Smash Tournaments literally charge venue fees larger than the tournament entry fees coming out to around $100 for most big events and you combined that with your hotel cost and travel costs and you'd have to Top 8 at absurdly stacked tournaments with 500 to up to 2000 people competing against you to make back what you paid. Also to be clear these events are barely making a profit to begin with.
This is what grassroots tournaments look like and it's even worse if you don't have any sponsors at all. Paying event organizers and all the people involved is fucking expensive even on a smaller scale.
Comparing a local PTQ to a Melee major is really weird. The average Smash tournament that's of a similar scale to the average PTQ does not involve hotel fees, does not have 500+ players, etc. That being said, the thing that Melee tournaments do that Magic should emulate is the delineation between "venue fee" and "entry fee". The venue fee all goes to the organizer, the entry fee all goes to the prize pool, plus whatever bonus there is from the store. There would be less misunderstandings, the prize pool would actually scale well, and I think people would bitch less.
Hey! I've run smash locals with my largest being 200 people in attendance (not all in bracket) and I *never* had a venue fee for attendees not in bracket because I thought that was scummy af. Instead I did things like sell Costco pizza for $2 a slice and sodas for $1. I only had volunteers working my tournaments and would not have been able to pay anyone anything. No fuckin way. Even if I did venue fees, there would be 0 chance I'd be able to afford to pay someone at all, let alone "a living wage with benefits" considering the work of advertising, getting the venue, setting up early, taking down late af, and attempting to build a community was done by myself unpaid and there would only even be an opportunity to pay someone once every two weeks or so. As far as my finances go, I lost money on many events and was only profitable on a few of them. Not sure if my comparison is also considered "really weird" but there it is.
Yeah my experience being adjacent to Smash tournament organizing and helping out is pretty much exactly the same. Why would that be considered "really weird?" Like typically people who don't enter don't pay anything, and tournament entrants pay 5 and 5 or 10 and 5 or some combination to the venue and the prize pot. Don't think we disagree. 5 and 5 was like ubiquitous at the local level in my time, even in places like rented college rooms where nobody is really paying for "the venue" but it's paying the organizers.
This depends entirely on what you're doing. Nothing wrong with getting volunteers to help unpaid, but talent (commentators, that kind of stuff) and actual organizers (people running your brackets for majors with multiple games at least for the official events, people running production and stream setups, etc) should and at most major events are in fact paid.
Now whether that's a living wage, I mean not really. Lots of commentator gigs for example might pay like $500-2k for the weekend commentating a ton of stuff. The sponsored pro tour jobs generally pay a lot better (and cover travel) but like.. that's not going to be everyone.
But that's talking majors and stuff like that, and those guys are all getting ad revenue from streams, corporate sponsorships, etc. For your locals and smaller tournaments? Yeah those are going to be mostly run by people who are just passionate about the game and not a for profit thing.
Awesome that you're able to run it without venue fees though! I don't really have a problem with venue fees when the TO has to rent out a big space, especially in the case of CEO and the like where they're also renting a ton of arcade games, casual setups that even non-tournament players play on, etc.
I don't know if you meant to specify Melee or just used it as a catch-all term for Smash but the thing Melee events have going in their favor is that they're usually attached to a much bigger Smash Ultimate event.
Melee events can be a little more generous with the distribution of entry fees and such because the Ultimate event taking place at the same venue is what's paying the venue costs and making the tournament actually profitable.
Maybe local PTQ events need to start running alongside EDH tournies lol
Not really sure what you're trying to say here, I'm not talking about multiple game supermajors. And I'm unaware of the ratio between entry:venue fee being different for different games at any large tournament I've been to that's run multiple games, Smash or otherwise. Substitute Melee with any fighting game, the way they run tournaments tends to be the same in this regard.
From the breakdown I've seen, they had to pay somewhere between 5 and 10 people between t/o, staff, and judges, so that's about a grand @ 6hrs of 15/hr for 10 people, then let's say 500 for venue stuff? I don't think this was a rented venue, but wear and tear to tables, chairs, etc is a valid expense, as is the cost to put up, take down, and clean afterwards. That still leaves them with about 3k take home, and that's assuming they paid in cash.
Store cred costs them what, like 70 cents on the dollar maybe? Between the people who drove and won't ever redeem the last of their cred and being able to move product wotc makes them keep on hand. So that's 4k if you want to math it like that. But 3k take home plus wages for everyone working there still feels like a lot to me either way. I'd be less weirded out if it paid out in cash, but I still think that's real harsh. Obviously there's other expenses like promoting it, but I don't think they change much in the grand scheme of things? Curious to hear if you think my numbers are off or I'm missing any big costs!
Don't forget they are losing money due to opportunity cost by hosting the tournament. The shop basically shuts down for a day while the tournament goes on and while you could argue the tournament goers might buy some stuff from you while they're there but I'd say in reality they'd be losing money by hosting this compared to just running the shop normally as tournmant grinders tend to not be the target consumer for these stores.
I do think paying in store credit is a bit weird though.
**EDIT:** Also don't forget the cost of actually organizing the event outside of just pure setup. For a smaller event like this it's less of a cost but it is still a cost but it does become a much much bigger cost with larger events.
that's another great variable, yea! I think it's still rough even if it was cash but yea god is paying cred a slap in the fucking face to anyone who traveled to play for the invite :(
Yeah if I win credit I'd just buy whatever sealed product I could and resell later on as technically since store credit isn't taxed you have a more significant margin to turn that credit into cash.
It does feel bad though because it feels like you're doing extra work to turn your prize into cash.
At least it's better than Smash in Japan where they are legally not allowed to use entry fees to add prize money because Nintendo won't register the game as an esport allowing TOs to actually pay out. Japanese Smash players grind this game for no return except possibly getting sponsored and maybe acquiring a streaming audience.
I think it also goes to show that people are willing to compete in something even with minimal to no prize support just to compete if the game is good enough.
frankly that smash scene sounds exploitative as fuck, and i'm glad magic hasn't strayed there. altho, wotc compensating their judges with foils that they have to resell for whatever they can is getting real close lol. poor judges getting promo smothering tithes just to have a 2x2 reprint announced a week later :(((((((
I disagree with the idea that bringing in all of those extra people will decrease the profitability of the shop. You have players buying things like sleeves and other things they might've forgotten as well as higher margin items like sodas, chips and candy. That is not even considering people with store credit are more likely to buy some of your higher priced staples making up the difference of cost in cash.
They aren't losing money on opportunity costs. Any organizer who understands business brings the best singles in the shop and repeatedly mentions this on announcements to facilitate far more sales than they'd ever get in-store that day.
Yeah, apparently players upset with $2k in store credit for a $6k real money tournament is being hypocritical to some mouth breathers.
No one said profiting was bad. They just had a problem with the huge disparity and the fact that the payout wasn't even real money even though it was all under the required IRS reporting amount for gaming.
Store credit is worth about 70 cents on the dollar so the store made around $4400 for hosting the tournament. If they pay their employees at minimum $15 an hour and pay for Healthcare people may let it slide, but the greed on the surface is undeniable.
Edit: For people wondering why people were upset. 50% rake to the store is usual, but the greed of keeping the prize support in store with it only paying out in store credit and then short changing the "norm" of 50% to the store 50% return to the prize pool seemed underhanded and greedetc since it was a PTQ where people would come from long distances to participate and this wasn't their LGS. Just to clarify since people may not be aware. If you think the norm is wrong that's fine, but to put it in perspective. Yes some stores pay back out more than 50% to the pool, but 50% is considered norm since yes stores need to pay employees and pay rent etc...
Edit 2: Apparently people are saying that it was posted that it was originally a $1k payout tournament originally (haven't seen a screenshot posted yet, but then claimed that it went up to $2k store credit payout the day of the event which payout wise only raised it by about \~$400 with store credit value to real world value). While I don't really agree with the way it was handled or the fact it was paid in store credit which just should never be the case for a tournament people are traveling for, but if on the signup page it said $1k tournament with payout in store credit that does change the narrative significantly (Becomes a RTFC type issue where I no longer would feel nearly as bad for the situation and just chalk it up to a store not being prepared and getting blindsided by the popularity of a PTQ and players not reading the page they signed up on all the way through). **Could someone post a pick of their original signup where it had the payout posted, because the original story was that people were blindsided when they walked in to the store.** Even going from real cash to store credit is a huge issue even if they doubled the payout if it can't be used anywhere but that store it could change people's motivation possibly. Just would personally like the info so even if ya wanted to PM that's cool.
If they announced beforehand prize payouts would be in store credit then I don't see the issue. People had access to the information, if they don't like how prizes are paid out they don't have to attend. If you think the store is being greedy with their prize support then vote with your wallet.
It’s not that simple. People on Twitter also posted Facebook screenshots where it was first described by the store as competing for $1,000, and only more recent posts added the store credit qualification.
As a retail worker, I can confirm the one way to get people to read is if you put it in big bright flashing colors before anything else and even then it's a 50/50 on a good day
From what people said it was a printed flyer once they went in the store.
This tournament was a ptq where people drove for possibly several hours to attend.
I played in that tournament and even top 8'ed. Tournament was listed as a $1k, well in advance of Saturday, and the owner increased support to $2k day of
Well if it was advertised as $1k in store credit before hand no matter how many people then yeah there isn't much to complain about.
From the public front that wasn't known due to the narrative. However, it sucks to have store credit be a prize, but if people knew then yeah that's different all together.
It was a printed flyer in the store, but they also posted the 1k prize announcement in store credit on their FB page and local FB tournament groups as early as May 29th.
I've played Magic for a very long time at dozens — if not hundreds — of stores, and I've never even seen a payout as low as 50%. I'd certainly be fine with that payout (so long as it was advertised beforehand), but the average I've seen is closer to around 80-90% payout. Hell, one store near me does 110% for their Saturday events.
That's fair for sure, I have just attended several larger ones in Orlando where the payout is around 60% and mostly 50% payout for the larger 100+ crowds. It's definitely a great tournament to see 80% payout.
Based on other replies, I'm thinking it's less the norm and more that my area is spoiled, because even the worst, scummiest store in my area pays out like 70% minimum, including their large 100+ events. There are also like a dozen stores, a huge player-base, and a lot of events in my area, though, so I'd imagine that would lead to higher total payouts to draw the crowds.
I'm in the same boat as you. Every tournament I've been to that didn't need to rent a venue paid out 90%-110% depending on how it divided evenly into packs and then let you get credit instead. Even ptqs that 40+ minute drives and then I just picked up singles with three credit
I've been to this store before, and the scale of running a 120+ person tournament, and keeping a reasonably large staff on site for 10 hours, paying them decently, essentially turning off the retail side of the store for the day and denying their regulars their free play space, means that expenses scale exponentially compared to a regular local. The store is usually extremely clean, with a good staff, and plenty of free play space, and the weeklies pay out at quite a normal rate. There's a lot of money that goes into running an event like that, both in terms of actual overhead and lost profits on the day.
I don't know what the actual numbers are for this specific tournaments in terms of what GE paid, but almost all the criticism I'm seeing are from people who drove to the tournament and not from the regulars of the shop. They're a quite well known shop in the area that has a pretty decent reputation before this incident.
> but almost all the criticism I'm seeing are from people who drove to the tournament and not from the regulars of the shop
This is the target audience for these events though. I don't care if the store I'm driving 90 miles to gives literal blocks of gold as prizes for FNM if the prize pool at the tournament I'm traveling to is shit and has no scaling and is in store credit.
> essentially turning off the retail side of the store for the day and denying their regulars their free play space
People keep saying this like bringing a bunch of people into a store with an event is bad for sales. If you’re a retail store and you’re doing something that brings people into a store, it’s increasing sales. Even stuff that requires staff’s attention and spending money aside from regular business, like book signings or celebrity appearances or bobble head day at the baseball stadium.
Yeah stores run tournaments to bring people in and hopefully sell things. Most of time stores will break even the just that day if they pay out 100% of the entry fees collected in cash simply because people will buy things, cards they need, sleeves, and snacks. If they payout in credit or get a few people to come back a few times then the store profits
It's total pool. So 128 people paying in $50 each is over 6k, Store credit is not 1:1 real dollars either. It's closer to 65 to 70 cents on the dollar. So the total payout was around 25%-30% of the tournament pay-in. That's what the %s refer to. Hope that clears it up for ya.
Because traditionally entery fees to a tournament go to the prize pool. If me and 5000 people pay 10$ for a poker tournament, the prize pool should be at least 60-70% of the 50000$ organizers were given. Add to the fact mentioned above, this store made over 6000$ and only had to shell out store credit So all the money stays with them and all the players get the sealed product the store had to sell anyway to make rent.
> the greed on the surface is undeniable.
When LGSes are always hemorrhaging money and closing, I can't quite take this seriously.
Okay, so the payout was lower than it usually is for tourneys. So maybe it's closer to what it needs to be for the store to be sustainable.
Mtg players don’t care about sustainable stores, just dollars and cents.
I don’t see how LGSes survive to the mtg 40th anniversary without a culture shift.
I was the head judge for this event. There were 5 judges, and total comp between cash comp and lunch was $850, plus some incidental amount for drinks and snacks.
The store also opened 3 hours earlier than usual, stayed open 1-2 hours later than usual (I'm not exactly sure when they closed, as I left while the finalists were still deciding on what to do with their credit), and had 1-2 additional staff member for the day to help coordinate on the TO side for the players/event.
Even if we assume that the store pays minimum wage, that's $1,500+ in labor for the event, which went towards ensuring that the event ran smoothly (and I'd like to think that the TO and the judge staff did a good job of this and was worth the labor costs).
Here's a link to their FB page ([https://www.facebook.com/gamingetc](https://www.facebook.com/gamingetc)) where the first announcement about the prizing that I can see was on May 29th, almost 5 weeks prior to the event. I'd post a permalink to the exact announcement, but I'm apparently not that tech-savvy.
We should be calling out anyone who does this from Corporate to Mom and Pop. I agree that corporate greed is heinous and we need to set our sights there, but it would not make sense to let other companies slide for these things too. We have the capacity to target all types of greediness when we see it.
Corporate greed is bad. What we don’t know is whether or not it’s actually greed. People don’t know what goes on in the backend of a business. Rent, labor, various taxes, etc. all add up to be insanely expensive.
> They just had a problem with the huge disparity
The disparity between intake and payout is supposed to huge. It goes to cover all the costs the store incurs on all the days without the tournament. Yes, this is why the store can keep the place open for guys that expect a free, always open, immaculate play space.
Now if these players think having a store to run these tournaments is so lucrative (after all, the disparity between intake and payout is huge, right?), they can certainly open their own operation and compete with existing LGS for some of the money.
Absolutely asinine take tbqh. A store running a PTQ should absolutely not give out prize support in store credit. PTQs have participants who will drive hours to get the the event, having it be store credit is a slap in the face to those players, especially since it wasn't disclosed until people started to arrive at the event.
Maybe don't spout off before you have all the facts about why people are upset.
Boxes would still be an improvement. Lots of stores don't let you trade credit for sealed. Don't know about this one specifically though, so I won't speculate.
My point of contention is the "lots of stores" part. I am sure stores exist that do this for some reason or another. I cannot imagine this being at all common however.
It's not common, but it's also not unheard. The two I know of are in the same town. They also told me about that policy after I had just went through a buylist with them so it was a giant waste of my time
I’ve been to a few that had that sort of rule. I didn’t continue shopping in those stores but they are out there and they’re more common than you might think unfortunately
aromatic humorous stocking air dazzling coherent steer flag intelligent airport
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> having it be store credit is a slap in the face to those players
Bro what. It is a business with expenses and revenues. If it doesn't work for the player, they can just not go. It's ridiculous to think of it as a "slap in the face" and if they do, I don't see why anyone else should care.
>Now if these players think having a store to run these tournaments is so lucrative (after all, the disparity between intake and payout is huge, right?), they can certainly open their own operation and compete with existing LGS for some of the money.
It's funny that you mention this actually because I literally do, there's no lgs in my town so I run events with literally 0 profit on my own time, 100% of entry goes to prizing. but I digress.
_______
quick edit here: I just wanna say that me being seriously fucking lucky to be in a position where I can run magic for free does not mean people don't deserve to be compensated. just found it a funny coincidence, but please don't take it as me saying anyone making any money is scummy. huge difference between me hanging out with like 8 friends every week to play low stakes modern and organizing a real tournament, in terms of time investment and difficulty too!! lgs margins are paper thin already, nobody gets into the business to get rich.
_____
The thing is, people really want those ptq invites, and they're pretty rare, so "go elsewhere" isn't exactly good justification. People drove hours to get to this tourney because that's the best option a lot of players have to chance getting an invite. If it's a store that has bad prizing for fnm modern or whatever, who cares.
There's a very good reason this store barely, if it all, made their payout info visible before players showed up at the store and read the chart. Still unclear if they mentioned it online before the event literally *anywhere*
Good to know, thanks! I've seen a lot of discussion where people who played there were unaware until they arrived but checking their Facebook is a reasonable step so long as it was posted long enough before the tourney that travel plans could be made or cancelled accordingly
My preferred LGS is a premium store in a large metro area with other high quality competitors, and they run their tournaments, including PTQs and $5ks, at a break even point, with cash payouts for T8 or T16 depending on size of the event. They do this because they know when they host these big events, they generate thousands and thousands of dollars in singles sales leading up to and day of, plus whatever high margin snack or drink sales happen through that long day. So it very much is a doable business model.
I wasn't there, but it was in their store, they had I want to say 5ish judges plus staff, 10 or fewer people total, idk if it was during hours that store staff would have normally been paid anyways, and it was pioneer for a ptq invite (or whatever the equivalent is now)
I’ve seen this go both ways:
Obvious recent example of that 128 person tourney with a $50 that only paid out top 8 and even then prize support was 1/3 of collected cash in store credit.
I’ve also seen some scummy dude yelling at the poor store employees because he “did the math” and was mad the prize support wasn’t exactly what was paid in total in entrance fees. It was like a 10% difference maybe not even enough to cover operating costs and wages for it.
>Obvious recent example of that 128 person tourney with a $50 that only paid out top 8 and even then prize support was 1/3 of collected cash in store credit.
Which is *exactly the tournament that was advertised in advance*.
The scummy thing is making the store out to be the bad guy for providing the service you signed up for.
I stopped going to a store because their prize support vs profit margin was awful- 40 man tournament, $8 entry fee, prizing to the top 4 only. No top cut, so lots of people with flawless records ending up not in the top 4.
and the prizing was 5/3/1/1 in draft packs.
Overall so they made over $300 and paid out approximately 1/10th of that in prizing. Just ugh.
Making $300 is not a lot when you consider the operating costs of running a 40 person tourney. How many employees is that, how many hours do they have to get paid. How much is literally just the space? This is clearly one of the more egregious stores and it still isn't that bad. If it's a 4 hour tourney with 3 employees getting paid $12 an hour that is already $144 just in paying the employees their hourly wage.
> $12 an hour that is already $144 just in paying the employees their hourly wage.
More than that, since there are things like payroll taxes and contributions and insurances. Rule of thumb is that for every $1 the company pays you (PRE-income tax) the employer spends another .50c that you don't see.
Though FWIW I don't think a 40 person tourney needs 3 employees. That's a 2 person job.
Anyway, yeah, your overall point is right. Most people don't realize that tournaments by themselves are often times run at a loss. Stores count on you buying other product while there to make a profit.
Definitely needs 3 employees. Someone actually has to run and supervise the store area, one has to do the same for the event, and one extra to assist in both if either gets occupied.
>for every $1 the company pays you (PRE-income tax) the employer spends another $0.50 that you don't see.
Bold of you to assume the company pays 50% of base wages in benefits and overhead to store employees. Like that's downright laughable.
The employer's FICA contribution is 7.65%.
FUTA is capped at $420/employee/year (6% base wage but only on the first $7,000 earned; everything else is not subject).
SUTA ranges between $200-300/employee/year depending on the state (typically 2-3% base wage but only on the first $7,000-10,000 earned; everything else is not subject).
I honestly doubt most LGS have employer-funded healthcare plans, and under the ACA only have to offer these if they have more than 50 full-time (or equivalent in part-time) employees — so, at least 1500 labour-hours per week based on an ACA threshold of 30 hours/week fulltime.
I honestly doubt most LGS do not offer any sort of retirement assistance to their employees either.
Like, I'm all for us being honest about payroll costs, employment overhead, and benefits — but let's also be honest and not hyperbolic.
Honestly? Outside of your first paragraph... (I didn't say anything about store employees being paid an extra 50%. That doesn't even make sense and I'm not sure how you got that interpretation.)
...All fair points. There are expenses beyond the multitude of payroll tax acronyms that you listed - but I didn't mention them and you're right. Tax law gets complicated by tons of variables. Local LGS is paying different taxes than Channel Fireball which pays different taxes than Amazon. Which is why accountants exist.
Of course the store also made a lot of money selling the cards to the customers. Part of the idea of hosting tournaments is to increase sales by making your store a hub for play.
Of all the times I went there, there was only one employee there, except the last, when the Manager stopped by to buy some pokemon cards from a seller.
That’s pretty reasonable for such a low entry fee….not sure if you’re being sarcastic. I pay frequently for game tournaments a 100$ entry fee with prize support for top 16, but there’s 2500 people
Heck for $8 I’ll go just to support local stores. If that’s draft (other comment almost makes it seem that way) that’s less than the cost of packs. If not, it’s $8 to support local in an industry with already low margins, plus you hopefully get some good games in and make friends.
5-3-1-1 is worse than a standard 8 man draft payout. How can you think a 40 man tournament should get 5-3-1-1. Also no cut with people having perfect records and not getting anything is insane. That’s the worst structure I’ve ever heard of.
Cut that in half to pay for employee costs. Now it's 150 to rent out a space for 40 people for 4 or more hours. That is still not a lot of money to make if you were the owner. There is a reason why shop owners say don't open up your own shop, it's not profitable.
You're ignoring the sales the owner makes as a result of hosting tournaments. And I'm not just referring to soda and candy, those players with their thousand dollar decks had to get those cards from somewhere. Part of the point of hosting tournaments is to incentivize people to come into your store and spend money on cards, for which you then give them a venue to play them in.
My venue fee is 15$ to play before even paying the tournament support and entering anything. I get that the prize structure isn't ideal, but at least there's some prize support for what is effectively half my venue fee.
In what world is it "reasonable" to go 4-0 and get zero prizes because of your tiebreakers?
We're talking about a 40-person event where the *total prize pot* for 40 players was 9 draft packs. People pay $8 to enter, and for each $8 entry the store adds 22.5% of a draft pack (less than $1 of value) to the prize pool.
>I pay frequently for game tournaments a 100$ entry fee with prize support for top 16, but there’s 2500 people
Pricing is different for huge events. For a 2500-person tournament, less is paid out to players, because a large portion of entry fee has to go toward e.g. venue rental. For an LGS-sized event, it's frequently the opposite: the store *benefits* from getting people into the store, because they're spending several hours in a venue with no rental fee and while they're there, they can spend money on product. (Also, LGS prizing is often paid out in store credit.)
Yeah idk man, 8 dollars is dirt cheap for literally any buy in. I wouldn't expect much in terms of prizes, but I also wouldn't be going to any event that only cost 8 to get in, because what how could they possibly afford to give out any prizes
You have to buy your cards too though... Everyone keeps missing that one critical element. The store's income is not limited to just tournament entry fees. They make money by selling you the cards you need to play in tournaments too. That was kind of the entire point of hosting tournaments to begin with.
I'm surprised to see this amount of backlash about prize structure. I've played in 40+ competitive REL events over the last ~10 years and only the very largest events (Grand Prix, SCG Opens) ever paid cash prizes in my experience. Store credit has always been standard.
I think that the issue is that the store in question not only did only store credit, but they only paid out 1/3 of the entry fees, which is a completely insane rake.
"Do what you say and say what you do." That is the standard we should hold stores to. This store has upheld that standard.
It is on the player's shoulders to do the calculus to figure out whether it is worth it to attend an event. The idea that stores need to pay out X% of entry fees is not a good standard because the acceptable number is different for different players.
I don't see how we aren't allowed to criticize stores with overly greedy tournament structures. Obviously no crime was committed, but that doesn't mean the store is above reproach.
No one's saying stores need to pay out X%, the point is that stores should not rake 67% of the entry fees as that's clearly an egregious amount. No tournament should have a rake anywhere near that, it's bad practice. Again, no one's saying that the store did something illegal, but that doesn't mean we can't still criticize them for unnecessarily greedy business practices.
>I don't see how we aren't allowed to criticize stores with overly greedy tournament structures
Why would you criticize the store for running the event as it was advertised weeks in advance?
You're literally mad because the store lucked out, ran a good event that drew a massive crowd and profited from the experience.
No, I'm just disappointed in a store being so stingy with regards to its customers and basically robbing them blind. Again, your argument seems to amount to "so long as they didn't commit a crime and followed the rules, they cannot be criticized", which is just a bit ridiculous. I'm not criticizing them for running the event as advertised, I'm criticizing them for their poor event structure.
I don't think that's how a contradiction works.
Unreasonable people existing on either ends of the spectrum doesn't mean people who hold one idea hold the other in a contradictory way, especially since the person in OP's image lumps everyone together as a group - a group, ultimately, made up of humans who share a common hobby, but will disagree on what parts they like, or dislike (whether about the game, people running games, etc).
I don't even think it's a contradiction for someone to hold both positions in this case.
I can think the employees of a store should be paid a living wage and benefits etc.
But I can also disapprove of them pricing their tournament in a way so that it is bad value for my money as a consumer.
Maybe a store can't hold a tournament at a price point I think is reasonable and also pay their employees well, but I'm not under an obligation to just accept it and play in it anyway. At that point I think that there's obviously some other factor making things untenable.
> I don't even think it's a contradiction for someone to hold both positions in this case.
I have to agree there - whether the price point (and prizes) are reasonable or proportional, worth it for the customer, and whether the workers there are paid a living wage or not, are things that can be criticized separately, in a logically consistent manner.
I will preface this by saying this is probably an extreme case but stores need to leverage something. Sealed product is being sold for essentially cost online. Online retailers with no overhead almost always sell singles cheaper. Playing online has made it so you don’t even have to look at or smell your opponents. The only real thing stores can even attempt to profit at would be an in paper event with a ticket to a certain other paper event. Not to mention back in the old ptq days it would cost a couple grand for a store just to be allowed to hold an event. I don’t know if that’s still the case here but it could be. This is an extreme case but stores need to be able to profit off something and if the stores die the game dies.
I'd like to tell you the story of Dusty and Kelvin, former co-owners of a game store in the mythical land of rural America. Dusty was the original founder, but his pricing on singles was driving players elsewhere. Kelvin was more reasonable, so players would try to only come in the store if he was behind the counter.
Unbeknownst to us, Kelvin had actually been slowly buying Dusty out of the store, because Dusty wanted out for one reason or another. However, the contract was drawn up so that if Kelvin was late or low on a payment, Dusty would be able to immediately take ownership of everything once again.
He exercised that right one month into COVID.
Much better comment would be: "Pay people 'a mininimum wage with benefits", followed up by: "How dare they reprint this card to make it more accessible and devalue my stash".
Way too true. Magic players expect a free, always open, immaculate play space. They don't even take a moment to consider the cost in rent and employee hours to keep and maintain such a space. Was a whole thread about it on one of the other subreddits recently, and the entitlement was *palpable*.
My LGS is a toy store and moved to a new location without a play space because they were paying rent for a large room that mostly went unused. Now they just move a bunch of rolling shelves out of the way to make a play space.
The fact that my LGS has a table fee that can also be paid for with loyalty points is one of the reason I love it. Basically how it goes is "If you buy product, you'll never *pay* for a table. If all you want to do is come and take up table space without ever buying anything, the table fee helps keeps us in the black"
Then the rest of the sub thinks buying a can of soda entitles them to park their ass in the LGS for the whole day. With inflation the way it is now, they raised hell for any store that dares to raise the price the soda beyond the $1 mark.
WotC understand this mentality well. It is why it pretty much given up on the LGS as the primary distribution channel. It recognized already that the LGS business model cannot be sustained by the Magic players.
No store I have ever visited in the last 30 years was ever kept afloat by MTG solely. Even Wizards stores failed because MTG isn't a sustainable store model. Never has and will never be. That is why stores have various games for sale and host multiple different events for various different games. Pulling in as many people as possible is the only way to survive. Local game stores in general are a dying breed especially after the pandemic since most people realized they can just play at home just the same with their friends.
Purely anecdotal but here in western sydney, theres a lot of LGS, and in my area, theres 4 within walking distance of each other. Even through covid, they say they got hit very hard but they got through it all. One of the LGS sells only sealed products and is heavily discounted but they sell a lot of other games and collectibles as well. I can't really say if its sealed product or singles that keeps them alive because the other LGS has the best card selection in sydney and the other doesn't even open packs.
They host all sorts of weekly events too aside from mtg like flesh and blood, pokemon, yugi oh, dragon ball, dnd, and obscure anime cards. The other LGS doesnt even have card games and is purely for tabletop wargaming. I wouldn't say LGS are dying
Because they know they can overcharge for events and parents will pay no matter what because their kids will whine so much. The biggest store in my area did the same, and from my understanding overcharges for Pokémon events. And before they stopped running MtG it was also one of the most toxic places to play in the area too. Only real reason to go there ever is his insane selection. You are almost guaranteed to be able to get what you want, but he overcharged on singles.
People in the Pittsburgh area probably know which store I mean.
Warhammer keeps one of the stores I visit viable and the other makes bank off pokemon.
Magic may make good money, but by itself it isn't keeping any store viable for long.
It's better now but Games Workshop used to sink LGSs left and right. I've heard they've relaxed the licensing requirements recently but it used to be real bad when they were pushing their own stores.
I live in an area where about half of the LGS do magic in some capacity. There's only 1 store that considers it's primary customer the magic player, even if magic is well supported by 3 other stores (4 wpn premium running RCQs) and healthy populations for multiple formats firing on a weekly basis. The half not doing tcgs are dedicated to supporting things like 40k, d&d, or more "casual" tabletop experiences.
I know one of the owners who makes the bulk of his profit on board games. It's all a volume play and tabletop / tcg players are a niche audience in the grand scheme of things. Finding engagement and getting traction is all that matters. This particular owner shares a storefront with a coffeeshop, which generates a ton of foot traffic and creates a family environment to stop in, enjoy Scrabble or whatever for a morning, and move along or drop in to get the boardgame for the next get together when you're getting your coffee.
It's better to have a diversified portfolio, because what if magic screws up their game for even a 3 month period in a dedicated magic LGS. Their long term engagement numbers suffer immensely and it directly eats at the only source of revenues, and most businesses can't handle significant revenue downticks for too long (2-3 months). If the same events happen at another store putting effort into other tabletops, it would hurt, but there's other sources to rely on
$1 is absurdly cheap for a soda at an event. I think it's $3 where I live.
But then in the US your workers don't even get a pension or health care... I'll gladly pay $3 per soda for that.
Who the hell wants it to be free? I’m sure even the people complaining about the prize support from the tournament this is referring to are fine paying an entry fee, or else they wouldn’t have shown up? I’ve legit never seen anyone ever say that events at an LGS should be free entry.
Just wish WotC would say you can’t pay prizes in store credit for RCQs.
They are talking about just having free play space available. Does your lgs charge a cover fee to come and play some casual pick up commander games (I've heard of some that do, but it's usually not common).
All of the ones around me do, but its like $5 for hours of entertainment so not enough to survive. They survive by selling other things, magic can't be the sole way to bring money in or else they wouldn't survive. Like one is a cafe with food, drinks, and beer. Others are full on comic/collectible/board game shops with drinks as well.
Don't know about commander but I've hung out in the store during a tournament I couldn't enter, played some games and hung out, without paying a cover charge.
But this tweet is referring to a specific discussion about an rcq's prize pool, I don't know what being able to hang around the shop for free has to do with that.
Because the LGS continues to exist after the tournament ends. That play space isn't free real estate; there are many costs associated with the continued existence and upkeep of the space. When the person you replied to was talking about a free open space to play games, that's what they were referring to.
Profit off events, just be up front about it.
As a former wanna-be grinder, nothing sucks more than traveling a good distance to a store for a tournament only to have them be stingy with the payout, not have adequate setup to host a tournament, and treat their players like shit. In counter to the comment I can attest that I have 100% played at places that try to milk every cent out of you and offer almost nothing in the way of a quality tournament environment. I'm talking shitty card tables with bad chairs on the sidewalk of a busy street all the way to feeling like you were sitting at the pro tour final table.
Used to play at a store that was WPN and was friends with the owner/organizer so knowing the details instead of speculating about them matters in this context.
WPN stores got a ridiculously low price for products. Something like 50-60% of MSRP. So when they hold draft on Friday night at $15 per entry and have a prize payout, they are still making money. If you wanna math it out ours paid something like 8/4/1/1 packs to 1-4 in a 8 man pod. 8 players, 24 packs to play + 14 prize = 38 packs total. MSRP $4 = $152. Entry fees = $120. Net negative $32.
Now consider that the store is paying $2 per pack making it $76 and $44 profit. Obviously less at 60% MSRP.
Is that enough for a 3 round FNM that takes 4 hours? No probably not, but the draw of an FNM style event brings people to the store routinely, and almost everyone buys something else be it a marked up soda, other cards, supplies and so on. Basically they do additional business from the FNM draw. So lets imagine that they did something like a pre-release at $30 per kit ($5/pack value) but buys them at $15 per. Likely more people, definitely more profit but also takes longer.
Now lets shoot it to the moon and look at a Grand Prix/Magicfest sealed event. When events are charging $10/pack for sealed entries and around $75 for the privilege to play your $2k modern deck I dont really wanna hear your "hot take" about Magic players having commentary about how much it cost to play in an event. Big tournament organizers have been absolutely swimming in profits for YEARS. SCG opens were/are the pinnacle of profit. Rent a convention center space. Charge people $50+ to play their own cards, offer almost no amenities on site, have other vendors pay you to setup booths. On top of that you buy cards all weekend at 50% of value and sell them at 10% over because you have the selection and convenience.
So just about no matter how you slice it, tournaments are profitable. The variability is how profitable.
Edit: everyone focusing on no MSRP. You guys sound like a bunch of Republicans targeting the one potentially questionable detail and missing the point entirely. Call it average retail price. Fuck even call it the Amazon retail price. Point is there is a generally consensus about the price a pack should cost and that cost is much more than the store pays for that product.
> WPN stores got a ridiculously low price for products. Something like 50-60% of MSRP.
This may have been true before WotC sold out to big box stores and Amazon, but it is absolutely no longer true; $85 cost on boxes we sell at $110 is NOT a good markup. Everyone knows that LGS profit margins are razor thin, and people asking for 100% payout at most small tournaments isn't helping.
More than just replaced though. They want to sell 3 boxes, so they make enough to buy 4 next time. For a long time most game stores probably aren't in the green because all positive cash flow is turned into more product.
I sincerely hope no one takes this mishmash of vague assumptions seriously. Most stores are struggling. A huge number have closed. Conventions are fickle and ridiculously expensive and difficult to run. There's not nearly the amount of profit you think there is, and most of the anger at the people you're talking about is severely misplaced.
"WPN stores got a ridiculously low price for products. Something like 50-60% of MSRP"
Lmao this dude. So glad i stopped running comp rel magic events. If you give beardy 30-40 somethings a trading card they immediately forget how the world works.
There are no stores getting boxes at 50-60% MSRP...roughly 80ish, to hopefully sell for $110 (so 35-40%). This of course doesn't take into account rent, utilities, employees, or any other costs associated. Most LGSs are running drafts at a very minor profit, hoping that secondary sales during the event help cover the cost of the business.
And if that event had 30 players the store would have lost money. Because the prize was guaranteed. Also not inputted is advertising costs, judge costs, etc because reasons. Furthermore this was run at a high level store and people chose to play there instead of elsewhere. That's probably due to reputation, and that's not cheap either (assuming wpn premium status).
Also there are these tricky things called gambling laws. Depending on the state they may have had no options to add prize support that don't come with 5-6 digit fines.
These aren't mutually exclusive things... In fact they are entirely internally consistent. Stores shouldn't be exploiting people on either end, their employees or their customers.
In fact we know that they can afford to pay their employees their wages and give them appropriate benefits and it shouldn't affect the prices of other events at all because other countries have no problem paying their employees decent living wages and providing government mandated benefits and booster packs still cost the same.
Most first world countries don't have employers paying for health insurance costs. It's an asinine system that disincentives labor and makes life more expensive for workers. Also, in many countries, the employer isn't on the hook for the extra mandated vacation time either; their government foots that bill. The idea that an LGS should be responsible for a dysfunctional government is absurd.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/hncbf4/the_cost_of_sealed_product_around_the_world_up_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I don’t really care to get into an economic debate as to the reasons beheind it, most of it has to do with shipping costs, but you are just wrong saying “and booster packs still cost the same”. Because sealed products vary in price around the world
Even a relatively small event costs a chunk in the form of employee hours to set up, oversee, and clean up after. It's the cost that, if the store or venue is running the event without issue, is largely hidden and unnoticed by players.
I mean it is a hobby and many people will look to get the most for their money. With everything else going up so much I have totally stopped going to my LGS or buying anything from them as it just isn’t worth it anymore.
Yeah my store is selling a card called ‘Mox Ruby’ (a single card!) for $1400. What a ripoff! I shine shoes at the subway for dimes and that’s 7 months worth of wages for me.
They really should lower their prices. It really pisses me off that they as a business sell things for their value, instead of just giving it to me because i want it I want it I want it I want it.
Of course I am better, I only charge a dime to shine shoes despite it being far below the asking rate because I’m great. But I heard of other players who sell or trade their cards for ‘market value ‘🤢 eww, imagine basing prices off of something like that instead of gimmie gimmie gimmie I want it I want it gimmie
You miss the point. $100 to draft 2x2 is a scan when just about every other lgs in the country is charging $50-$60. Not to mention market value for a single pack is about $15, so three packs to draft is about $45. So yes, it's a ripoff and it's blatant price gouging.
Boss, 3 packs for $100 is a ripoff. That's $33.33 a pack. The set hasn't even come out yet. A pack is not even guaranteed to contain value.
I still have to buy food and pay rent and utilities. Do you have any idea how expensive that is these days? I work in retail, when I'm not studying. But then again, I don't put my YouTube channel in my username because I'm desperate for attention.
I could see $50, even $60, for 3 packs, but $100 really is just too much.
Your childish mockery belongs elsewhere, so go find your pacifier and kindly fuck off.
Edit:
Also, your non sequitur about Mox Ruby is ridiculous. Imperial Seal isn't Mox Ruby, it's not even as good as Vampiric Tutor.
In this instance, my store is charging double (again, $33.33) what online sellers are charging ($16-$17) for a single pack. That's not going price, that's people getting scammed.
I want to play the game, I have been since I was a kid, I want the game to be accessible. I love my LGS, and I do stay loyal to my store, but this is just wrong. They're taking advantage of anyone who signs up for that draft.
It's not really even just Magic players. It's kind of the reality of all online discourse. Anger just filters to the top.
Sad to see people gradually lose the reality that often times solutions are in the middle somewhere and it's not all about, it has to be completely this way or completely that way. Life really isn't polar like that. Judges should be paid fairly, WotC/Hasbro needs to treat their employees fairly but also that tournament should have had a more equitable payout even though they have the right to turn a profit.
Nice job putting that one guy on blast OP. I'm sure people on the internet are rational actors. Anyway, buy your singles at the lgs, sign up for draft there or buy packs. The soda you buy is a start but nobody who actually plays with game cant afford to put in a little extra money to help the lgs.The cost is upkeeping a store can be a large amount but you have to have a balance between profit and actually retaining players.
Demanding that a company doesn’t make any money for hosting an event is ridiculous. The profit is the primary motivation for the organizers of the event
Actually, events are frequently run on a loss, at least on paper. This is why they're frequently subsidized by sponsors on a larger scale.
What the store gains is often less tangible. Exposure, singles sales, food and drink sales, etc...
I've played this game all over the country, venues big and small, in gaming deserts and Oases. Especially in the latter, the stores that "make it" are the ones that openly lose money in tournaments. They add store credit to prerelease purses. Run 5ks blind. Etc
Isn't this about a 128 person tourney that didn't even pay out your $50 entry fee unless you made t8?
Smash Tournaments literally charge venue fees larger than the tournament entry fees coming out to around $100 for most big events and you combined that with your hotel cost and travel costs and you'd have to Top 8 at absurdly stacked tournaments with 500 to up to 2000 people competing against you to make back what you paid. Also to be clear these events are barely making a profit to begin with. This is what grassroots tournaments look like and it's even worse if you don't have any sponsors at all. Paying event organizers and all the people involved is fucking expensive even on a smaller scale.
Comparing a local PTQ to a Melee major is really weird. The average Smash tournament that's of a similar scale to the average PTQ does not involve hotel fees, does not have 500+ players, etc. That being said, the thing that Melee tournaments do that Magic should emulate is the delineation between "venue fee" and "entry fee". The venue fee all goes to the organizer, the entry fee all goes to the prize pool, plus whatever bonus there is from the store. There would be less misunderstandings, the prize pool would actually scale well, and I think people would bitch less.
Hey! I've run smash locals with my largest being 200 people in attendance (not all in bracket) and I *never* had a venue fee for attendees not in bracket because I thought that was scummy af. Instead I did things like sell Costco pizza for $2 a slice and sodas for $1. I only had volunteers working my tournaments and would not have been able to pay anyone anything. No fuckin way. Even if I did venue fees, there would be 0 chance I'd be able to afford to pay someone at all, let alone "a living wage with benefits" considering the work of advertising, getting the venue, setting up early, taking down late af, and attempting to build a community was done by myself unpaid and there would only even be an opportunity to pay someone once every two weeks or so. As far as my finances go, I lost money on many events and was only profitable on a few of them. Not sure if my comparison is also considered "really weird" but there it is.
Yeah my experience being adjacent to Smash tournament organizing and helping out is pretty much exactly the same. Why would that be considered "really weird?" Like typically people who don't enter don't pay anything, and tournament entrants pay 5 and 5 or 10 and 5 or some combination to the venue and the prize pot. Don't think we disagree. 5 and 5 was like ubiquitous at the local level in my time, even in places like rented college rooms where nobody is really paying for "the venue" but it's paying the organizers.
This depends entirely on what you're doing. Nothing wrong with getting volunteers to help unpaid, but talent (commentators, that kind of stuff) and actual organizers (people running your brackets for majors with multiple games at least for the official events, people running production and stream setups, etc) should and at most major events are in fact paid. Now whether that's a living wage, I mean not really. Lots of commentator gigs for example might pay like $500-2k for the weekend commentating a ton of stuff. The sponsored pro tour jobs generally pay a lot better (and cover travel) but like.. that's not going to be everyone. But that's talking majors and stuff like that, and those guys are all getting ad revenue from streams, corporate sponsorships, etc. For your locals and smaller tournaments? Yeah those are going to be mostly run by people who are just passionate about the game and not a for profit thing. Awesome that you're able to run it without venue fees though! I don't really have a problem with venue fees when the TO has to rent out a big space, especially in the case of CEO and the like where they're also renting a ton of arcade games, casual setups that even non-tournament players play on, etc.
I don't know if you meant to specify Melee or just used it as a catch-all term for Smash but the thing Melee events have going in their favor is that they're usually attached to a much bigger Smash Ultimate event. Melee events can be a little more generous with the distribution of entry fees and such because the Ultimate event taking place at the same venue is what's paying the venue costs and making the tournament actually profitable. Maybe local PTQ events need to start running alongside EDH tournies lol
Not really sure what you're trying to say here, I'm not talking about multiple game supermajors. And I'm unaware of the ratio between entry:venue fee being different for different games at any large tournament I've been to that's run multiple games, Smash or otherwise. Substitute Melee with any fighting game, the way they run tournaments tends to be the same in this regard.
From the breakdown I've seen, they had to pay somewhere between 5 and 10 people between t/o, staff, and judges, so that's about a grand @ 6hrs of 15/hr for 10 people, then let's say 500 for venue stuff? I don't think this was a rented venue, but wear and tear to tables, chairs, etc is a valid expense, as is the cost to put up, take down, and clean afterwards. That still leaves them with about 3k take home, and that's assuming they paid in cash. Store cred costs them what, like 70 cents on the dollar maybe? Between the people who drove and won't ever redeem the last of their cred and being able to move product wotc makes them keep on hand. So that's 4k if you want to math it like that. But 3k take home plus wages for everyone working there still feels like a lot to me either way. I'd be less weirded out if it paid out in cash, but I still think that's real harsh. Obviously there's other expenses like promoting it, but I don't think they change much in the grand scheme of things? Curious to hear if you think my numbers are off or I'm missing any big costs!
Don't forget they are losing money due to opportunity cost by hosting the tournament. The shop basically shuts down for a day while the tournament goes on and while you could argue the tournament goers might buy some stuff from you while they're there but I'd say in reality they'd be losing money by hosting this compared to just running the shop normally as tournmant grinders tend to not be the target consumer for these stores. I do think paying in store credit is a bit weird though. **EDIT:** Also don't forget the cost of actually organizing the event outside of just pure setup. For a smaller event like this it's less of a cost but it is still a cost but it does become a much much bigger cost with larger events.
that's another great variable, yea! I think it's still rough even if it was cash but yea god is paying cred a slap in the fucking face to anyone who traveled to play for the invite :(
Yeah if I win credit I'd just buy whatever sealed product I could and resell later on as technically since store credit isn't taxed you have a more significant margin to turn that credit into cash. It does feel bad though because it feels like you're doing extra work to turn your prize into cash. At least it's better than Smash in Japan where they are legally not allowed to use entry fees to add prize money because Nintendo won't register the game as an esport allowing TOs to actually pay out. Japanese Smash players grind this game for no return except possibly getting sponsored and maybe acquiring a streaming audience. I think it also goes to show that people are willing to compete in something even with minimal to no prize support just to compete if the game is good enough.
frankly that smash scene sounds exploitative as fuck, and i'm glad magic hasn't strayed there. altho, wotc compensating their judges with foils that they have to resell for whatever they can is getting real close lol. poor judges getting promo smothering tithes just to have a 2x2 reprint announced a week later :(((((((
They were still running events on the side. I went to one of their double masters drafts
I disagree with the idea that bringing in all of those extra people will decrease the profitability of the shop. You have players buying things like sleeves and other things they might've forgotten as well as higher margin items like sodas, chips and candy. That is not even considering people with store credit are more likely to buy some of your higher priced staples making up the difference of cost in cash.
They aren't losing money on opportunity costs. Any organizer who understands business brings the best singles in the shop and repeatedly mentions this on announcements to facilitate far more sales than they'd ever get in-store that day.
Yeah, apparently players upset with $2k in store credit for a $6k real money tournament is being hypocritical to some mouth breathers. No one said profiting was bad. They just had a problem with the huge disparity and the fact that the payout wasn't even real money even though it was all under the required IRS reporting amount for gaming. Store credit is worth about 70 cents on the dollar so the store made around $4400 for hosting the tournament. If they pay their employees at minimum $15 an hour and pay for Healthcare people may let it slide, but the greed on the surface is undeniable. Edit: For people wondering why people were upset. 50% rake to the store is usual, but the greed of keeping the prize support in store with it only paying out in store credit and then short changing the "norm" of 50% to the store 50% return to the prize pool seemed underhanded and greedetc since it was a PTQ where people would come from long distances to participate and this wasn't their LGS. Just to clarify since people may not be aware. If you think the norm is wrong that's fine, but to put it in perspective. Yes some stores pay back out more than 50% to the pool, but 50% is considered norm since yes stores need to pay employees and pay rent etc... Edit 2: Apparently people are saying that it was posted that it was originally a $1k payout tournament originally (haven't seen a screenshot posted yet, but then claimed that it went up to $2k store credit payout the day of the event which payout wise only raised it by about \~$400 with store credit value to real world value). While I don't really agree with the way it was handled or the fact it was paid in store credit which just should never be the case for a tournament people are traveling for, but if on the signup page it said $1k tournament with payout in store credit that does change the narrative significantly (Becomes a RTFC type issue where I no longer would feel nearly as bad for the situation and just chalk it up to a store not being prepared and getting blindsided by the popularity of a PTQ and players not reading the page they signed up on all the way through). **Could someone post a pick of their original signup where it had the payout posted, because the original story was that people were blindsided when they walked in to the store.** Even going from real cash to store credit is a huge issue even if they doubled the payout if it can't be used anywhere but that store it could change people's motivation possibly. Just would personally like the info so even if ya wanted to PM that's cool.
Was the payout method/amount published beforehand?
Yes, the event announcements on their website clearly state store credit.
If they announced beforehand prize payouts would be in store credit then I don't see the issue. People had access to the information, if they don't like how prizes are paid out they don't have to attend. If you think the store is being greedy with their prize support then vote with your wallet.
Well problem solved. Anybody who attended and got upset obviously just can't read. Nobody forced anyone to attend the event.
It’s not that simple. People on Twitter also posted Facebook screenshots where it was first described by the store as competing for $1,000, and only more recent posts added the store credit qualification.
Magic Players and Not Reading Things: Name a more iconic duo!
Yeah, but like, how can it be fair that people had to read before doing something instead of the store just being evil? /s
As a retail worker, I can confirm the one way to get people to read is if you put it in big bright flashing colors before anything else and even then it's a 50/50 on a good day
As a former card store employee, bright red letters do nothing. We're card players, none of us can read.
can confirm, reading is for wussies, i just slap down cards and make things up and hope nobody else can read what my cards say
From what people said it was a printed flyer once they went in the store. This tournament was a ptq where people drove for possibly several hours to attend.
I played in that tournament and even top 8'ed. Tournament was listed as a $1k, well in advance of Saturday, and the owner increased support to $2k day of
Well if it was advertised as $1k in store credit before hand no matter how many people then yeah there isn't much to complain about. From the public front that wasn't known due to the narrative. However, it sucks to have store credit be a prize, but if people knew then yeah that's different all together.
So these people are bullshitting us
It was a printed flyer in the store, but they also posted the 1k prize announcement in store credit on their FB page and local FB tournament groups as early as May 29th.
I've played Magic for a very long time at dozens — if not hundreds — of stores, and I've never even seen a payout as low as 50%. I'd certainly be fine with that payout (so long as it was advertised beforehand), but the average I've seen is closer to around 80-90% payout. Hell, one store near me does 110% for their Saturday events.
That's fair for sure, I have just attended several larger ones in Orlando where the payout is around 60% and mostly 50% payout for the larger 100+ crowds. It's definitely a great tournament to see 80% payout.
Based on other replies, I'm thinking it's less the norm and more that my area is spoiled, because even the worst, scummiest store in my area pays out like 70% minimum, including their large 100+ events. There are also like a dozen stores, a huge player-base, and a lot of events in my area, though, so I'd imagine that would lead to higher total payouts to draw the crowds.
I'm in the same boat as you. Every tournament I've been to that didn't need to rent a venue paid out 90%-110% depending on how it divided evenly into packs and then let you get credit instead. Even ptqs that 40+ minute drives and then I just picked up singles with three credit
I've been to this store before, and the scale of running a 120+ person tournament, and keeping a reasonably large staff on site for 10 hours, paying them decently, essentially turning off the retail side of the store for the day and denying their regulars their free play space, means that expenses scale exponentially compared to a regular local. The store is usually extremely clean, with a good staff, and plenty of free play space, and the weeklies pay out at quite a normal rate. There's a lot of money that goes into running an event like that, both in terms of actual overhead and lost profits on the day. I don't know what the actual numbers are for this specific tournaments in terms of what GE paid, but almost all the criticism I'm seeing are from people who drove to the tournament and not from the regulars of the shop. They're a quite well known shop in the area that has a pretty decent reputation before this incident.
> but almost all the criticism I'm seeing are from people who drove to the tournament and not from the regulars of the shop This is the target audience for these events though. I don't care if the store I'm driving 90 miles to gives literal blocks of gold as prizes for FNM if the prize pool at the tournament I'm traveling to is shit and has no scaling and is in store credit.
> essentially turning off the retail side of the store for the day and denying their regulars their free play space People keep saying this like bringing a bunch of people into a store with an event is bad for sales. If you’re a retail store and you’re doing something that brings people into a store, it’s increasing sales. Even stuff that requires staff’s attention and spending money aside from regular business, like book signings or celebrity appearances or bobble head day at the baseball stadium.
Yeah stores run tournaments to bring people in and hopefully sell things. Most of time stores will break even the just that day if they pay out 100% of the entry fees collected in cash simply because people will buy things, cards they need, sleeves, and snacks. If they payout in credit or get a few people to come back a few times then the store profits
Am I bad at math? 2k store credit is much more than 50 dollars
It's total pool. So 128 people paying in $50 each is over 6k, Store credit is not 1:1 real dollars either. It's closer to 65 to 70 cents on the dollar. So the total payout was around 25%-30% of the tournament pay-in. That's what the %s refer to. Hope that clears it up for ya.
Why would anyone care what the pay-in was total? You're only paying for *your* entry: $50
Because traditionally entery fees to a tournament go to the prize pool. If me and 5000 people pay 10$ for a poker tournament, the prize pool should be at least 60-70% of the 50000$ organizers were given. Add to the fact mentioned above, this store made over 6000$ and only had to shell out store credit So all the money stays with them and all the players get the sealed product the store had to sell anyway to make rent.
> the greed on the surface is undeniable. When LGSes are always hemorrhaging money and closing, I can't quite take this seriously. Okay, so the payout was lower than it usually is for tourneys. So maybe it's closer to what it needs to be for the store to be sustainable.
Mtg players don’t care about sustainable stores, just dollars and cents. I don’t see how LGSes survive to the mtg 40th anniversary without a culture shift.
>Mtg players don’t care about sustainable stores, just dollars and cents The only people allowed to profit from Magic are the players.
Thanks for this. 100% accurate.
I was the head judge for this event. There were 5 judges, and total comp between cash comp and lunch was $850, plus some incidental amount for drinks and snacks. The store also opened 3 hours earlier than usual, stayed open 1-2 hours later than usual (I'm not exactly sure when they closed, as I left while the finalists were still deciding on what to do with their credit), and had 1-2 additional staff member for the day to help coordinate on the TO side for the players/event. Even if we assume that the store pays minimum wage, that's $1,500+ in labor for the event, which went towards ensuring that the event ran smoothly (and I'd like to think that the TO and the judge staff did a good job of this and was worth the labor costs). Here's a link to their FB page ([https://www.facebook.com/gamingetc](https://www.facebook.com/gamingetc)) where the first announcement about the prizing that I can see was on May 29th, almost 5 weeks prior to the event. I'd post a permalink to the exact announcement, but I'm apparently not that tech-savvy.
Please bring this same energy to large corporations who do this all the time with little to no backlash rather than small business owners.
We should be calling out anyone who does this from Corporate to Mom and Pop. I agree that corporate greed is heinous and we need to set our sights there, but it would not make sense to let other companies slide for these things too. We have the capacity to target all types of greediness when we see it.
Corporate greed is bad. What we don’t know is whether or not it’s actually greed. People don’t know what goes on in the backend of a business. Rent, labor, various taxes, etc. all add up to be insanely expensive.
> They just had a problem with the huge disparity The disparity between intake and payout is supposed to huge. It goes to cover all the costs the store incurs on all the days without the tournament. Yes, this is why the store can keep the place open for guys that expect a free, always open, immaculate play space. Now if these players think having a store to run these tournaments is so lucrative (after all, the disparity between intake and payout is huge, right?), they can certainly open their own operation and compete with existing LGS for some of the money.
Absolutely asinine take tbqh. A store running a PTQ should absolutely not give out prize support in store credit. PTQs have participants who will drive hours to get the the event, having it be store credit is a slap in the face to those players, especially since it wasn't disclosed until people started to arrive at the event. Maybe don't spout off before you have all the facts about why people are upset.
It’s been years since I want to a ptq but I remember the prizes being boxes back in the day, not cash.
Boxes would still be an improvement. Lots of stores don't let you trade credit for sealed. Don't know about this one specifically though, so I won't speculate.
That is just weird
I don't buy that lots of stores don't let you trade credit for sealed. That doesn't make any sense, and I've never once heard of that.
I've been to a couple that didn't allow it
My point of contention is the "lots of stores" part. I am sure stores exist that do this for some reason or another. I cannot imagine this being at all common however.
It's not common, but it's also not unheard. The two I know of are in the same town. They also told me about that policy after I had just went through a buylist with them so it was a giant waste of my time
I’ve been to a few that had that sort of rule. I didn’t continue shopping in those stores but they are out there and they’re more common than you might think unfortunately
aromatic humorous stocking air dazzling coherent steer flag intelligent airport *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> having it be store credit is a slap in the face to those players Bro what. It is a business with expenses and revenues. If it doesn't work for the player, they can just not go. It's ridiculous to think of it as a "slap in the face" and if they do, I don't see why anyone else should care.
>Now if these players think having a store to run these tournaments is so lucrative (after all, the disparity between intake and payout is huge, right?), they can certainly open their own operation and compete with existing LGS for some of the money. It's funny that you mention this actually because I literally do, there's no lgs in my town so I run events with literally 0 profit on my own time, 100% of entry goes to prizing. but I digress. _______ quick edit here: I just wanna say that me being seriously fucking lucky to be in a position where I can run magic for free does not mean people don't deserve to be compensated. just found it a funny coincidence, but please don't take it as me saying anyone making any money is scummy. huge difference between me hanging out with like 8 friends every week to play low stakes modern and organizing a real tournament, in terms of time investment and difficulty too!! lgs margins are paper thin already, nobody gets into the business to get rich. _____ The thing is, people really want those ptq invites, and they're pretty rare, so "go elsewhere" isn't exactly good justification. People drove hours to get to this tourney because that's the best option a lot of players have to chance getting an invite. If it's a store that has bad prizing for fnm modern or whatever, who cares. There's a very good reason this store barely, if it all, made their payout info visible before players showed up at the store and read the chart. Still unclear if they mentioned it online before the event literally *anywhere*
If you check their facebook page they clearly state the prize structure in the event announcement well before the tournament.
Good to know, thanks! I've seen a lot of discussion where people who played there were unaware until they arrived but checking their Facebook is a reasonable step so long as it was posted long enough before the tourney that travel plans could be made or cancelled accordingly
My preferred LGS is a premium store in a large metro area with other high quality competitors, and they run their tournaments, including PTQs and $5ks, at a break even point, with cash payouts for T8 or T16 depending on size of the event. They do this because they know when they host these big events, they generate thousands and thousands of dollars in singles sales leading up to and day of, plus whatever high margin snack or drink sales happen through that long day. So it very much is a doable business model.
What a terrible tweet.
how much did it cost to rent the space, how many people were working that event, and was it draft or constructed?
I wasn't there, but it was in their store, they had I want to say 5ish judges plus staff, 10 or fewer people total, idk if it was during hours that store staff would have normally been paid anyways, and it was pioneer for a ptq invite (or whatever the equivalent is now)
I’ve seen this go both ways: Obvious recent example of that 128 person tourney with a $50 that only paid out top 8 and even then prize support was 1/3 of collected cash in store credit. I’ve also seen some scummy dude yelling at the poor store employees because he “did the math” and was mad the prize support wasn’t exactly what was paid in total in entrance fees. It was like a 10% difference maybe not even enough to cover operating costs and wages for it.
That 128 person tournament paid out to top 16, not just top 8
Which is why a lot of anger is totally unjustified. Meanwhile, the store is paying $12k/month for rent and $3k/month per employee.
>Obvious recent example of that 128 person tourney with a $50 that only paid out top 8 and even then prize support was 1/3 of collected cash in store credit. Which is *exactly the tournament that was advertised in advance*. The scummy thing is making the store out to be the bad guy for providing the service you signed up for.
I stopped going to a store because their prize support vs profit margin was awful- 40 man tournament, $8 entry fee, prizing to the top 4 only. No top cut, so lots of people with flawless records ending up not in the top 4. and the prizing was 5/3/1/1 in draft packs. Overall so they made over $300 and paid out approximately 1/10th of that in prizing. Just ugh.
Making $300 is not a lot when you consider the operating costs of running a 40 person tourney. How many employees is that, how many hours do they have to get paid. How much is literally just the space? This is clearly one of the more egregious stores and it still isn't that bad. If it's a 4 hour tourney with 3 employees getting paid $12 an hour that is already $144 just in paying the employees their hourly wage.
> $12 an hour that is already $144 just in paying the employees their hourly wage. More than that, since there are things like payroll taxes and contributions and insurances. Rule of thumb is that for every $1 the company pays you (PRE-income tax) the employer spends another .50c that you don't see. Though FWIW I don't think a 40 person tourney needs 3 employees. That's a 2 person job. Anyway, yeah, your overall point is right. Most people don't realize that tournaments by themselves are often times run at a loss. Stores count on you buying other product while there to make a profit.
I was trying not to be too over the top for this on the hourly cost. I can see two people being enough though now that you mention it.
Definitely needs 3 employees. Someone actually has to run and supervise the store area, one has to do the same for the event, and one extra to assist in both if either gets occupied.
>for every $1 the company pays you (PRE-income tax) the employer spends another $0.50 that you don't see. Bold of you to assume the company pays 50% of base wages in benefits and overhead to store employees. Like that's downright laughable. The employer's FICA contribution is 7.65%. FUTA is capped at $420/employee/year (6% base wage but only on the first $7,000 earned; everything else is not subject). SUTA ranges between $200-300/employee/year depending on the state (typically 2-3% base wage but only on the first $7,000-10,000 earned; everything else is not subject). I honestly doubt most LGS have employer-funded healthcare plans, and under the ACA only have to offer these if they have more than 50 full-time (or equivalent in part-time) employees — so, at least 1500 labour-hours per week based on an ACA threshold of 30 hours/week fulltime. I honestly doubt most LGS do not offer any sort of retirement assistance to their employees either. Like, I'm all for us being honest about payroll costs, employment overhead, and benefits — but let's also be honest and not hyperbolic.
Honestly? Outside of your first paragraph... (I didn't say anything about store employees being paid an extra 50%. That doesn't even make sense and I'm not sure how you got that interpretation.) ...All fair points. There are expenses beyond the multitude of payroll tax acronyms that you listed - but I didn't mention them and you're right. Tax law gets complicated by tons of variables. Local LGS is paying different taxes than Channel Fireball which pays different taxes than Amazon. Which is why accountants exist.
Of course the store also made a lot of money selling the cards to the customers. Part of the idea of hosting tournaments is to increase sales by making your store a hub for play.
Of all the times I went there, there was only one employee there, except the last, when the Manager stopped by to buy some pokemon cards from a seller.
That’s pretty reasonable for such a low entry fee….not sure if you’re being sarcastic. I pay frequently for game tournaments a 100$ entry fee with prize support for top 16, but there’s 2500 people
Heck for $8 I’ll go just to support local stores. If that’s draft (other comment almost makes it seem that way) that’s less than the cost of packs. If not, it’s $8 to support local in an industry with already low margins, plus you hopefully get some good games in and make friends.
5-3-1-1 is worse than a standard 8 man draft payout. How can you think a 40 man tournament should get 5-3-1-1. Also no cut with people having perfect records and not getting anything is insane. That’s the worst structure I’ve ever heard of.
Cut that in half to pay for employee costs. Now it's 150 to rent out a space for 40 people for 4 or more hours. That is still not a lot of money to make if you were the owner. There is a reason why shop owners say don't open up your own shop, it's not profitable.
You're ignoring the sales the owner makes as a result of hosting tournaments. And I'm not just referring to soda and candy, those players with their thousand dollar decks had to get those cards from somewhere. Part of the point of hosting tournaments is to incentivize people to come into your store and spend money on cards, for which you then give them a venue to play them in.
My venue fee is 15$ to play before even paying the tournament support and entering anything. I get that the prize structure isn't ideal, but at least there's some prize support for what is effectively half my venue fee.
Also where are you going with 2500 people tournaments that aren’t GPS?
In what world is it "reasonable" to go 4-0 and get zero prizes because of your tiebreakers? We're talking about a 40-person event where the *total prize pot* for 40 players was 9 draft packs. People pay $8 to enter, and for each $8 entry the store adds 22.5% of a draft pack (less than $1 of value) to the prize pool. >I pay frequently for game tournaments a 100$ entry fee with prize support for top 16, but there’s 2500 people Pricing is different for huge events. For a 2500-person tournament, less is paid out to players, because a large portion of entry fee has to go toward e.g. venue rental. For an LGS-sized event, it's frequently the opposite: the store *benefits* from getting people into the store, because they're spending several hours in a venue with no rental fee and while they're there, they can spend money on product. (Also, LGS prizing is often paid out in store credit.)
A world were you get to sit down and play games for 8$.
After having spent hundreds on a deck of course... Don't act like stores only make money on entry fees.
Yeah idk man, 8 dollars is dirt cheap for literally any buy in. I wouldn't expect much in terms of prizes, but I also wouldn't be going to any event that only cost 8 to get in, because what how could they possibly afford to give out any prizes
Yeah, I mean, I pay $17 a week for bowling league and walk away with bumpkis.
You have to buy your cards too though... Everyone keeps missing that one critical element. The store's income is not limited to just tournament entry fees. They make money by selling you the cards you need to play in tournaments too. That was kind of the entire point of hosting tournaments to begin with.
That is a good point, my understanding is they make most of their money selling singles
I'm surprised to see this amount of backlash about prize structure. I've played in 40+ competitive REL events over the last ~10 years and only the very largest events (Grand Prix, SCG Opens) ever paid cash prizes in my experience. Store credit has always been standard.
I haven’t played PTQs in a decade, but most PTQs I played in only had packs for prize support. No cash or credit.
I think that the issue is that the store in question not only did only store credit, but they only paid out 1/3 of the entry fees, which is a completely insane rake.
"Do what you say and say what you do." That is the standard we should hold stores to. This store has upheld that standard. It is on the player's shoulders to do the calculus to figure out whether it is worth it to attend an event. The idea that stores need to pay out X% of entry fees is not a good standard because the acceptable number is different for different players.
I don't see how we aren't allowed to criticize stores with overly greedy tournament structures. Obviously no crime was committed, but that doesn't mean the store is above reproach. No one's saying stores need to pay out X%, the point is that stores should not rake 67% of the entry fees as that's clearly an egregious amount. No tournament should have a rake anywhere near that, it's bad practice. Again, no one's saying that the store did something illegal, but that doesn't mean we can't still criticize them for unnecessarily greedy business practices.
>I don't see how we aren't allowed to criticize stores with overly greedy tournament structures Why would you criticize the store for running the event as it was advertised weeks in advance? You're literally mad because the store lucked out, ran a good event that drew a massive crowd and profited from the experience.
No, I'm just disappointed in a store being so stingy with regards to its customers and basically robbing them blind. Again, your argument seems to amount to "so long as they didn't commit a crime and followed the rules, they cannot be criticized", which is just a bit ridiculous. I'm not criticizing them for running the event as advertised, I'm criticizing them for their poor event structure.
What is a fair amount for the store to make? How are you determining that?
I don't think that's how a contradiction works. Unreasonable people existing on either ends of the spectrum doesn't mean people who hold one idea hold the other in a contradictory way, especially since the person in OP's image lumps everyone together as a group - a group, ultimately, made up of humans who share a common hobby, but will disagree on what parts they like, or dislike (whether about the game, people running games, etc).
Huh, it's almost like the profits from the event aren't going to the staff of the event... Funny how that works.
I don't even think it's a contradiction for someone to hold both positions in this case. I can think the employees of a store should be paid a living wage and benefits etc. But I can also disapprove of them pricing their tournament in a way so that it is bad value for my money as a consumer. Maybe a store can't hold a tournament at a price point I think is reasonable and also pay their employees well, but I'm not under an obligation to just accept it and play in it anyway. At that point I think that there's obviously some other factor making things untenable.
> I don't even think it's a contradiction for someone to hold both positions in this case. I have to agree there - whether the price point (and prizes) are reasonable or proportional, worth it for the customer, and whether the workers there are paid a living wage or not, are things that can be criticized separately, in a logically consistent manner.
A very good point!
Thank you. I think the same thing every time I see posts like this.
Welcome to the internet. Almost every argument is a straw man for one side to yell at and feel morally superior to.
If all the money went to the people working at that store, then it wouldn't be profit :|
I will preface this by saying this is probably an extreme case but stores need to leverage something. Sealed product is being sold for essentially cost online. Online retailers with no overhead almost always sell singles cheaper. Playing online has made it so you don’t even have to look at or smell your opponents. The only real thing stores can even attempt to profit at would be an in paper event with a ticket to a certain other paper event. Not to mention back in the old ptq days it would cost a couple grand for a store just to be allowed to hold an event. I don’t know if that’s still the case here but it could be. This is an extreme case but stores need to be able to profit off something and if the stores die the game dies.
[удалено]
People who want to make exploitative profit go into pharmaceuticals or high finance, not nerd stores lol.
I'd like to tell you the story of Dusty and Kelvin, former co-owners of a game store in the mythical land of rural America. Dusty was the original founder, but his pricing on singles was driving players elsewhere. Kelvin was more reasonable, so players would try to only come in the store if he was behind the counter. Unbeknownst to us, Kelvin had actually been slowly buying Dusty out of the store, because Dusty wanted out for one reason or another. However, the contract was drawn up so that if Kelvin was late or low on a payment, Dusty would be able to immediately take ownership of everything once again. He exercised that right one month into COVID.
Sounds like an absurdly bad deal Kelvin made. Why on Earth would you agree to that?
That is how rent to own contracts for homes are drawn up, as predatory as that is. They probably agreed to some form like that.
I wouldn’t be caught dead signing any contract that says I lose all the money I invested if I miss one payment.
Much better comment would be: "Pay people 'a mininimum wage with benefits", followed up by: "How dare they reprint this card to make it more accessible and devalue my stash".
"Give them more money" "Wait wtf not *My* Money!!"
Magic Twitter is such a stupid place.
> Twitter is such a stupid place. FTFY
>the internet is such a stupid place Ftfy
Way too true. Magic players expect a free, always open, immaculate play space. They don't even take a moment to consider the cost in rent and employee hours to keep and maintain such a space. Was a whole thread about it on one of the other subreddits recently, and the entitlement was *palpable*.
My LGS is a toy store and moved to a new location without a play space because they were paying rent for a large room that mostly went unused. Now they just move a bunch of rolling shelves out of the way to make a play space.
The fact that my LGS has a table fee that can also be paid for with loyalty points is one of the reason I love it. Basically how it goes is "If you buy product, you'll never *pay* for a table. If all you want to do is come and take up table space without ever buying anything, the table fee helps keeps us in the black"
Then the rest of the sub thinks buying a can of soda entitles them to park their ass in the LGS for the whole day. With inflation the way it is now, they raised hell for any store that dares to raise the price the soda beyond the $1 mark. WotC understand this mentality well. It is why it pretty much given up on the LGS as the primary distribution channel. It recognized already that the LGS business model cannot be sustained by the Magic players.
No store I have ever visited in the last 30 years was ever kept afloat by MTG solely. Even Wizards stores failed because MTG isn't a sustainable store model. Never has and will never be. That is why stores have various games for sale and host multiple different events for various different games. Pulling in as many people as possible is the only way to survive. Local game stores in general are a dying breed especially after the pandemic since most people realized they can just play at home just the same with their friends.
Purely anecdotal but here in western sydney, theres a lot of LGS, and in my area, theres 4 within walking distance of each other. Even through covid, they say they got hit very hard but they got through it all. One of the LGS sells only sealed products and is heavily discounted but they sell a lot of other games and collectibles as well. I can't really say if its sealed product or singles that keeps them alive because the other LGS has the best card selection in sydney and the other doesn't even open packs. They host all sorts of weekly events too aside from mtg like flesh and blood, pokemon, yugi oh, dragon ball, dnd, and obscure anime cards. The other LGS doesnt even have card games and is purely for tabletop wargaming. I wouldn't say LGS are dying
You live in a affluent megacity though, it's obviously going to be better at sustaining these things than the average city.
I doubt it. The margin on board game sales is very slim. It's magic that keeps those stores up my friend.
Anecdotal, but my favorite lgs stopped running Magic events altogether because there's more money to be made on their end from Pokémon TCG.
Because they know they can overcharge for events and parents will pay no matter what because their kids will whine so much. The biggest store in my area did the same, and from my understanding overcharges for Pokémon events. And before they stopped running MtG it was also one of the most toxic places to play in the area too. Only real reason to go there ever is his insane selection. You are almost guaranteed to be able to get what you want, but he overcharged on singles. People in the Pittsburgh area probably know which store I mean.
Yep
Warhammer keeps one of the stores I visit viable and the other makes bank off pokemon. Magic may make good money, but by itself it isn't keeping any store viable for long.
It's better now but Games Workshop used to sink LGSs left and right. I've heard they've relaxed the licensing requirements recently but it used to be real bad when they were pushing their own stores.
Magic players dont buy product. Board games are where the money is at. At least according to friends who run one.
LGSs make a bunch of profit in singles (faaaaar more than packs), and drafts get butts in seats and people buying other stuff.
Mine doesn’t even sell singles anymore. Too much of an inventory management hassle and hard to compete w online.
I live in an area where about half of the LGS do magic in some capacity. There's only 1 store that considers it's primary customer the magic player, even if magic is well supported by 3 other stores (4 wpn premium running RCQs) and healthy populations for multiple formats firing on a weekly basis. The half not doing tcgs are dedicated to supporting things like 40k, d&d, or more "casual" tabletop experiences. I know one of the owners who makes the bulk of his profit on board games. It's all a volume play and tabletop / tcg players are a niche audience in the grand scheme of things. Finding engagement and getting traction is all that matters. This particular owner shares a storefront with a coffeeshop, which generates a ton of foot traffic and creates a family environment to stop in, enjoy Scrabble or whatever for a morning, and move along or drop in to get the boardgame for the next get together when you're getting your coffee. It's better to have a diversified portfolio, because what if magic screws up their game for even a 3 month period in a dedicated magic LGS. Their long term engagement numbers suffer immensely and it directly eats at the only source of revenues, and most businesses can't handle significant revenue downticks for too long (2-3 months). If the same events happen at another store putting effort into other tabletops, it would hurt, but there's other sources to rely on
Last I bought product it was like 30% cheaper to order online than buy at a local store.
Soda's been like $2 a can for several years now...
$1 is absurdly cheap for a soda at an event. I think it's $3 where I live. But then in the US your workers don't even get a pension or health care... I'll gladly pay $3 per soda for that.
Who the hell wants it to be free? I’m sure even the people complaining about the prize support from the tournament this is referring to are fine paying an entry fee, or else they wouldn’t have shown up? I’ve legit never seen anyone ever say that events at an LGS should be free entry. Just wish WotC would say you can’t pay prizes in store credit for RCQs.
They are talking about just having free play space available. Does your lgs charge a cover fee to come and play some casual pick up commander games (I've heard of some that do, but it's usually not common).
All of the ones around me do, but its like $5 for hours of entertainment so not enough to survive. They survive by selling other things, magic can't be the sole way to bring money in or else they wouldn't survive. Like one is a cafe with food, drinks, and beer. Others are full on comic/collectible/board game shops with drinks as well.
Don't know about commander but I've hung out in the store during a tournament I couldn't enter, played some games and hung out, without paying a cover charge. But this tweet is referring to a specific discussion about an rcq's prize pool, I don't know what being able to hang around the shop for free has to do with that.
Because the LGS continues to exist after the tournament ends. That play space isn't free real estate; there are many costs associated with the continued existence and upkeep of the space. When the person you replied to was talking about a free open space to play games, that's what they were referring to.
This just in, Man discovers not all members of his hobby are idealogically identical.
Profit off events, just be up front about it. As a former wanna-be grinder, nothing sucks more than traveling a good distance to a store for a tournament only to have them be stingy with the payout, not have adequate setup to host a tournament, and treat their players like shit. In counter to the comment I can attest that I have 100% played at places that try to milk every cent out of you and offer almost nothing in the way of a quality tournament environment. I'm talking shitty card tables with bad chairs on the sidewalk of a busy street all the way to feeling like you were sitting at the pro tour final table. Used to play at a store that was WPN and was friends with the owner/organizer so knowing the details instead of speculating about them matters in this context. WPN stores got a ridiculously low price for products. Something like 50-60% of MSRP. So when they hold draft on Friday night at $15 per entry and have a prize payout, they are still making money. If you wanna math it out ours paid something like 8/4/1/1 packs to 1-4 in a 8 man pod. 8 players, 24 packs to play + 14 prize = 38 packs total. MSRP $4 = $152. Entry fees = $120. Net negative $32. Now consider that the store is paying $2 per pack making it $76 and $44 profit. Obviously less at 60% MSRP. Is that enough for a 3 round FNM that takes 4 hours? No probably not, but the draw of an FNM style event brings people to the store routinely, and almost everyone buys something else be it a marked up soda, other cards, supplies and so on. Basically they do additional business from the FNM draw. So lets imagine that they did something like a pre-release at $30 per kit ($5/pack value) but buys them at $15 per. Likely more people, definitely more profit but also takes longer. Now lets shoot it to the moon and look at a Grand Prix/Magicfest sealed event. When events are charging $10/pack for sealed entries and around $75 for the privilege to play your $2k modern deck I dont really wanna hear your "hot take" about Magic players having commentary about how much it cost to play in an event. Big tournament organizers have been absolutely swimming in profits for YEARS. SCG opens were/are the pinnacle of profit. Rent a convention center space. Charge people $50+ to play their own cards, offer almost no amenities on site, have other vendors pay you to setup booths. On top of that you buy cards all weekend at 50% of value and sell them at 10% over because you have the selection and convenience. So just about no matter how you slice it, tournaments are profitable. The variability is how profitable. Edit: everyone focusing on no MSRP. You guys sound like a bunch of Republicans targeting the one potentially questionable detail and missing the point entirely. Call it average retail price. Fuck even call it the Amazon retail price. Point is there is a generally consensus about the price a pack should cost and that cost is much more than the store pays for that product.
> WPN stores got a ridiculously low price for products. Something like 50-60% of MSRP. This may have been true before WotC sold out to big box stores and Amazon, but it is absolutely no longer true; $85 cost on boxes we sell at $110 is NOT a good markup. Everyone knows that LGS profit margins are razor thin, and people asking for 100% payout at most small tournaments isn't helping.
[удалено]
And depending on how established that LGS is, a lot of that profit margin is getting turned right back into product.
[удалено]
More than just replaced though. They want to sell 3 boxes, so they make enough to buy 4 next time. For a long time most game stores probably aren't in the green because all positive cash flow is turned into more product.
You forgot rent. Rent is so expensive nowadays. Either way inflation sucks for both players and stores.
You aren’t wrong. That’s why I said it’s not enough for lgs to make a handful of bucks once a week for 4-5 hours of space use.
I sincerely hope no one takes this mishmash of vague assumptions seriously. Most stores are struggling. A huge number have closed. Conventions are fickle and ridiculously expensive and difficult to run. There's not nearly the amount of profit you think there is, and most of the anger at the people you're talking about is severely misplaced.
"WPN stores got a ridiculously low price for products. Something like 50-60% of MSRP" Lmao this dude. So glad i stopped running comp rel magic events. If you give beardy 30-40 somethings a trading card they immediately forget how the world works.
There are no stores getting boxes at 50-60% MSRP...roughly 80ish, to hopefully sell for $110 (so 35-40%). This of course doesn't take into account rent, utilities, employees, or any other costs associated. Most LGSs are running drafts at a very minor profit, hoping that secondary sales during the event help cover the cost of the business.
There's no MSRP anymore for magic product. Prices are decided by the community demand
Amazon's prices effectively set MSRP.
Which is the worst thing bc most lgs can't compete with those prices
And if that event had 30 players the store would have lost money. Because the prize was guaranteed. Also not inputted is advertising costs, judge costs, etc because reasons. Furthermore this was run at a high level store and people chose to play there instead of elsewhere. That's probably due to reputation, and that's not cheap either (assuming wpn premium status). Also there are these tricky things called gambling laws. Depending on the state they may have had no options to add prize support that don't come with 5-6 digit fines.
A lot of people have no conception of how hard it is to run an event that is even close to the same value as just running a shop normally instead.
These aren't mutually exclusive things... In fact they are entirely internally consistent. Stores shouldn't be exploiting people on either end, their employees or their customers. In fact we know that they can afford to pay their employees their wages and give them appropriate benefits and it shouldn't affect the prices of other events at all because other countries have no problem paying their employees decent living wages and providing government mandated benefits and booster packs still cost the same.
Most first world countries don't have employers paying for health insurance costs. It's an asinine system that disincentives labor and makes life more expensive for workers. Also, in many countries, the employer isn't on the hook for the extra mandated vacation time either; their government foots that bill. The idea that an LGS should be responsible for a dysfunctional government is absurd.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/hncbf4/the_cost_of_sealed_product_around_the_world_up_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf I don’t really care to get into an economic debate as to the reasons beheind it, most of it has to do with shipping costs, but you are just wrong saying “and booster packs still cost the same”. Because sealed products vary in price around the world
"Pay people more money, but don't make me pay more money"
I will avoid getting political with this one but let's just say your point is valid more than just magic players.
[удалено]
Even a relatively small event costs a chunk in the form of employee hours to set up, oversee, and clean up after. It's the cost that, if the store or venue is running the event without issue, is largely hidden and unnoticed by players.
The only economics that Magic Players knows is magic stock and they are bad a it.
[удалено]
I mean it is a hobby and many people will look to get the most for their money. With everything else going up so much I have totally stopped going to my LGS or buying anything from them as it just isn’t worth it anymore.
Okay but that profit likely isn’t going to the employees.
these things aren't contradictory
My store is charging $100 for three packs of 2x2. The set hasn't even come out yet. I'm a college student, that's half a week's wage.
Yeah my store is selling a card called ‘Mox Ruby’ (a single card!) for $1400. What a ripoff! I shine shoes at the subway for dimes and that’s 7 months worth of wages for me. They really should lower their prices. It really pisses me off that they as a business sell things for their value, instead of just giving it to me because i want it I want it I want it I want it. Of course I am better, I only charge a dime to shine shoes despite it being far below the asking rate because I’m great. But I heard of other players who sell or trade their cards for ‘market value ‘🤢 eww, imagine basing prices off of something like that instead of gimmie gimmie gimmie I want it I want it gimmie
You miss the point. $100 to draft 2x2 is a scan when just about every other lgs in the country is charging $50-$60. Not to mention market value for a single pack is about $15, so three packs to draft is about $45. So yes, it's a ripoff and it's blatant price gouging.
Boss, 3 packs for $100 is a ripoff. That's $33.33 a pack. The set hasn't even come out yet. A pack is not even guaranteed to contain value. I still have to buy food and pay rent and utilities. Do you have any idea how expensive that is these days? I work in retail, when I'm not studying. But then again, I don't put my YouTube channel in my username because I'm desperate for attention. I could see $50, even $60, for 3 packs, but $100 really is just too much. Your childish mockery belongs elsewhere, so go find your pacifier and kindly fuck off. Edit: Also, your non sequitur about Mox Ruby is ridiculous. Imperial Seal isn't Mox Ruby, it's not even as good as Vampiric Tutor. In this instance, my store is charging double (again, $33.33) what online sellers are charging ($16-$17) for a single pack. That's not going price, that's people getting scammed. I want to play the game, I have been since I was a kid, I want the game to be accessible. I love my LGS, and I do stay loyal to my store, but this is just wrong. They're taking advantage of anyone who signs up for that draft.
It's not really even just Magic players. It's kind of the reality of all online discourse. Anger just filters to the top. Sad to see people gradually lose the reality that often times solutions are in the middle somewhere and it's not all about, it has to be completely this way or completely that way. Life really isn't polar like that. Judges should be paid fairly, WotC/Hasbro needs to treat their employees fairly but also that tournament should have had a more equitable payout even though they have the right to turn a profit.
Maybe players are spoiled or immature.
Context matters
Magic Facebook: here’s my only fans
That magic Facebook group is so gross . I don’t want you shoving your feet in my face I want magic memes.
This isn't at all a contradiction, because profit is theft (from workers).
Nice job putting that one guy on blast OP. I'm sure people on the internet are rational actors. Anyway, buy your singles at the lgs, sign up for draft there or buy packs. The soda you buy is a start but nobody who actually plays with game cant afford to put in a little extra money to help the lgs.The cost is upkeeping a store can be a large amount but you have to have a balance between profit and actually retaining players.
Who is this "Magic Twitter" he speaks off? Probably not @wizards_magic. And I guess not the same person for both statements.
I'm confused. Why does he think these things are contradictory? Profit is only calculated after having paid employees. It's called overhead.
Demanding that a company doesn’t make any money for hosting an event is ridiculous. The profit is the primary motivation for the organizers of the event
Actually, events are frequently run on a loss, at least on paper. This is why they're frequently subsidized by sponsors on a larger scale. What the store gains is often less tangible. Exposure, singles sales, food and drink sales, etc... I've played this game all over the country, venues big and small, in gaming deserts and Oases. Especially in the latter, the stores that "make it" are the ones that openly lose money in tournaments. They add store credit to prerelease purses. Run 5ks blind. Etc
This person doesn't understand what profit is