Jamison Sacks of Common Ground Games knows how important event preparation is to create a smooth experience for players the day of the event.

He relies on two crucial strategies—staffing and preregistration. Let's dive in and find out how he employs these two strategies to help set himself up for success.

1. Assign Adequate Staffing

Finding judges can sometimes be a challenge. We try and make sure a month before any event like a Prerelease, that we know who the judge is going to be.

Ensuring your store is well-staffed during an event goes a long way in creating a positive experience—for players and customers.

A good starting point is to have at least one dedicated event organizer—whether that's a judge or store staff—and one other staff member dedicated for sales and general customer assistance but more staff may be required based on attendance.

Jamison aims for roughly one staff member for every twenty-five event participants.

Empower Staff

We've trained [our staff] to find the information in the same place that I put it for the customers.

You can't be everywhere and you likely won't be available to help everyone. Jamison empowers his staff to assist customers, direct players, and solve problems on their own.

To prepare his staff for the variety of questions they may receive, Jamison holds weekly staff meetings where he covers upcoming events and products and discusses common questions they are likely to encounter.

You and your staff can find relevant event or set information on the WPN website and Magic website in the weeks leading up to a release to help you prepare.

2. Preregistration

The best way to maximize event sign-ups tends to be through preregistration online.

It can be difficult to know how many staff members you'll need on hand for an event. Preregistration can help you gauge event attendance in addition to saving you time during registration on the day of the event.

Before the event, print a few flyers with instructions on how to sign up for a DCI account to hand out to new players who don't have a DCI number.

You can also use this digital asset as a call-to-action in your preregistration marketing efforts.

Provide Clarity

Providing a good player experience comes down to simple things.

Starting your event on time is one of those simple things.

We've mentioned that preregistration can save time the day of the event but sometimes players show up late, ruining your chances of starting on time.

You can help players arrive on time by distinguishing both registration time and event start time. Take the opportunity to designate these two times when you're promoting preregistration.

Doing this clearly defines when you expect players to arrive and when the event will begin making them more likely to show up on time.

Do you use these same strategies in your event preparation? Take a look at our Event Quality Checklist and see if you regularly check all the boxes for your events!

By Jordan Comar