Wizards of the Coast announced the Arena Open this evening, the first cash-prize tournament event for MTG Arena, which will take place on May 30–31. The tournament will be Standard and will be split into two days, with a cut between days.
The Arena Open will be available to any player over 18 within “eligible territories”—the list of which will be available tomorrow—who can compete for a maximum prize of $2,000 each. “We’ve been working on the Arena Open for a while, well before the global quarantine,” said Jay Parker, MTG Arena’s Game Director. “We run top-level esports tournaments in Arena, but we also wanted a more open and accessible competitive tournament, and that’s where the Arena Open comes in.”
The tournament will kick off with a Day 1 event that is accessible to anyone meeting the above criteria directly inside of MTG Arena. It will have an entry fee of 20,000 Gold or 4,000 Gems and can be entered multiple times during the during the 23-hour period starting at 11 AM Eastern. Players will enter the event and then play Best-of-One Standard matches at their leisure, similar to the Mythic Qualifiers or Mythic Point Challenges, until they win seven matches to advance to Day 2 or two losses and are eliminated—though they can reenter should they want to try again. Players will earn 400 Gems for each match win from three to seven, as well.
Day 2 will shift to Best-of-Three Standard and competitiors will again play until they reach seven wins or two losses—but they cannot reenter this time. Players will earn 2,000 Gems per win and those that win six matches will also earn $1,000 while those that win seven matches will also earn $2,000.
There do not appear to be any qualifications to a Mythic Invitational or Players Tour on the line in the Arena Open, though more information will be released tomorrow.
While many organizations have run tournaments with cash prizes on MTG Arena before, like Red Bull’s Untapped series, all of those events were organized and run through third party services like smash.gg or Discord. The Arena Open, on the other hand, is an event within MTG Arena itself. It will be accessible in the client just like any other event like the Mythic Qualifiers or Mythic Point Challenges.
As this is the first MTG Arena event with cash prizes, Parker said that Wizards has been beefing up its security to prevent cheating. “While we’re always monitoring player behavior and scrubbing through our code to ensure we’ve fully protected players, we cranked that scrutiny up several notches over the last few months in preparation for this tournament,” he said.
Check back tomorrow for any additional information.