US Prerelease prize structure change

[M_Liesik]

If I remember correctly, magic prizes was based on your record. I think a perfect record got you 1/2 box and so forth. At least that's how it was where I went.

The last time I played at a MTG prerelease, I think it was the Torment release, it seemed that the prize structure was similar to what Pokemon used to be with a box for first and then down from there.

How much of this support comes from the company and how much comes out of the TO's pocket? I don't know WotC's support structure anymore (haven't worked there in like 3+ years) so I'm legitimately curious.

I've played in 100-150 tournaments for a certain other game *coughL5Rcough* in my day. The company that produced the game sent a little bit of prize support for thier events and the rest was up to the TO to provide. All of the weekly constructed events that I played in cost $6. $1 went to the store owner for letting us use his play space, the other $5 went to buying packs (the store owner sold packs to the TO for $2.50 each). If there were 40 players in the tournament (which was the norm for our events), the owner got $40 plus the TO bought $200 worth of product (80 packs). At the end of the tournament, everyone that played got 1 pack. The other packs 40 packs were split up among the top 8 (10 for 1st, 8 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd/4th, 3 for 5th-8th). This was a ton of prize support, but it was all provided by the TO/players.

A smart TO realizes that a company can only dedicate so much of its resources to prizes. She/he compensates by finding a system that works for her/his players, augmenting the FREE support that they are already receiving from the company.

 

[meganium45]

Don't weep too much for store owner sales, if they are negotiating correctly.

For all of my venues, for pre-Releases, I give the store owner $5.00 a head, and get my space guaranteed.

For a 20 person event, that is $100.00, pure profit.

For a 40 person event, that is $200

For an 80 person event - $400

If they make 25% profit margin off of their stuff (which is pretty close sometimes) that is a HECK of a lot of product that they would have to sell to match the $200 they get from a 40 person event. The owners know this, I know this.

They also sell all the sleeves, snacks and other packs. Except for T-shirts (which I am all but stopping - anyone want a FireRed Shirt at this point?), I sell nothing except the entry fee.

It makes for a good profit day for the store for my event, which I understand is more than most games give the stores.

I make sure the owners are taken care of...otherwise they do not want me to use their space....no space, no event...a business decision once again.

M45

 

[Adv1sor]

How much of this support comes from the company and how much comes out of the TO's pocket? I don't know WotC's support structure anymore (haven't worked there in like 3+ years) so I'm legitimately curious.

I have now idea how much prize support, if any, was given freely from WOTC. I don't know for a fact but I believe that, back when I used to play MTG, stores that bought from primary distributors did so at half the suggested retail price of the product. (Oh, and someone told me that it was one Sealed deck of 75 cards and two booster packs of 15 each, not three.)

 

[Gym Leader Blaine]

If winning a box spurs players to go out and buy 2-3 more boxes, then that's good, if indeed that happens. That's probably true for adults, but not so for youth. The majority of players in my locale are youth.

You are correct is it the Adults who are buying more boxes since the youth cant afford the spend that much money like adults do. The only way some of the youth are able to get packs is from what they are able to win in a Prerelease of other tournaments. Which they can use for decks or trade for the cards they get. I agree with the new prize sturcture that it will get more packs in all of the youths hads instead of just the top 8 players, I really like that idea. The doesnt mean I cant add more to the prizes stucture. Someone posted the idea that Winner get free entry into the next Prerelease, I think that is a great idea and an thinking about doing it along with other things.

I know your player base is youth, and you have been to a tounament of mine before and seen that a big part of mine is in the 15+ age group. Even though these adult players win the prerelease they still go out in buy more of the product to build there decks. At least that is how it works around here, so the given a booster box away in the past didn't hurt sell since most the Adults that won went out and bought more packs and boxes, and the youth that couldn't afford very may packs went home happy they won a box of their favorit card game and couldn't wait to get home to open it up. These are the things I have seen in the Utah area, and it works great for the players and store owners because of the great tournaments we have had in the past year, thanks to PUI.

 

[Rainbowgym]

Rainbowgym, I'm not completely convinced that it would be good to have different prize-payouts for the different age categories. Children have a keen sense of what's fair and what's not fair. I'm thinking that a 10-year champ would think it's very unfair that he only gets 4-6 boosters while his adult counter-part gets much more.

Steve - We are working with a sort of that construction for 2 years now and it works really good.
We even used it at our only supported Prerelease, but there we did what I suggested for 15+ for all agegroups.

It was the most we could get out of our hard negotiation with the distributor.
While the US had the 1 box , 1/2 box structure we at the end ended up with a support of 2 boosters each person attending.
We made an agreement that every person got 1 booster as price and the remaining booster were used to be split up between top 4 or top 8 depending on attendance and divided by agegroup.
It was a great succes with 54 people playing (this was our first Prerelease ever in our country).

ONe of the reasons our distributor didn't want to work with us anymore was:
We charged a 15 Euro entrancefee, because that would cover everything we had to pay and the distributor wanted us to charge 22,50 Euro. We didn't increase the fee, because we are convinced that you have to keep fees as low as possible and they were mad at us and told us we could forget OP and we wouldn't get leageumaterials.

Nobody here until now has beaten our number of players and we will proof again Sunday that we know what players want in our after Prerelease party.

Because we were on our own again, we used a kind of pricestructure like suggested in our (20?) following larger tournaments and everyone was happy with it.
The little kids saw that meaby number 1 of 15+ got more boosters, but also saw that nr 6 had less.
And kids have a better feeling for sharing/equalty than most older people. So the very few times the nr 1 of the younger had a question about it, I explained that by sharing they all had prize and I never ever heared a single complain about it, they were happy that all their friends had the same.

We have a saying : Een kinderhand is snel gevuld.
It means something like a little kid is satisfied with less than an adult.

But the structure we used for 15+ can also be used for the younger ones, most leagueleaders who are involved with their player will be able to estimate the needs of their groups.

 

[GodTrainer]

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i mean really people 8!!!!! pages , for what???! its not like the more pages of argueing you fill up there going to change the prize structure ..........JUST DEAL WITH IT , find someting more productive to do! like...helping someone with a deck, or write a sratagy artical about a new card, or find out whats the 411 on those deck tins were suposed to get

for god sakes 8PAGES!!!! you guys really have nothing better to do, do you?

give it a chance

i mean after the first 2 pages, this isnt even news anymore........the other 6 pages should be moved to the center for randomness, and be titled HI we like to be random allll day long

 

[PokePop]

GT: With your permission, is it alright if the TOs discuss among themselves and their clients exactly how they plan on dealing with it?

 

[GodTrainer]

GT: With your permission, is it alright if the TOs discuss among themselves and their clients exactly how they plan on dealing with it?

sure pokepop...with my permission




....whatever


i guess its one of those things, that would have sounded better inperson

 

[SD PokeMom]

GT: With your permission, is it alright if the TOs discuss among themselves and their clients exactly how they plan on dealing with it?

Exactly...it's not like anyone is _making_ anyone else read the topic, if they're not interested in it...

*coughbackontopiccough*

'mom

 

[Lawman]

Just be glad that many of you have stores that run the leagues that stock the product. At our league location, we went over a year w/o ANY new product. There wasn't a thing Pokemon in the store. I went out and bought boxes on the internet and brought them to the league (w/ store manager's permission mind you) and sold the packs for $2.50 each. This was meant to keep the kids involved! Now, w/ new management, the store has gotten product in. I lost money to keep Pokemon alive. I am not a PTO, just someone who wants to see it grow for my son and others. We HAVE to travel to go to PRs and CCs, GCs, etc. I like a bit of an incentive to receive a "bit more" prize as a winner for myself or my son. Trust me, everyone (or most) buys add'l product outside of their "winnings". PUI has made it impossibe to finish a set in 1 box only (or even 2-3)

Keith

 

[Lawman]

Venusaur: when you factor in the shipping costs, plus keeping some product for my sons; I lost a bit of money. Closest I came to the break even mark was when I bought a whole case of HLs and sold almost 5 boxes at store and kept a box plus a few more packs for the boys. I also gave a few packs away to a few of the "less fortunate" to let them have new cards too. Gotta keep the game going. We are fortunate enough to provide for my boys. Remaining on topic though, I'd still like a bit of a bump for the winners in the prize structure. I love what PUI has done so far, so I won't question them much But, IMHO, the overall PR #s will decrease a bit.

Keith

 

[sneaselsrevenge]

The structure should help PUI somewhat, because people who normally just rely on their PR winnings will now have to buy those packs to help their decks. It will also help those of us that can't afford to buy many packs and dont do to well in these types of tourneys. The people it will hurt the most, are those in College that count on the prerelease winnings as their only way to stay competitive.

 

[NoPoke]

for the tournaments that I've run so far I pyramid the prizes. Everyone gets something plus the more points you get the bigger your share of the remaining prize pool.

eg after six rounds with four boosters per player then the prizes are awarded as boosters = (1+ points/3) with a few minor tweaks to ensure that everyone gets something and to avoid half boosters!

 

[SteveP]

for the tournaments that I've run so far I pyramid the prizes. Everyone gets something plus the more points you get the bigger your share of the remaining prize pool.

eg after six rounds with four boosters per player then the prizes are awarded as boosters = (1+ points/3) with a few minor tweaks to ensure that everyone gets something and to avoid half boosters!

I LIKE your idea. It evens out the prize payout to anyone who wins a game. So, if you have 32 players with 5 rounds, that's 16 X 5 = 80 matches, with 40 winners, or just over a box. Personally, I don't like draws, so I'd round-down after dividing by 3.

GREAT IDEA NoPoke. My PTO told me today he wanted to somehow beef-up the prize support for those who do well at the pre-release. I think I'll present this idea to him. This idea rewards performance to just about everybody without a ridiculous "winners-take-all" prize-payout.

 

[ScythKing]

OK folks, keep your eyes peeled. There are some PTOs who are going to increase the prizes for winners.... But that now lies in the hands of the individual PTOs.
Who is going to do this? Probably a PTO who has a larger attendance, and therefore a little more room to move.

Just in passing Vince, the fact that it is a topic of discussion underlines the problem that reduced prize support is a concern among the players and the PTO's. If it weren't then you would not be concerned with boosting the prize structure. Folks, I'd like to underline the fact that the PTO's are in fact concerned and trying to work for *you* the players! It also means we will be running on the proverbial shoestring and need the player support more than ever. Wait - that would "prove" PUI's point. Maybe you shouldn't come at all so they will get the message we need the prize support. Seriously - tell how you feel to PUI. Personally I feel the cards are an important part of teh structure as it gets trading and deck material in the mix.
The message needs to get back to PUI that they are removing a valuable incentive for people to play. Several people have mentioned that this will be more competitive. That is not PUI's intent - they wish to make the Pre's *less* competitive and underline the theme that the pre is for fun and getting new cards - not for competition.

 

[JasonthePwnda]

i think prereleases should be draft over sealed, under 1 age division, and winner take ALL. thats like 6 boxes. or maybe 1-3 get 3-2-1 boxes, respectively. that would be pwnage

 

[ScythKing]

Please quit complaining about the prize structure change. If you want it changed back to what it was, then it is up to us ALL to increase the number of players so it is financially viable for the TO's to give out the huge prizes. This new prize format favors the KIDS....it allows them to get more product so they can compete and have fun. If your over the age of 17 and your complaining that its not fair that they changed things so you cannot go to a small prerelease and get a box by beating 4 people who play for the fun of the game, then too bad. Make it worth the TO's time and expense...bring new blood to the tables. Overflow your play area. Be part of the solution to the games longevity. If your in it for the freebies and the loot, then your doing it for the wrong reasons. If its not woth the travel time to go to other prereleases then work on making the one in your area HUGE. It is possible...I see it every Saturday.

'Dad - that in a nutshell is the most intelligent response I've seen yet. I wish I'd have said it and I am a PTO. This is very very true and I haven't figured a solution for it. I actually had a player once that was totally honest with me in that he declined to give a ride to someone because that would have reduced his chances for a big win. So I guess that old monster greed is part of the problem here.
But I still think it's a mistake to drop the incentives (more prizes to winners).

 

[GymLeaderPhil]

i think prereleases should be draft over sealed, under 1 age division, and winner take ALL. thats like 6 boxes. or maybe 1-3 get 3-2-1 boxes, respectively. that would be pwnage

Cannot be done, since draft requires knowledge of the set and since nobody has seen it yet, there will be lackluster results when playing a pure draft.
-Phil

 

[JasonthePwnda]

it doesnt require that much knowledge of the set, and who says no one knows anythnig about the cards in the set?

 

[GymLeaderPhil]

it doesnt require that much knowledge of the set, and who says no one knows anythnig about the cards in the set?

I don't think a normal draft would be easy for players to pick up. Prereleases always net new players in, we had more new players at our Orlando Prerelease than our regulars after Worlds. New players would find it confusing and since nobody has seen any of the cards before, judges will be constantly rushing players throughout their card selection time.

Generally a prerelease is an event where you don't know what is contained in the set. If you already know what's in the set you are a slim few who either found somewhat accurate translations and/or saw scans of select few cards that were released at an earlier Prerelease.
-Phil