PokerStars’ EPT Barcelona Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

PokerStars’ European Poker Tour (EPT) 2024 Barcelona started on August 26th and recently finished its circuit. With 62 events spread over two weeks, it drew over 25,000 players. This year, the festival reached an impressive figure of €53 million given out in prizes. 

Of that €53 million, around €50 million was awarded through 41 non-satellite events. This amount overtakes last year’s prize pool with around €3 million more, as 2023’s festival awarded €47.8 million for 40 non-satellite events. However, this festival didn’t outperform last year’s tournament in every aspect.

The 2024 edition of the EPT Barcelona marked the festival’s 20th anniversary. Barcelona has hosted every tour of this event since its debut in 2004. While this is definitely something to celebrate, this tour didn’t do as well as we expected it to.

We expected to see PokerStars pushing this festival, offering promotions, qualifiers, and other offers to advertise it. However, that didn’t happen, and this year’s attendance is actually less than last year.

One would expect the €5,300 buy-in Main Event to do well, especially considering it attracted 2120 entrants in 2023. However, this year saw a 7% decrease in participants, with just under 2,000 entries instead. 

This Main Event generated an overall prize pool of more than €9.5 million, which is the fourth-largest Main Event in this festival’s history. However, it’s still less than last year’s prize pool, which was over €10 million, and 2022’s event, which was just over €11 million. 

Further, the following events also saw a decrease in entries:

• €1,100 buy-in ESPT Main Event - 7138 participants (down by 3.5%)
• €1,100 buy-in NLH Seniors Event - 27% drop
• €2,200 buy-in ESPT High Roller - 7% drop
• €3,000 buy-in NLH Mystery Bounty - 1,113 entries (down from 1,339)
• €10,300 buy-in  EPT High Roller - 9% drop

While quite a few tournaments saw fewer players participating, some did better than last year. These events are likely what allowed the overall prize pool to overtake last year’s figure:

• €10,200 NLH Mystery Bounty - 11% increase
• €1650 Mystery Bounty - 6.5% increase
• €1650 Women’s Event - 6% rise
• €550 NLH Deep Stack - 28% growth
• €3150 NLH 6-Handed - 10% increase
• €550 NLH Estrellas Cup - 2,175 participants (up from 1,093)
• €100,000 Super High Roller - 41 entries (up from 18)
• €25,000 NLH (Event 1) - 35% increase
• €25,000 NLH (Event 2) - 172% rise
• €50,000 2nd Chance Super High Roller - 8% growth

Last year, there was a lot of confusion and uncertainty regarding Spanish tax concerns. However, with the increased participation we saw in many of the high-roller events, this uncertainty seems to have been resolved.

Further, PokerStars handed out 30 Power Path Gold Passes, compared to last year’s seven, so we expected to see more interest in the festival. Clearly, live poker remains as popular as ever, as we can see with the record-breaking attendance at the WSOP Main Event.

Still, despite fewer players participating, the festival’s atmosphere remained triumphant as it prepared for its stops in Cyprus and Prague.