The LGS in my tiny college town was banned form running sanctioned events in the early 2000's for this. You know what happened? Literally nothing. They were still the only store within 100 miles (literally), and they charged the exact same amount for the events... just without promos.
Areas like that are what WPN restrictions hurt the most, because a college MTG club *can't* run events since they aren't a store, and so you have one place to play sanctioned events. If that place gets hosed, then... no more sanctioned events.
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Like any type of GP coverage aside from Top 8 results? Well, too bad:
https://twitter.com/magicprotour/sta...61097860120576
Cost-cutting at its finest. But hey, Magic is an eSport!
@Barook: maybe I misunderstand your comment, but they are only claiming to reduce the Twitter coverage, from what I can tell. Edit: ah, they mentioned their site too, which I guess you mean includes the stream.
I think "eSports" is the key term. They focus on Arena for promotion and coverage now after they chopped down LIVE event coverage time and time again. If CF, SCG and other partners for GPs would not jump in filling the void WotC left, there wouldn't be any big live tournaments at all anymore. I sometimes think all WotCs adds for these events is sanctioning them in exchange for CF, SCG & Co moving a shitload of WotC products via drafts and more. WotC never understood tournaments, its coverage and paying pros as a form of marketing which is mandatory for the game, the compeditive drive and player starpower.
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Just found this through the Swedish MtG site, like I thought WotC's comment was not related to all coverage, only text-based coverage.
"Blake Rasmussen explained that the Magic Pro Tour’s response on Twitter only applied to 'round-by-round live text coverage of events,' which will no longer be live. Instead, as stated on Twitter, the remaining text coverage—including decklists, Top 8 bios, pairings, and standings—will be posted at the end of the event.
As for video coverage, Wizards emphasized that they, 'did not announce anything regarding video coverage and we aren’t announcing anything about it at this time.' However, Wizards wouldn’t confirm when (or if) the next Grand Prix would be streamed, only saying that, 'Besides Mythic Championships/the Mythic Invitational, we have not announced our streaming schedule for the year yet.'"
From Hipsters of the coast's web site:
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2...ew-jersey-mtg/
Lmao
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co..._coverage_for/
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co..._go_50_of_the/
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/co..._invitational/
The only redeeming part of this that is that the invitational announcement caused Hoogland to have a meltdown on twitter.
Why didn't they invite me, either? It's insulting. I play Magic. I use the Internet.
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I never heard of like 2/3 of the invitees. Who the fuck are those people? Meanwhile, they're missing people like Caleb Durward, who pulls thousands of viewers, won the first streamer Arena invitational and even plays Arena.
But then again, it's pretty entertaining to watch WotC shooting themselves in the foot again. Just because they enjoy some success with Arena right now, they become megalomaniac. All these changes will backfire sooner or later.
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it seems to me that these people are being rewarded for building a social media following. I guess that's it. some " legit qualified" via some method( i didn't read that much of it) but the rest seem to me like " they have our brand in mind so we'll give them a shot to win some money and increase their brand" (and therefore our brand)
my take: essentially its a 1 million pr move at first glance. also other bad opinion: this is like modern marketing 101 reductionist version.
pps there were on my soft guess probably a good 6-10 hours of meetings curating that invitee list if y'all want to get more salty about it. probably centered around market cross section exposure.
I'm naturally a cynic though so take what i say with grains of salt
I think it's a good selection for a promotional invitational. I have no clue who most of the people on the list are (even of those in the mpl) but i think it's good that they try to diversify it a bit. The best 32 players will still be there so it's fine.
BUT i must say i would have liked if they had thrown in Richard Garfield as one of the invites, maybe even made a special thing about 1 stream following him through the tournament ("The Creator Cam"). Had been really cool watching that. I guess internet would whine about "herp derp Garfield stealing pros money". But internet always whines.
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