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The Ultimate Guard European Magic Series Regional Championship - Prague
The UGEMS Regional Championship Prague took place in January 2025. We organised the event from start to finish. From early planning to execution, we meticulously worked on this event tirelessly to provide an exceptional and memorable event for our community. Implementing community feedback from the last edition also proved to be a huge success!
Wizards of the Coast is a family of studios specializing in building role playing, trading card, and digital games for all genres of players. Most famously, they are the publisher of the trading card game Magic: The Gathering. Published in 1993 as the world's first trading card game, it now has over 50 million fans and is published in more than 150 countries.
The Regional Championship (RC) Prague was one of three Regional Championships of the season of the European Magic Series, powered by Ultimate Guard (UGEMS). The Regional Championships lead up to international events, the Pro Tour and World Championships. The Regional Championship Prague was the second Magic: The Gathering event after our return to the Magic scene in 2024.
As its organiser, we are in charge of the organisation of the entire event, from planning to execution.
The RC Prague spanned a total of three days from Friday to Sunday. On Friday, the Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) attracted over 1400 players who hoped to win-out and secure one of the last tickets to participate in the Regional Championship on Saturday and Sunday. Besides the LCQ and RC, we also organised and hosted multiple competitive Side Events in which players can win prizes as well as take part in casual competition.
As organiser of the Ultimate Guard European Magic Series, we are in charge of the entire planning of the Regional Championships. This spanned several months and included the sourcing and liaising for the ideal location, staffing all stands, securing judges and administrative personnel, negotiating hotel deals, collaborating with the right partners, and signing the best possible talent. Lastly, of course, we are in charge of the organisation of the main event, the Regional Championship, as well as all Side Events available for players to compete in.
We handled all necessary staffing tasks: finding the required personnel to cover our Prize Wall where players redeem their winnings for prizes, tournament staff responsible for all administrative tasks, and judges who are capable of problem solving under the pressure of a live tournament.
We also onboarded all vendors that sell Magic: The Gathering cards at the event, recruited official Magic: The Gathering artists who brought their awesome merchandise and met their fans for a chat, photos, and to sign or alter their favourite cards.
We partnered up with CSL to broadcast the entire weekend of the Regional Championship on Twitch and YouTube. In our two dedicated feature match booths, multiple cameras were set up perfectly to capture both players as well as their boards so viewers can follow the action. Behind the screen, two commentators cast the games to entertain viewers and add context to the players’ decision making.
Besides the matches, a third booth served as an interview space where our talent recorded content segments with players and artists.
Over the weekend, we streamed to our YouTube and Twitch channels, as well as to our partner’s, Ultimate Guard, channels. On our platforms alone, we recorded 52,031 unique viewers, 260,000+ impressions, as well as an impressive average watch time of 28:35 and 32:13 on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, on YouTube.
Additionally, we shared impressions from the floor on Instagram, resulting in 256,000 impressions throughout the event.
The Regional Championship tournament structure as well as prize payouts were carefully planned by our experienced tournament team. With the main event hosting 996 players, as well as other events, such as the Last Chance Qualifier (1400+ entries), and the Ultimate Guard Open (609 competitors), it took meticulous planning to get it right. Multiple scenarios had to be considered as tournament sizes (which cannot always be accurately predicted far in advance) can vary, potentially affecting timings, scheduling, and prize payouts.
The execution of all tournaments further required thorough briefing of all tournament staff to ensure the schedule is followed and players are instructed accordingly.
Of course, not everything can always go perfectly - especially for newer events. After our previous UGEMS Regional Championship in Lille, we recognized that some areas of the event did not meet our community's expectations.
Player feedback is extremely important to us as Fanfinity is rooted in our dedication to game communities. For us, it was paramount to make sure that players knew their feedback was heard and to communicate that we took their concerns seriously. We promptly analysed the situation: Where did we not meet players' expectations? What feasible changes could be implemented?
Throughout this process, we felt it was crucial to share our thoughts and communicate the steps we are taking with our audience transparently. Therefore, we acknowledged the feedback and outlined how we would address it in articles on our community page fanfinity.gg.
A few months later, we implemented the resulting changes at our next event UGEMS - the Regional Championship in Prague. Overall, the adjustments have been positively received by players as reflected by our post-event feedback forms and social media responses. We are excited to continuously improve the UGEMS and will continue on the path of transparency and openness for feedback.
We learned tremendously from this experience and are confident about the future of the UGEMS. We remain committed to transparency and openness to feedback with all of our communities.
Want to learn more about the Ultimate Guard European Magic Series? Reach out to us at info@fanfinity.agency.
