded that snooker is a sport worth investing in…