Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne talks about Mayfair's exclusive deal with Alliance.

As the press release below indicates, the big news for the gaming industry coming out of the San Diego Comic-Con was the announcement that Mayfair Games entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with Alliance Games and Diamond Comics Distribution (for those who don't know, Diamond Comics owns Alliance):

Mayfair Games is excited to announce their partnership with Alliance Game Distributors and Diamond Comic Distributors for the exclusive distribution of their games to the U.S. hobby retail network.

Management at Mayfair Games foresees a future bright with opportunities for national campaigns with coordinated outreach and events.  With the advent of streamlined, focused distribution to the hobby trade, Mayfair anticipates continued direct support of the hobby retail channel through the MAR program and other means.

Dan Hirsch, President of Alliance notes: "Having worked with Mayfair from the early days of both companies, we at Alliance are excited to partner more closely with them.  This partnership allows both of us to focus on the things we do best--Alliance coordinating and wholesaling, and Mayfair developing award winning titles, building brands and communities!"

This comes on the heels of the announcement of  a 16 month agreement giving Target Stores exclusive rights to the Star Trek: Catan game, with a teaser of hobby exclusive products coming out sometime in the future.  It appears that Target approached Mayfair with the offer to purchase enough of the game to justify a print run, rather than the other way around.  Ergo, Target gets two holiday seasons to sell Star Trek: Catan before retailers in the hobby game market get a crack at the product.  Near as I can tell, if Target hadn't approached Mayfair, the company's projections had indicated sales of Star Trek: Catan would not hit levels high enough to justify a print run and the project would have been a no-go.

The Mayfair/Alliance deal affects the entire industry at one level or another.  Stores that already have an account with Alliance or Diamond, won't be bothered much, save that they won't have access to other sources for Mayfair product if either of those distributors run out.

It will hurt other retailers that don't have an account with either of the two distributors as it means they will either have to open an account with Alliance or drop the Mayfair line.  Mayfair is the top selling board game line in many gaming specialty stores, so stores without an Alliance account will need to decide if it is worthwhile for them to create one.  If board gaming is a significant part of their product line, stores will almost have to sign up with Alliance, since the company now controls access to not only the Mayfair Games product line but also that of Days of Wonder and Z-Man.  It also makes it harder for stores dealing with distributors other than Alliance to hit the free freight plateaus.

The gaming entity hurt most will be other distributors.  If they dealt in board games, as most of them have done with the growing popularity of board games within our market in the last few years, Mayfair likely accounted for a significant portion of their sales.  Poof, that vanishes as soon as they sell out of their remaining Mayfair stock, leaving stores one less reason to put orders in with them.  I foresee other distributors trying to sign exclusives with other popular game lines in an attempt to give retailers a reason to direct purchases to them.

Summing it up, little change for the customer, not much change for stores already dealing with Alliance or Diamond, major changes for stores that don't and other distributors.

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