Fixing what was wrong with States/Champs

[Reindeercards]

I understand States/Champs aren't coming back, at least as we used to know them. But they went away because they weren't working for WotC. If we take a look at why they didn't work and what could have been done to fix them, maybe we can help the same problems from cropping up again.

These are the issues I can see

1) No one outside of WotC seemed to have any clue that Champs was unsuccessful.

I understand WotC can't put out press releases proclaiming one of their tournament events is under-performing. But it shouldn't be a complete mystery to someone who reads WotC and a number of top english-speaking Magic sites daily that the event is tanking. It didn't seem WotC was doing anything extraordinary to boost attendence.

I thought the official goal of Champs was to highlight new cards in the new Standard environment. Seeing the wide variety of new decks would inspire players to get the chase rares which means either the players buying boxes or companies which sell singles buying boxes.

And I thought part of the idea was for WotC to get that publicity of the new cards very cheaply. Thus the lack of prize support.

I honestly never had a clue that the goal of WotC was to promote higher attendence. Does WotC get a cut of the attendence money from their premier tournament organizers that I don't know about? I mean, I know that they'd be happy if attendence was fantastic. But I never got the impression that a large attendence was the event's primary goal.

WotC can't come out and say "attendence really sucked at Champs last year, what can we do to change that?" But they can make it clear that their major goal is to increase attendence and that they are open to discussing ideas.

2) The rules for States and the way they were organized (at least in the US) were designed to decrease attendence.

For "City Champs", it doesn't matter where you live but where you are when you want to play. At GP Dallas, one of the Japanese players showed up Friday night for a City Champs event and got to play. Not everyone can plan their lives around a Magic tournament and be in the right place at the right time. Why couldn't States/Champs be set up the same way?

The great part of winning the title "Champ of Somewhere" is the "Champ" part, not the "of Somewhere" part. The Boston Marathon doesn't make only people from Boston compete. Why should Champs make some person live in that location?

PTQs work in part because people can travel to win them. You can pick a PTQ you think you can win and show up at that one rather than showing up at one where you are likely to lose. I know a couple of years ago I would have been willing to travel to win a states tournament in a smaller state whereas in my home state I'd never have a chance.

PTQs also work in part because all PTQs aren't held on the same day. Why not have a "Champs month" and stagger the dates of various Champs tournaments in the same geographic region in order to maximize turnout? If States had been set up like that, I'd probably have showed at 3-4 tournaments in smaller states hoping to add a title to my resume'.

3) Prizes were much smaller than at a PTQ and tougher entrance requirements than a PTQ. But with attendence often being similar to that of a PTQ, the attendence was seen by WotC as unsuccessful.

I understand that with the large number of Champs events that any increase in the prize would be costly. But I think some things could have been done besides throwing money at it.

I've got more to say on the subject of prizes and tournament location but I've got to be away from the keyboard right now. I'll be posting more later.