There are 3 main types of players in our industry and understanding which type of players make up the majority of your customer base is critical to the success of your in-store events. Every local store is going to have a different customer base depending on what part of the community they are located in, so you want to make sure you tailor your events to best suit the majority of your customers. The three different types of players in our industry and competitive players, casual players, and new players. Let’s look into the differences between each type of player, and how tailoring your in-store events to each type of player helps bring success to your events.

Competitive Players

Competitive players play the game for more than just getting together with friends. They want to play for the big bucks and with the high-level decks. These players will go to as many events as they can in their area because they are super competitive and want to get as much practice in as possible. If your store’s customer base is made up of mainly competitive players, you will want to host at least 3-4 events per week that can hold at least 8 players, as well as have higher prize payouts for these events to motivate all the competitive players in your area to attend. There are many different types of formats you can host your events with, but for competitive players, if we look at MTG for example, they prefer the Draft, Standard, and Modern formats.

Casual Players

Casual players don’t seek out tournaments and in-store events like the competitive players do, but instead, play the game because they enjoy it and like to get together with friends. These players really enjoy the social aspect of the game rather than the competitive aspect of it. If this type of player makes up most of the customer base at your store, then you will want to focus on hosting events that are free to participate or have a really low buy-in so it doesn’t turn these players away. Casual players prefer the Draft and Commander formats in MTG, so as a store owner you want to host about 1-2 events per week with this style of play.

New Players

These are customers who are new to the game and have not played it for very long but are very interested in learning the rules and strategies of the game. New players are a great way to really build and grow your customer base. If this is the majority of customers that you see coming into your store, you will want to focus on hosting open house events. Wizards of the Coast have great open house events that they host every time they have a new product or deck coming out. Store owners can sign up for the open house and get free training card decks to use to help teach the new players how to play the game. This is the best kind of event to host for a new player customer base because anyone can come in and play, and they can bring friends in who may be new to the game. With open houses, you don’t need your own deck, so it really is open to anyone who is even remotely interested in playing the game.