How Live Poker Events Are Built: Inside the Poker Industry
Working in the poker industry is an absolute delight. It kind of feels that you can make a living out of your hobby, similar as to playing poker for a living. But I can assure you, there will be less financial swings! Let's give you all an insight how it's like to work for The Festival Series, and what all comes with it!
The brand of The Festival Series is a brand that is much more known around Europe, than it was 5 years ago. Which is fairly logical as well when you think about it. But just to give you an idea: When we mentioned The Festival events to players a couple years back, they mixed us with other events such as Malta Poker Festival. Nowadays, people know the difference, and for that, we are very grateful and aware that we are on the right path.
Our brand stands for diversity at first. Besides a legion of No-Limit Hold'em events (on average most NLH tournaments per day of the event in Europe), there are tons of mixed games available. Some of them, you might even never have heard of before. At The Festival, we all love mixed games, especially Martin 'Franke' von Zweigbergk, who is in the same time the largest fish of the crew, as well as the owner of the entire brand.
But that's not all: The Festival offers hospitality events, which are side activities that allow online qualifiers which have hospitality included in their package, that gives people a chance to look beyond the poker tables and have a great time with fellow other poker players. In our opinion, live events are not just about poker, it's about everything that comes with it. And that's exactly a topic as well that our crew likes doing the most during an event, making sure people have a brilliant time at the hospitality events. Led by Christel Natri and Andreas Hoglund, all social activities are arranged from A to Z, and players can really that breather which is often required for poker players, and definitately the thing that most tend to forget about when being at a live event.
What It Takes to Prepare for a Live Poker Event?
Organising a live poker event from scratch is something that requires a lot from a team. First of all, for The Festival Series, it’s essential to have venues that are capable of hosting the event. For several years now, we have had three venues that regularly return to the yearly calendar: Banco Casino Bratislava, King's Resort Rozvadov, and Portomaso Casino in Malta. In addition, new venues such as Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham and returning venues such as Olympic Park Casino in Tallinn have also become part of the schedule.
It’s extremely important to stay in close contact with the venue, as many things need to be organised well before the actual event takes place. One of the main topics we focus on long before an event is the tournament schedule. Together with a small team, we always aim to create a schedule that works well for both Hold’em players and Mixed Games players.
However, there are many other factors that need to be taken into consideration when creating a tournament schedule. It’s vital to know how many poker tables are available during the event, as well as how many poker dealers and floor staff can be provided. And that’s only from the venue’s side of things.
Like many other live poker events, hotel accommodation is required for players. Naturally, poker players prefer accommodations that are convenient, but they also want options that offer the best balance between price and location. That’s something we provide with The Festival Series, as we have partnerships with various hotel brands to ensure players can book their accommodation through us.
On top of that, all online qualifiers have hotel accommodation included in their packages, meaning rooms need to be booked in advance, which is very important.
Online Qualifiers and Promotions of the Event
Online qualifiers are the foundation of a live poker event, as they give organisers and the venue an indication of how many players can be expected during the event. At The Festival Series, we work with a large number of poker operators, including Unibet, KKPoker, WPT Global, NordicBet, Betsson, Guts, Betsafe, Paf, Coolbet, Betfred, Inbet, RedStar, Svenska Spel, OlyBet, and Champion Poker.
As you can imagine, there is a lot to arrange before any online qualifier even goes live for the first time. It’s not simply about selecting a random day of the week and adding a tournament to the schedule. It’s about creating a tournament structure that works best for the operator, The Festival, and the players alike. The same applies to deciding which format will be played, as well as setting the ideal buy-in level and guarantee.
Then, once all of that is set in stone, you need to come up with a plan for how you want to market the online qualifiers. Not only do we inform our players about every single online qualifier through our website, but we also work together with numerous external media companies that help promote our qualifiers across different platforms.
Besides that, there is the entire world of social media to consider. Without going too deeply into detail, you can be certain that it’s not an easy topic to deal with. Poker is still widely viewed as gambling, and that comes with many restrictions and challenges. In many ways, social media in the poker industry can feel like navigating a minefield, you need to know exactly where and how to move.
And let’s be honest: social media content is completely different compared to what it was ten years ago. That means our content team constantly needs to stay innovative and keep up with the latest trends in social media, while at the same time making sure we never lose sight of our brand values.
Upcoming Live Events
This gives you a bit of a view of what we have to deal with on a daily basis here at The Festival Series. It's not always easy, it's challenging, and it's just an absolute delight to work in the world of poker. We hope you like The Festival events as much as we do ourselves, and we hope to see you at any of the stops of 2026!
| Stop / Event | Location | Country | Dates (2026) | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Festival Weekend Vilnius 2026 | Vilnius | Lithuania | May 28–31 | Festival Weekend |
| The Festival Rozvadov 2026 | Rozvadov | Czech Republic | June 9–15 | Full Festival Series |
| The Festival Weekend Tallinn 2026 | Tallinn | Estonia | July 1–5 | Festival Weekend |
| The Festival Weekend Riga 2026 | Riga | Latvia | September 10–13 | Festival Weekend |
| The Festival Malta 2026 | St. Julian's | Malta | September 14–20 | Full Festival Series |
| The Festival Online Autumn 2026 | Online | International | Autumn 2026 | Online Series |
| The Festival Tallinn 2026 | Tallinn | Estonia | Late 2026 | Full Festival Series |
