A different perspective

[MattNZ]

This is my perspective on the whole Issue of the Pro Tour I would appreciate if you read the whole thing before deleting/skimming over it.

I really don't think you can blame Wizards or Hasbro for shutting down a Pro Tour if it is costing more then its perceived Benefit to there product.

This is why I think we as magic players should approach this in a different manner a Business like approach lets think up angles to decrease Cost, instead of telling them that increased costs will give them more benefit. I think we need to be asking Questions like

Why hasn't Magic Approached a Sponsor?

The original Goals of the Pro tour were to create something for inspiring players, they wanted to have something that these players could look up to, Like Sports Stars they would compete in grueling competitions to find out who was the best! The Pro tour has done a lot to reach these goals but is missing the one thing thats truly makes Professional in Sports .. Sponsors.

Is this soo unfeasible? Males 18-29 are very hard to reach advertising wise this could be a huge opportunity for big Corporates to reach this demographic, The PRO TOUR SPONSORED BY COCO COLA I'm sure they could find someone to pay for this. (Obviously doesn't have to be Coke but any multiple of companies)

Instead of Pro Cards in boosters Small cards Advertising our new Sponsor, how many boosters are brought a year? Someone will pay for this Advertising space.

Instead of getting an Alternative art Miraris Wake getting an Alternative Reality Miraris Wake with a Coke Cola Banner in the background! these cards will become rare and completely different there will be collectors looking for these, and not just magic card collectors!

These are just some of the options and I'm sure someone a lot smarter then myself could come up with some better options, but there are defiantly options there which I feel haven't been explored this is an opportunity, and could even make the Pro Tour bigger better greater!

I understand that some players have tried to ask and find sponsors with no luck, But I think Magic as a whole - could reach and talk to them and make agreements to make it worth while for any sponsor its true we don't have a huge Market but you wouldn't have to charge any sponsors that much money for advertising but something is better then nothing and would defiantly help alleviate costs of the Pro Tour.

Sorry for my terrible English :]

I wonder could anyone give me the email so I could make this an Ask Wizards Question as well

[gleemax]

This is what I thought the intention might have been with the introduction of the rules/token cards in the booster packs. (In America we only get pro cards in tournament and fat packs isn't it the same everywhere else?). Seriously, I never understood why they would advertise magic events like FNM or the next set on the back of the token. It seemed kinda redundent. This is a perfectly reasonable area to generate revenue by selling those ad spaces to outside companies. The only problem is that Hasbro might not like the idea of potentially advertsing competitors very much. Even if they only advertised other Hasbro junk, they would still get some money. I'm all in for this idea, coke a cola elf tokens here we come.

[mercenarybdu]

Before there was any of that starting as of 2005 with player cards and expanding into 2007 with tips and tokens with ads on them. The PT used to be advertised at the start with non-tourney legal Championship decks that could be generally only played for fun rather than play out of the box at an event. This fade lasted from 1996-2004, when they weren't making much money from buying them.

So Marketing had to come up with a new way to promote the tour by featuring Player Cards. Instead of classifying Levy as the guy who played the "R/G deck" at Worlds of 2002 finishing in the top 16, the player card was a neat idea to give a better insight of who the player actually is other than the person who played deck X or Deck Y. Because I know that nobody wants to be remembered as the Player who won with Deck V.

Then with the Tip cards, the company has given the player some nice things to know about the set he/she is playing with along with the mechanics of the set or block. If the player already knows about them then they have a nice token to keep with them at all times rather than just something they can't really use.

With Tokens no longer being a Reward under the Rewards Program, the player has been opened the doors of actually owning such cards rather than screaming out to the world "Where could I find such cards?!"

So this is what I have been analyzing up to now about how the company is trying to attract players to play on the circuit other than word of mouth and posters at the game/comic store.

[Sponsored content]