Rich Waldbiesser of Six Feet Under Games in New Holland, Pennsylvania, saw John Riley's recent column on organized play (see 'Sharpening the Sword--Organized Play') and says game companies need to improve OP opportunities for retailers:
After reading the latest Sharpening the Sword column, I am reminded of the exact conversation I had with people inside Wizards of the Coast. In this conversation, I was told that if I am not already a Premier Tournament Organizer, I never will be. So, why should I continue to build a large player base just to have someone else benefit from my work? While I have continued to promote Magic, it is no longer my main objective. I have a Pokemon Premier Organizer who holds all pre-releases and state championship events at my store as I can provide space for over 100 players. If there were a large enough player base in the area, I could also get some of the Upper Deck Premier Events.
As a store owner, I have seen attendance at my Magic tournaments drop steadily over the past two years as our store continues to be denied premier events. I have, in fact, turned down the opportunity for expansion, which would have given us tournament facilities large enough to host over 200 players, due to the fact that it would not matter to the one company which could make it worth the investment. Something needs to change in this industry.
All of the manufacturers tell us that organized play is our best chance to compete with the Internet but the manufacturer with the largest and arguably best OP system denies us the premier events which attract the largest number of players in favor of giving these events to Premier TOs, most of which have no vested interest in the game during the rest of the year. They do not have the stores which create the player base from which they profit. Wizards of the Coast needs to give some of these premier events to the very stores which work day in and day out to build a player base and support Magic year round, not just at pre-release, PTQ or Grand Prix time.
I have built a facility capable of hosting large tournaments and have the opportunity to expand it even further in order to support premier events, but Wizards of the Coast has made it quite clear that I have just wasted my time and money. While our Pokemon PTO has been very appreciative of our work, there are just not enough Pokemon premier events to justify increased space. In fact, there is only one event per year that needs more space than I can currently provide.
What we need as store owners is for more companies to have Organized Play and actually reward stores for their work like the way our Pokemon TO does. Premier events, with the exception of Professional Level events and very large events, like Magic Grand Prix events, need to be held in stores which run events all year. This means that Pre-release events need to be moved out of convention centers and back into stores. Store owners in the areas which feed pre-release events for Magic lose about $25,000 in combined sales for each Magic prerelease (assuming the pre-release has an attendance of 500 with each attendee spending an average of $50). Assuming that 10 stores are sharing this impact, that is $2,500 per quarter that we are each giving to Premier TOs with nothing gained in return. For our hard work, Wizards of the Coast makes millions of dollars annually, the Premier TOs make hundreds of thousands of dollars annually and we, the store owners who do the majority of the player building and hardcore sales work, receive a few posters and a few nice signs. Something must change.
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