GGRAsia – Poker group to stream APT events in HK, mainland China

Poker group to stream APT events in HK, mainland China

Mar 08, 2018 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck

The Asian Poker Tour (APT) and the Hong Kong Poker Players’ Association (HKPPA) have announced an agreement to provide live-streaming – in Chinese language – of some of APT’s events to audiences in Hong Kong and mainland China.

The broadcast will be done via HKPPA’s channel on Douyu – a Chinese Internet streaming platform. The first event to be broadcast will be the APT Championship Philippines 2018, scheduled for this month, the APT said in a Wednesday press release. The tournament will take place from March 21 to April 2, at Philippine casino venue Resorts World Manila.

“HKPPA will also host [cashless satellite games] at their poker room to support various APT events throughout the year, starting with the APT Championships Macau 2018 which will be held at Macau Billionaire Poker, Babylon Casino starting from April 25 to May 6, 2018,” the APT said.

Stephen Lai, managing director of HKPPA, told GGRAsia that the negotiation for the live-streaming of some of APT’s events took some time to be finalised. “What [APT] saw in HKPPA was a good platform for [poker-related] streaming,” he said in a phone interview.

According to Mr Lai, there is “significant demand” for online-streaming of poker games with commentary in Cantonese – a Chinese dialect in Southern China – in places like Malaysia, Macau and Guangdong.

“We usually use Facebook for streaming, but started adopting Douyu as well in recent months because the latter can reach a wider mainland Chinese [audience],” he explained.

Mr Lai said additionally that his association is working on promoting poker as a sport in Hong Kong, as well as on changing people’s perception about the game.

“There are a number of international and Asian [poker tournament operators] who would like to host a poker game in Hong Kong,” he said, noting however that the association only organises cashless events and games.