Game stores that are part of the Wizards Play Network (WPN) saw a 171% increase in the number of Standard players this year over last year, according to the 2024 WPN Year-In-Review article that came out today. WotC has been making a concentrated effort to revitalize Standard dating back to the announcement that Standard would be moving to a 3 year rotation on May 7th of 2023. Since that time we’ve seen a number of changes aimed at making Standard a focus for players, including changing Store Championships to be Standard only.
As for WPN stores as a whole, the article claims that there has been a roughly 15% increase in the number of overall players over the previous rolling year. This number includes everything from prerelease to casual Commander nights where the WPN store creates an event link for players to sign-in.
While no raw numbers were included, as this was an article aimed specifically at WPN stores, this seems to be a positive trend in both the number of people playing Magic at their LGS as well as the success WotC is enjoying in targeting Standard as the on-ramp to the game.
