It’s been a couple of weeks since the conclusion of the 2025 PartyPoker Tour London. The visit to the British capital was the inaugural event of the tour, and it’s safe to say that they kicked things off in utterly brilliant fashion. All players got great value for their money, and seemed to have a swell time. The biggest winner was, of course, Getnet Kassa, who won the £500 Main Event for £38,408, defeating Will Kassouf heads-up.
The next stop for the 2025 PartyPoker Tour is in Manchester. June 17-22, the Manchester235 Casino will roll out the red carpet, and the excitement for yet another thrilling event is overwhelming. Presumably, you’re as eager as we were to hear more about the upcoming event. We couldn’t contain ourselves, so we called Antonio Sapio, asking him to review the London event, and perhaps reveal some upcoming Manchester treats.
Raising the Bar
Naturally, the first thing we needed to ask Antonio was how he’s been feeling after the London event:
“London exceeded our expectations. We registered more than 2,000 entries for the festival. While these numbers may be frequent in the industry, you need to consider that for us, it was quite the challenge to bring a new brand to life. We started from scratch; the brand, the tour, and the concept are all new. We are happy with the numbers and with how everything went.”
Out of the 2,000+ entries that were made across all events in the London event, roughly 300 of these were online qualifiers. Without a doubt, PartyPoker are one of the poker sites that offers the best opportunities when it comes to qualifying for live events. For mere cents, players can play qualifiers and eventually get their hands on a £1,000 package. PartyPoker are sending 1,000 players to the live fields in 2025, and we’ll see hundreds of them in Manchester.
No doubt, all participants in London were pleased with the event. Antonio reveals that a lot of thought and care have gone into the process of creating the events:
“The PartyPoker Tour wants to be different from other tours. You will see how we try to change the narrative. We just started, but we have big ideas in mind. We’re already achieving one of our goals, which is to give back to players. We have the lowest rake in the industry. Within our resources, we have a powerful, solid player engagement and player experience plan for our events. We are trying to turn this into something wholly focused on the players.
During the event, we are trying to reward players as much as we can with big prize pools, Spin the Wheel, merchandise, and free-to-enter tournaments. We are also experimenting with other verticals, such as sports tournaments. In the future, we want to integrate casino tournaments. All these activities are free.”
To Manchester We Go
Now, Antonio and the rest of the PartyPoker crew will bring an enhanced version of the London experience to Manchester. Antonio guarantees that players can expect a similar atmosphere to the one that they experienced in London, but elevated to even higher standards:
“For example, Tennessee Hold ‘Em will return. We’re very happy about this, but of course, the one thing we’re most thrilled about is that we are once again qualifying hundreds of players for the event. We aim to bring the same spirit and vibes across the country, and we hope to achieve this in Manchester. We want to strengthen our relationship with our team of ambassadors who did an amazing job in London. We will repeat and improve the London experience and bring it to Manchester.”
Tennessee Hold ‘Em, a fairly new and action-packed form of poker, was invented by Scott Hill, and he, together with PartyPoker, hosted a tournament of the game in London. Tennessee Hold ‘Em is just the tip of the iceberg that makes the PartyPoker Tour events unique; whether it be a new game, the PartyPoker “Wheel of Fortune”, giving away free merchandise, or throwing a sublime Player’s Party, there’s no doubt that PartyPoker goes to great lengths to create live events that are in a league of their own.
Another example is live streaming. Players could follow the conclusion of the £500 Main Event in London on PartyPoker’s Twitch channel, and even though the broadcasting was an overwhelming success with thousands of viewers worldwide, Antonio reveals that PartyPoker plans to set a new standard for poker streaming:
“What we had in London was very beautiful but very conventional, very standard; you can find it everywhere across the nation and beyond. We are trying to explore new ways of live streaming that can have more of a grassroots spirit. Most likely on Thursday and Friday, we’ll have two streams with one host each day. One will be Glenn Brown, the guy behind Redtooth Poker, and the other one will be Jason Glatzer. We will set up a table with cameras, and these two guys will do the live commentating, walking around, interviewing live, and be a little more engaging. The idea behind this is to get a synergy between live and online, by attaching an online promotion to the live stream so that we can maximize engagement.”
More to Come
While we’re excited to touch down in Manchester as the official media partner to the PartyPoker Tour, we’re also walking on needles for PartyPoker to announce the last two stops of the 2025 UK Tour. At the end of our talk, Antonio reveals that he’s aiming to reveal this golden nugget of information at the end of May.
Until then, we’re excited to have the time of our lives with many fellow poker players in Manchester. Of course, the PartyPoker Team Pro’s Jaime and Matthew Staples will join us for a thrilling week of poker action, and you’d better believe we’re in for an event that will raise the bar for live poker events in the UK to come.
- Read more: Jaime Staples: “Live Poker Is Still Sexy” as PartyPoker Tour Returns
- Read more: Matt Staples Shares His Thoughts on PartyPoker Tour Return and More
