This past week/weekend was a bag of crazy and some of it had to do with magic.  Lets start things off the LGS (Local Game Store) i work part time for got broken in to Monday morning around 1am. Thanks to a weird happenstance the would be thief got nothing for his time, well not yet anyway. Once he is found he might get something… Anyway, that is why no Magic Monday, i was assisting with that fall out. But lets rewind to magic topics.

Thanks to changing my hours at my evening job i have been able to attend the last few FNM drafts. At these drafts i am 16-2 in games. 8-0 in matches. Not a bad record overall but what is nice to know is that the weeks before my shift change the FNM attendance had been falling. Part of my job is getting players in the store on Fridays as well as keeping them happy. My not being around effected that turn out a bit i believe but now that i am back things seem to be turning around again. Well for now anyway. We have a few of our area’s players leaving for greener pastures in the coming weeks some for the summer, some for a time unknown. I wish these players well as they are my friends but i can’t lie i will miss having them a in direct correlation to $$ spent at the LGS. Greedy i know.

Then on this last Saturday, we had a small 4 round win a box as a going away event for one of these guys and i was able to play as well as run the event.

Lost my first round mostly to the deck just not wanting to run issues. Mulled to 5 before finding a reasonable keep. And proceeded to flood out to an opponent (mulled to 6) with an aggressive open lion into boon stayer into deathmist into den protector. We were both at 7 when he was able to enchant the protector with the stayer for the win. Game 2, i kept a risky hand of red cards with black mana. I figured if i hit a red source in the first few draws i couldn’t loose. But it came a turn too late and my last out was one of my anger of the gods. It was the draw i would have drawn when he was able to push through with a 3/2 den protector.

I proceeded to win out to end on a record of 3-1. My first round opponent ended up playing in the finals and loosing, locking up second. I was in the top 4. Not too bad really.

There was an issue after the tournament was done. I am not in charge of figuring out prize product. We had 13 people at 15$ a head and gave out about a box and a half or 54 packs. The winner got a box and 2-3 split 18 packs between them. At our prices that gave the shop 33$ for running the event + the margins on the pack sales. Which we run VERY small margins on magic packs. I am not the accountant but i would assume after costs the shop might have made 10-15$ or so on the event.

For the record, If we used WoTC MSRP we would have giving out 48 packs. Or a box + 12 packs at MSRP that would be 57$ish dollars before costs. Or a much larger profit.

We have a very vocal player that feels that we should give out 100% of the entry fees in packs to the winners taking 100% of the profits out of the pack margins. Doing so with our current margins would have netted about 9$ before costs. Ie cost the shop money to hold events.

I told this player i would look at the numbers and see what i could do to address his concerns, but even after having talking with him about it, he still went on to bash the shop in front of other players about what he fills to be correct. And i did my best to counter this in the mind of those players in hear shot but he droned on. Including implying that he would talk to other people about his feelings even outside of the shop. People that i can not hope to reach out side of here or Facebook.

So if you are one of those people i hope you read to the end here and that this counters some of his argument. That said I AM looking at adjusting/creating a formula to assign winnings that is as favorable to the players as it is to the shop. If holding tournaments is not profitable then they will not be supported and that would be horrible.

Aside: This issue has been forefront in my mind since it happened. It just so happened that GP Las Vegas was this weekend. So i did some back of the napkin maths.

The base entry fee was 75$ and the attendance was over 7,100 players. I know there were more then that and i also know that all the different levels of the event were filled as well as a number of side events but i just want to use these numbers.

75*7100 is 532500

packs for 7100 for 2 days of a sealed is roughly 50000 or have a MSRP of 199500 or a cost of 13750 assuming that they didn’t get a better deal on packs for the GP.

I did the math on the prize support in cash on Sunday, so pardon if it is not 100% right but i remember it being just under 250000

Fees 532500
packs 137500
prize 250000
———–
145000 before paying staff and other fees.

Assuming about 100000 cost for this one event that is about 45000 profit for this one event. The largest tournament of all time. And that is not counting the side events, sells, booth rentals, concessions, etc…. And or 10$ on 195$ is a deal breaker????

I would love to hear peoples thoughts on this.

<3s