Idea to help give players in your scene an incentive to level up

Back when SF4 was first released, I was able to convince a local PC Cafe to host a $1 an hour “Fight Night” every Wed. to give players in my local scene a place to play every week. While still a great thing to have, I’ve noticed that everyone is getting together and just playing, and it seems like people are leveling up less and less since we all know we’re just going to pay a $1 an hour, we don’t mind losing, unlike the old days in the arcade, when you lost, you had to pay another $1 to play.

So, my idea to help level up my scene is, every month, whoever has the highest win streak that month at fight night gets a prize or something. I don’t know what the prize is, but something like this will definitely make people hungry to keep winning / take out whoever is winning.

Also, I need to find a small white board or something that we can just leave at the that PC Cafe that has the top 3 highest win streaks at the time, maybe even with a polaroid picture or something haha. That way people always know what the score to beat is, and it’s a small sense of pride to be on top, which is another incentive to keep winning.

What’s cool about this idea is it can expand even further: Get the highest win streak 3 months in a row and you get an even better prize. The person on top will have to really stay at the top of his game and the people below him really have to learn how to fight the top person’s character and will level up to beat him.

Just an idea I’m throwing out there, post with your suggestions/concerns/improvements please if you have any. I need to figure out some way to get everyone in my scene to level up ASAP before we go to Japan for EVO JAPAN.