We’re the biggest Twitch channel in northern Europe for poker
Bengt “Bengan” Sonnert is on the move when I call him - there’s an odd crackle on the line, which for some reason sounds remarkably like chip-riffling. My soul is instantly soothed - it’s been well over a year now since I was in a bricks-and-mortar casino - but also it seems most fitting for a gentleman I think I last encountered as he was taking fourth place in the 2008 WSOPE Main Event. Bengan has well over $1.1 million in live tournament earnings, but we’re not here to talk about his impressive tournament record today - instead, the topic of discussion is his involvement with The Festival Series’ newest partner site, The Gambling Cabin.
“We are a Swedish gambling community and website,” Bengan explains, as I try my best to ignore the chip-riffling interference on the line. “We do gambling content, and affiliation of course. It started out as a Twitch channel and now we do really broad things - we try to do really high level content. I was a poker player for about 10 years and also a sports bettor - so we try to make really high quality content, but also in an entertaining way. Most people who gamble do it for fun, so we try to bring both quality and entertainment to our different channels. Now we do Twitch, we do podcasts, we have a cooperation with Unibet, and we work across different media. It’s mostly sports betting, but as we have a poker background we’re really big on poker. We’re the biggest Twitch channel in northern Europe for poker - we do it in Swedish but we still compete with the biggest English language channels.. We have a foundation in poker - we do different tournaments for our members, yesterday I played the biggest event on PokerStars and streamed it. So that sort of thing.” Exactly the sort of thing that The Festival Series players like, in other words.
Be assured that it’s going to be an entertaining experience for everyone
Indeed, The Gambling Cabin and The Festival Series seem like a match made in gambling heaven. “I thought it was a really fun and exciting idea,” Bengan enthuses. “Franke’s done similar stuff before - with the Cash Game Festival and all - and now that we can start doing live events again, I think a lot of gamblers will be looking forward to that. So what we’re doing is trying to help him - bring players from Sweden first of all, from our community - and also go there and try to make it as good an experience for everyone as possible. I think Franke has a lot of good ideas and those events will be really great.”
The Gambling Cabin doesn’t focus too much on games like blackjack or roulette, but Bengan is enthusiastic about the concept of casino games as part of The Festival Series schedule. “Well, we don’t do a lot of casino, but I love playing casino games, so if you look at it that way... I think casino games are great - they’re so entertaining! So if you go to an event and you can play there, that’s great. I think casino games are maybe hard to market in a responsible way, and our market is mainly poker and sports betting, but for me...” he laughs. “I think it’s going to be great to cover as well - everyone having so much fun!” As a live blogger, I can’t argue with him on that.
The Gambling Cabin are still in the early stages of their partnership with The Festival Series, but they’re planning to run a series of qualifiers to The Festival in Bratislava for their players - stay tuned to the usual channels for more info nearer the time. However they end up running things, be assured that it’s going to be an entertaining experience for everyone involved. “Swedes are really keen on going to these kinds of events,” Bengan says as we wrap up, “So I think we can bring some players and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
