The Philippine Basketball Association has recently announced the winner of their logo-making contest for the 2018 PBA All-Star with the logo immediately drawing attention from gamers that it resembles the Playpark All-Stars logo which has been in use by Playpark since 2015.

The winner was announced yesterday on PBA’s website alongside the new logo with the article with the title “Part-time photographer wins PBA 2018 All-Star logo contest”. The winning entry was selected out of 44 finalists with over 100 logos being submitted by artists and fans during the contest period.

The new PBA All-Star 2018 logo is below:

In the PBA’s Facebook post for the announcement, many gamers were quick to cite the logo’s similarity to that off online video game publisher and operator Playpark. The company runs many successful online titles in the Philippines and part of their community events is the Playpark All-Stars. Started in 2014, Playpark All-Stars is a community event where competitions and other activities for players are held.

Here is a side-by-side:

The PBA , Playpark or the winner of the logo-making contest have yet to make any statements.

Update 1 03/16/18 2:58PM – The PBA has announced the disqualification of the logo design contest winner. The disqualification announcement has been made in their official website.

The PBA announced:

The committee in charge of the 2018 All-Star Week on Friday declared that the winner of its logo contest has violated the rules of the contest. League officials learned of the violations after a concerned fan posted on the PBA’s Facebook account an e-sports logo that looks exactly similar to the winning entry. In the light of this development, the All-Star committee will hold another round of selection to determine the logo of its annual spectacle.

Update 2 03/16/18 5:09PM – Playpark has commented on the announcement of the PBA that disqualifies the winner of the logo contest. Playpark also published on its Facebook page its message to the PBA: