After originally going forward with this weekend’s MagicFest Detroit, ChannelFireball is reversing course. The Magic: The Gathering event in Detroit has been cancelled. Due to fears of the coronavirus, the weekend’s normal MagicFest festivities won’t be happening. MagicFest Sao Paulo, Louisville, and Palm Beach are all cancelled. ChannelFireball, for those that don’t know is the tournament operator for all of the MagicFest events in the world. So they make the decisions on these events. Wizards of the Coast has already stopped some of it’s employee events.
ChannelFireball didn’t mention anything about the Player’s Tour events in Houston and Charlotte in April and May. This is horrific news for people that were planning on traveling to these events. It’s a necessary precaution against the virus though. It spread in tight spaces that are indoors. Magic tournaments and MagicFests are exactly that. This is a major blow to the Magic tournament scene though. People are better off at this time staying in and not traveling due to the virus.
Magic is a game that takes a lot of person to person contact. I’m sure that ChannelFireball didn’t make this decision lightly with many people either already in Detroit or flying there for the weekend for the MagicFest events. It’s a rough situation for many companies right now making these decisions.
Other Cancelled Events And MagicFest Events In The Future
StarCityGames cancelled their Baltimore and Syracuse SCG Tour events. E3 was cancelled earlier by it’s promoters. Various professional sports leagues are either running games without fans or outright cancelling games. It’s a rough time right now. To protect the general public from the outbreak of the virus, these steps have to be taken. As I’ve said before, it’s not helpful to anyone to panic about these cancellations. It’s better for everyone involved to cancel the MagicFest events.
Hopefully this doesn’t affect the tournaments in the near future. We don’t have any more information on whether or not future MagicFest events will go on as planned.
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