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By The Numbers
I had an incident with a player this weekend at my
store. It involved the distribution of prize
support. So I figured I would write up the scenario
with all the proper numbers worked into it this week
so that the great readers of Pojo.com have a better
idea of what their favorite local game store goes
through when trying to figure out how to distribute
prizes for an event.
We were hosting a Team Trios Sealed event this past
weekend, which fellow writer Jonathan Pechon wrote a
little about yesterday. Entry fee for each team was
only $40.
If we assume that we had received full entry fee
from every team, which we didn't, it would have
been: $40 * 7 = $280.
At retail, the cost of the event using 14 Starters
($11.50 each), 28 boosters ($3.69 each), and then
another 24 for prizes = $352.88
So obviously at retail, we are taking a loss, even
if everyone would have paid into the event at full
price. If we assumed the retail prices at 20% off,
which is a fair discount, we only come to $282.30.
So even with a 20% discount I don't quite make our
mark.
Another thing to keep in mind here is that I
personally threw in another 12 boosters just to
settle the situation. So that's more of a loss on
the end of the day.
Let's assume that a store's cost is roughly $6.32
for tournament packs and roughly $2 for boosters.
That should be about $192.48 AT COST for the
event.
$280 - $192.48 = $87.52
The player in question was trying to claim that there should have been at least $100 in profit. The way he was talking, he wanted me to run the draft using the 24 packs AND have at least a box worth of prizes. Considering a decent box price is $90 these days, I would have made **$0** profit on the event doing things this way. I actually would take a short loss. OK, technically, there would still have been say, $12-15, profit on the box, so there would be a small profit, but it still wouldn't have been any better than just selling the packs to an outside customer.
Now from a reality perspective, we had 4 teams
buy-in at $30 and 1 team buy in at the full $40.
The others traded in cards and such to get into the
event. That's only $160 to work with. We allowed
teams to provide their own boosters for the event to
get $10 off the entry fee or provide their own
tournament packs and get $20 off the entry
fee. They could also provide all their own product.
It does cut back SOME of the product we had to front
by 20 boosters and 2 Starters, the way it worked
out. Even at our assumed cost, that only takes off
$63 from the budget to run the event.
So if our total wholesale cost was $192.48 to run
the event, minus the $63, we get $129.48. This
would leave us making about $30 profit for running
the tournament and dealing with the headaches and
effectively giving up space in our schedule from
another game to make sure this event happened.
Now add to the fact that I tossed in another 12
packs to appease them, and we now have a cost of
$153.48 to run the event. So take that away from
the $160 cash we brought in and our immediate profit
at the end of the day is $6.52 from the team event.
Sure, I'm might make another $40-50 over the course
of the next seven to ten days from singles I brought
in from it, but even then, that's nowhere near the
number, dollar wise, that he was believing I should
have made. And honestly, that other $40-50 comes
with its own set of costs and stipulations
completely separate from the tournament.
I was purposely running the event cheaper than
normal so that people who wanted to play, could
still play, without being out a lot of cash. So in
some of your stores, that's something to remember.
If you are paying a low entry fee, then you should
expect a lower prize pool. If you want more prizes,
pay more on the entry fee.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy running tournaments. I
am also not upset with the player in question. I am
just using this to state a point. Many players like
to believe they know how business works and how much
a store owner should be making. Even in practice
this seems silly. This basically stating that the
end user (consumer) should be dictating what the
retailer/manufacturer should be making. If you work
at a steel mill, should a construction worker be
able to go to your factory and tell your boss that
you should only be making $8/hour? No, it's not
really fair. Don't do it to your local game store
either.
Most retail game stores are working off of small
margins as it is. Every little bit they part with
is money directly out of their pocket. When they
lose money, they get to see their hard work slip
away.
Another thing to note is that there are other costs
that go with running an event. For instance, you
can't assume that a store will make full profit off
of the cards a couple of teams traded in. Some of
those cards will go out in trades for other cards.
Some will sit for three months eating up inventory
space. And of course, a few will sell after just a
day or so.
Also, stores have what we call in business,
"overhead." This is the term used to describe the
daily cost of operations on a business. Things like
utilities, rent, and payroll all fall into this
category. During the course of a tournament, some
employee is being paid to watch/host/run the events,
tables and chairs are being damaged (which will need
to be replaced) and utilities are being used. Some
part of your tournament fees have to go toward
paying for these things. And believe it or not,
there is even some cleanup time that needs to be
done when the tournament is over.
The flip side to this is that some players want to
make an argument that the tournament brings in
business and does advertising for the store. Truth
be told though, the average tournament MAY bring in
one new person. This event in question had NO new
players. Also, when you are playing in a
tournament, someone has decided to give up space for
a different game, to allow you your time and space
to play. Think about it like this: What good would
it be to a store to hold an event for the one new
person to play in and make zero profit, when that
same space could be used for a different event
generating even just a $40 profit? It seems really
silly to go out of your way for one person (who's
probably new and won't do well anyway) and give up
making decent money on multiple players, doesn't
it? Once you add up the time and effort it's really
not worth it. You can't expect for your local store
to make no profit on their event.
Basically, what I'm saying here is simple; cut your
local game store some slack. You can't worry
yourself about how much product cost THEM. They are
just trying to make a buck just like you do when you
go to work. Imagine if your boss walked up to you
and asked you to take a 20% reduction in pay for
doing the same job you work hard at every day. You
wouldn't be too happy about it would you? Imagine
how your local game store owner feels when you ask
him to do the same thing. That's really what's
happening when you do such a thing.
Every store is different. Local economics are
different. Rent prices are different. Utility
rates are different. Shipping prices over various
distances are different. Each store has their own
set of costs that they need to cover.
Well, that's your education in small scale economics
for the day.
On to more fun stuff...like...BAD PLAY OF THE WEEK.
Let me say that reader response was huge. I don't
think I got any GOOD plays of the week this week.
However, I got a TON of bad plays of the week.
Everyone was making up for me not getting any last
week. So needless to say, I am going to go over a
couple of them this week.
This first one comes to us from Matthew Barrett:
I was playing in a sealed deck tournament in
Dublin when my cunning opponent outsmarted himself
in a wonderful self checkmate.
Heres the situation:
I have 5 lands out - 2 seats of the synod, 2 vaults of whispers and a swamp. My life total is at 7 and I have two disciples of the vault and two skeleton shards on the field He has got 5 lands out also-3 seats of the synod and 2 islands. His life total is at 17 and he has arcbound ravager, dross scorpion and a whispersilk cloak on the field Its his turn, and he untaps his permanents and plays another island, then plays Soul Foundry, imprinting it with the Ornithopter in his hand. He grins as he tells me how he has set up his "unstoppable" infinite damage combo. I say nothing as he equips his ravager with the Cloak, then taps the Soul Foundry to make an Ornitopter token which he sacrifices to the ravager to give it a token. That untaps his foundry through the scorpion and so on. He declared "repeat one billion times" It was then that I pointed out that I had a pair of disciples of the vault on the field, and that he had just lost 2 billion life. He was annoyed, especially when I pointed out that had he only sacrificed Ornithopter 6 times, he would have had enough firepower to win with the unblockable Ravager whilst still staying alive on 5 life. I got a good laugh out of this one, because I'd seen something similar happen to a local player years ago. As a bonus feature, our next bad play of the week comes from a reader simply known as turrtle1337:
I pulled off the combo early, and on turn 5
I had almost complete control of the board.
Oxidize working wonders on his Great Furnaces,
and Arcbound Crusher building up steam, I had
him cornered with just two Mountains, two Skirk
Prospectors, and a Piledriver. I, on the other
hand, had a veritable army out, being able to
play anything I drew thanks to the infinite mana
combo which involves Mycosynth Lattice. Having
his gobbos defeated, he showed me his hand
of Siege-Gang, Warchief, and... Furnace Dragon?!
Then he says, "Yeah. I would've played it too,
if it wasn't for those darn
Oxidizes..." Remembering that everything was an
artifact as per Mycosynth Lattice, he kicked
himself when he realized he could've done a
complete reset of the board.
I thought this one was cute as a whole.
And my other weekly is the card of the week. I
really didn't have much that stood out to me this
week. I chose a card at random and I'm going with
Aether Vile. This is strange though, because I
don't really know of any amazing uses with this
card. There are a lot of small things and a lot of
neat little tricks. However, I think people need to
start experimenting with this card as it might be
one of the keys to the format.
I've taken up about enough time of your week
already. I want to ask you all to keep sending in
good and bad play of the week. I have plenty of
prizes to send out!
Also, as a request be sure to proofread your e-mail
to make sure the facts add up and make sense. Make
sure you use capitalization and punctuation as
well. I had to take two e-mails out of the running
this week, because of each of these things. I had
no way to know exactly how the events fell based on
how they were written.
Until next time,
DeQuan Watson
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