Global Poker Masters to be broadcasted live on Twitch

"Our audience is online and on Twitch, and that's why we are going to use this great and innovative platform to bring our initiatives to a new public," he added.

With one month to go before the first edition of the GPI-powered Global Poker Masters kicks off in Malta, while the island celebrates its first-ever European Poker Tour festival, Dreyfus announced that months of hard negotiations led to Twitch's management believing in his project and signing an agreement to promote the event.

"The Global Poker Masters will be broadcast and promoted on Twitch in five different languages," Dreyfus announced. "Not only will we have the live stream of our event available in real-time on Twitch, but also that the GPM on the portal's homepage, making the event visible to an impressive amount of online users."

"Twitch is a lively community," Dreyfus continued.

According to Dreyfus, one of the keys to convince the popular streaming video service to accept the challenge offered by the GPI and engage in the poker world has been the specificity of the events that his organization has set up in order to proceed with, what Dreyfus calls, "sportifying" of the game of poker.

"I believe that GPI, with the GPM and the GPL, is creating the perfect bridge between e-sports and poker," Dreyfus said. "The team format and the 'sportified' concept fit perfectly to Twitch's audience."

"If you will visit Twitch.tv on March 21-22, you will find the live stream of the GPL available right from the site's homepage," Dreyfus continued. "It's going to be the first time ever that they do that about poker, and they decided to accept our offer and do it with the GPI and the Masters because we are not a classic poker tournament with an open buy-in. At Twitch, they have seen that our initiatives and their format can become the ideal bridge to fill the gap that today exist between poker and e-sports."

"Twitch and its 300 million monthly visitors globally is definitively one of our key strategic partners for our new initiatives," Dreyfus went on. "We are excited to have the opportunity to work together and promote poker differently."

"Over 80 percent of their visitors are 18 years old or older, and this means that you have 80 percent of 300 million visitors that are potentially interested in poker. During our event, we aim to reach between 300,000 to 1,000,000 viewers," Dreyfus estimated. "However, it would be OK with us also to record a lower number of viewers — we are in the middle of a learning process and we need this experience to learn how to do better things in the future."