Dave Salisbury of Fan Boy Three in Manchester, England, saw Steven Olsen's additional comments about CCG pre-releases (see 'Steven Olsen of A Little Shop of Comics on CCG Pre-Releases: 'Numbers Don't Lie'') and says the UK recently adopted the pre-releases for all stores approach and recommends it to U.S. retailers:

To start by clearing up the confusion, Steven, I'm not a PTO, I'm a store just like you.  I run Fan Boy Three, a large games store in the center of Manchester (a city in the north of England), which specializes in organized play.

In the UK we moved over to a system a year ago which allowed any store to run Magic pre-release events.  Prior to that, I'd struggled for two years in exactly the same position you are in, Steve.  It was pretty frustrating to have built exactly the sort of store WotC had suggested I build, one capable of holding premiere events in store, and then not to get to run those premiere events at all, because a local independent TO ran everything in my area.  Champs, pre-releases, PTQ's --everything.

But in the UK, that changed with Coldsnap.  Now every store gets to run a pre-release if it qualifies to do so (say, by running a regular Friday Night Magic event in-store).  A lot of people, independent premiere TO's with vested interests, were dead set against stores like mine running these events.

For Dissension, the last pre-release in the UK that was exclusively 'Premiere TO only,' we saw around 1,400 players across 41 locations.  Fast forward a year to Futuresight, and we see 1,822 players across 54 locations, over half of which were in stores exactly like yours.  But compare this to the 10th Edition release events: around 1,100 players in 58 locations, 45 of which were stores, and you'll see that on average we get around 75% of player turnout at a release event compared to what we see at a pre-release.

Because you see Steven, you are right.  That pre-release does damage attendance at the subsequent release events.  Without a pre-release, your release events would be twice as big.  But you don't have access to the whole equation, because you don't know how big your attendance would be if every one of those 21 stores were able to run pre-releases and then release events a few weeks after.

That's the real kicker.  With every store running a pre-release, you don't just get to run that one event, but that second release event as well.

Taking your figures and combining them with my data, you should see around 750 players at your 21 stores if every store was allowed to run pre-releases, and you'd still get those players for the release event as well (that's 211 across 14 stores, or potentially 315 players across 21 stores).

Pre-releases for all would give you almost twice as many players across both events as you just had for your 10th releases.  That's significant growth for you and significant growth for Wizards.

Given the other major Talk Back thread at the moment, pre-releases for all gives brick and mortar stores a two week promotional head start on WalMart, Target and all those Internet deep discounters.  It gives us the opportunity to turn those casual players who might only ever attend pre-releases into in store regulars, which is good news for us and again, good news for Wizards and their desire to increase the number of active players.  You can use that pre-release to promote your release events, then tie your release events into your booster box sales and freeze the big box shifters out.

Steven, I'm a FLGS just like you.  Stores like mine have been fighting exactly the same battles in the UK, and with pre-releases for all, I think we've turned the corner.  I'm suggesting you lobby for pre-releases for all in the U.S. because I believe it will benefit your business (and all other US stores) just as it has benefited my store and others in the UK.  Good luck!

The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.