The ultimate success of your LGS is all about bringing in the crowds, and there is no better way to foster and build a community than by running events. While the most important thing is to determine which kinds of events are best for your customers, there are several kinds of events that are recommendable essentially regardless of more specific client interests. These are the events that your LGS should be able to run with great success.

Release Events

Most games have specific, timed events that are built around the release dates of their newest products. Magic: The Gathering, Flesh and Blood, Pokemon, and more all offer interesting support for releases, and this is the kind of support you should strongly consider taking advantage of. Few things bring in a crowd better than the next big release, and if you offer the right prize support and other incentives you can see a substantial return on both your investment and customer interest. 

Constructed Format Tournaments

Enfranchised players love nothing more than the opportunity to play with their collection and help foster a community. This love is something that your LGS can take ready advantage of, and the best way to do this is to offer constructed format tournaments for the games that you support. Magic has one of the largest tournament-grinding communities, but many other TCGs and miniature war games (such as Warhammer 40,000) are quite popular.

Introduction and Test Play

Many players are often looking for an opportunity to try something new, especially those in tabletop, TCG, and board gaming communities. Giving your customer base the opportunity to try something new is more than worth your time, especially as many of the games that offer introductory or playtest kits provide generous incentives to your store in order to do so. Running an open house event with games to test can bring in plenty of potential repeat customers, so don’t hesitate to consider adding this to your event rotation. 

Draft Events

When it comes to turning a profit, draft events can potentially be king. It helps you move product, placing it directly into customer hands, helps add more cards into the economy (both the overarching TCG economy and potentially new game pieces for your store to buy and sell), and it brings in a healthy number of players who are very likely to purchase more than just their draft packs. Even better, Draft events are easy to fire off and provide a consistent sense of community for players involved. 

Casual Format Tournaments

The biggest potential market for your LGS is the casual market. Thankfully, this market is huge, easily reached via social media, and extremely receptive to events that are designed to appeal to them. There are all kinds of fun, casual-friendly events that you can consider, however the largest market right now is likely players of the most popular MTG format: Commander. 

By running commander tournaments, complete with prize support, you can bring in members of the community that have an avid interest in cracking packs and buying preconstructed products to add to their Commander collection. There are a lot of ways to add additional appeal to Commander tournaments, including house rules and customized ban lists that can be tailored to suit the needs of your players. When it comes to fostering a community for your LGS, you can find few things better than bringing in the casual crowd.