Working hard at the booth. Annalisa Van Houten tournament director of the
Novi Jaguar Invitational and Carol Maas, tournament director of the
adidas Warrior Classic and Fall Classic.
Thursday night, we ran into our good friends Bobby Kramig, head coach for the Championship
Miami RedHawks and Carol Maas, tournament director of the
adidas Warrior Classic and Fall Classic.
Elizabeth Weimer of Site Search and Carol Maas, tournament director of the
adidas Warrior Classic and Fall Classic.
Grandma and grandpa want to see their grandson Billy play in his first away soccer tournament. How will they find the right field and times Billy plays?
Fortunately, Billy's coach applied to a TourneyCentral soccer tournament so finding all this information was easy.
Billy's grandma went to the website, clicked on Schedules, found Billy's team name and got his schedule in seconds.
Marcy has just been named her club's soccer tournament director. She searches for the best solution to help her manage all the tasks that go along with hosting a soccer tournament.
Twitter is a service that you can use to fire out quick updates or messages to your followers. This makes it a great tool for youth soccer tournaments and tournament directors because they can immediately announce game scores, special promotions or upcoming events on their smart phones, computers or via text messaging.
Here’s how to set up your Twitter soccer tournament account:
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If you are like me, you’re probably getting a bit tired of hearing from or about Charlie Sheen. But hear me out on this one little thing. I promise, there is a good take-away.
Last night, Charlie decided he was going to take his message directly to the people with a live show streamed onto the Internet. You can watch it if you have an hour to kill. I’ve included a screen shot below to illustrate everything that was wrong with the show.
The lighting was bad. The sound bounced hard all over the room. Nobody was mic-ed. The cameras were positioned too low, Charlie did not get proper cues on which camera was live so he was frequently looking into the wrong one. The background was busy. The titles at the bottom covered the action. There were too many “branding” phrases thrown out. I could go on and on. There were a lot of things wrong with the show technically as well as contextually.
There is a reason there is a long list of people who get credit at the end of TV shows. I’m not taking anything away from Charlie Sheen’s talent and he brings a lot to shows like Two and a Half Men and Spin City. But when celebrities begin to think that they alone are responsible for their own fame and attempt to produce their own content, the public quickly finds out how very wrong they are.
Our Advice: Your tournament is run by a team, not just the tournament director. Your event may very well have a talented, dedicated leader and a team that is willing to give them all the credit. That is a good thing. But once the tournament director starts believing his/her own press, your event is headed for trouble.
You could argue that Charlie’s show was “real” and “genuine” or that your tournament is “fun” and “like family.” You would be wrong. What you see as fun, loose and ‘like being with family,’ your paying teams see as messy, unorganized and apathetic. It takes a lot of work (and acting skill) to appear nonchalant. The character of Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men) can pull it off. Charlie Sheen? Not so much.
Recognize and appreciate your team and their skills in their specialized area, from your sales team to your scheduling team to your website crew. Never think yourself bigger than the sum of them.
They made you great. Never underestimate their power to unmake you. Or — just like Charlie Sheen is doing before our eyes — you unmaking yourself.
There is no getting around it, running a youth soccer tournament is a lot of work. Even the most organized tournament directors with the best clubs and best software tools take on a huge responsibility. In the end, the hard work is balanced out by the rewards of seeing kids enjoying the game and putting a nice amount of money in the club’s accounts and the local economy. Everybody wants to be considered successful. When it comes to success, an old saying comes to mind, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” A well thought out and executed communication plan, starting at the time of registration and acceptance, can help save headaches later, when you should be concentrating on something else.
Never assume that coaches who are accepted into your soccer tournament automatically know what the next step is. It is as simple as this: tell them what to do and when to do it. Starting with your acceptance letter, include a timeline or checklist of any items that need to be completed prior to the tourney. Be clear about the dates and if there is any further information or payment needed. Make sure that you also comply by sticking to stated dates.
Anticipate questions and make sure that your tournament website includes the answers. Push as much of the information and communication needs onto your website as possible. It is helpful if your soccer tournament website is more than just a static recruiting tool. A complete, end-to-end soccer tournament management system, like those offered by TourneyCentral, is well worth the investment. Cheap and free systems always have limitations which are more costly in the end.
This may seem like a lot of upfront work, but you’ll be thankful as your tournament dates get closer. It brings to mind another old saying, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”
What will be your legacy as a soccer tournament? Why are you doing all this? Will players and their fans still talk about your event long after they have left town?
For many soccer tournaments, the immediate goal is to make money for the club or the league. That has to be done for the tournament to continue year after year. But beyond making money, think about how your event is leaving a legacy for each soccer player who participates, each coach who brings their team to play another and each parent who spends the weekend with their kid in the company of other kids and parents. Think about how your tournament shapes your community and contributes to its legacy.
Will your tournament be the subject of a story around the Thanksgiving table that starts out as, “Remember when we went to …” and ends with uncontrollable fits of laughter, followed by knowing glances and wistful sighs?
Our advice: Think about the intangibles about twice as much as you think about the operational parts of your tournament. These things include fair play, good referees, short lines at the concession stand, quality hotels, fun things to do between games, good communication with coaches, friendly field marshals and cheerful volunteers. Update scores as fast as you can. Make sure your maps are clear and correct. Never assume everyone knows what “you are here” means. And perform random acts of kindness, no matter how tired you are or how late it is.
Tell compelling, positive stories about your tournament and the players, coaches and families to anyone who will listen. Share them on your website or blog.
Stay humble and never forget the teams who are playing at your tournament are your guests who chose to come to your event among a large and growing market.
These are the things that create a soccer tournament legacy worth passing on.
This blog post is part of a blog-off series with a group of bloggers from different professions and world views, each exploring a theme from his/her world view. This was about “answering the question, “What is legacy?”” To explore how others handled the theme, check them out below. I will add links as they publish.
Most people would say that bringing hundreds of youth soccer teams and their families to your town for a weekend youth soccer tournament would be good for the local economy.
But how good is it?
Knowing the answer to that question could really make things easier for tournament directors who are trying to schedule fields, get sponsors and generally drum up support from the local business community.
Using an integrated, online solution for marketing, scheduling and managing your soccer tournament could provide some of the answers. One example is the Tournament PulsePoint™ tool standard with every TourneyCentral site.
The tool is available to TourneyCentral tournament directors as one of several administrative modules that take the mystery out of running a tournament. Tournament PulsePoint™ uses numbers from the U.S. Soccer Foundation Economic Impact model, economic impact from the National Association of Sport Commissions and marketing data from the U.S. Census Bureau to provide overall economic impact and other marketing data based on the numbers of teams in your tournament and where they come from.
All of the information can be seen on a dashboard style screen including a map with pin marks on the locations of the teams in your tourney.
Youth soccer tournaments mean business; big business for your organization and for hotels, stores and restaurants in your town. The tools are now available to help you manage and market your soccer tournament like the serious business that it is.
Most youth soccer tournaments are run by volunteers who generously dedicate huge chunks of their time, talent and sometimes even their own money because they love the game and love to see kids get a chance to compete on a high level. But a youth soccer tournament represents big business to the clubs that sponsor them and to the business community in host cities.
There is a new resource for directors of these events and all others who want to share their knowledge or perhaps pick up a thing or two. If you have not already done so, join the Soccer Tournaments Mean Business Group on LinkedIn and start to share thoughts and network with other like-minded, dedicated soccer folks.
Social media is picking up momentum as a means of communication for business professionals in all walks of life. LinkedIn is the recognized leader for people who would rather separate their business interests from their other social networking activity on Facebook and Twitter.
Sharing ideas and making contacts with tournament directors from around the world can put your event on the forefront of using the latest and best tools, software and procedures that will make your event more attractive to youth soccer teams and to the sponsors who want their name and business attached to a winner.
The group was started by TourneyCentral, a provider of integrated online solution for youth soccer tournaments, but is open to everyone in the youth soccer tournament world who wants to dial up the professionalism of their event.
There are two youth soccer tournament events that are still accepting applications for the third weekend in March 2011. Both the Dynamo Round Robin in Indianapolis, Indiana and the Middletown Spring Blast in Middletown, Ohio have an application deadline of February 20th.
The twelfth annual Dynamo Round Robin, on March 18-20, is a great pre-season warm up. Last year’s tournament featured several defending state champions and state runners-up. Teams from Oklahoma, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and other states were represented. This year’s tournament welcomes all girls’ teams U9 through U19. U9 through U14 teams will play four games while U15 through U18 teams will play three games. Entry fee for U9-U10 is set at $475, U11-U12 is $500, U13-U14 is $525, u15-U16 is $550 and U17-U19 is $575.
The Middletown Spring Blast, on March 19-20, will offer competition for boys and girls in the U-8 through U-19 brackets. The tournament will be held at Smith Park and AK Steel Soccer fields at Jacot Park in Middletown Ohio, and Franklin Community Park in Franklin. Smith Park has been home to many tournaments including the Franchise, State SAY and High School Tournaments. Both parks offer ample parking, playgrounds, walking trails around the park, refreshment areas and with a total 26 fields for your soccer enjoyment. Entry fee is $400.00 for U8-U10 with all others set at $425.00
Information on registration, travel, lodging, scheduling, scores and things to do when you are in town are included on both tournaments respective websites.
Recently, GotSoccer sent out a press release outlining the difference between their tournament management software and TourneyCentral. We, of course, were immediately flattered; not because we particularly care about what GotSoccer thinks of our product but because that told us that their customers and prospects were asking them about TourneyCentral. And they had to defend their product against ours.
That makes us happy.
But GotSoccer did get a few things wrong about TourneyCentral. After all, accuracy at a soccer tournament is very important, even more so when you trust software to drive your event. Accuracy makes sure the right teams (including referees) show up on time and at the correct fields and the right teams advance. Accuracy is critical to most soccer teams, coaches, parents and players when it comes to standings and who gets the trophy. If you are going to start comparing yourself to the big dogs in the yard, it’s important to get the big things right.
Here are just a few things GotSoccer GotWrong about TourneyCentral:
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We here at TourneyCentral have been encouraging soccer tournaments to get on board and use Twitter for their communications, scores reporting, etc. In fact, all of our soccer tournament websites are integrated with Twitter and will automatically post your front page news and scores updates in real time. All you need do is set up a Twitter account and enter the information in your Web Site Maintenance>Variables
This morning we saw a support question come over to one of the tournaments from a coach:
With the forecast being for rain/storms, how best can we learn about cancellations/postponements? Website? Email mailing list? Twitter (this would be great)? Phone call to certain phone#?
This would be great! Twitter is a really cool tool to communicate out to followers your local fields, local vendor deals, etc; all without having to set up complex SMS servers and verify cell numbers and email addresses. The user controls how s/he wants to receive your tweets (email, SMS) or if at all.
Our Advice: Get a Twitter account for your soccer tournament. Really, now. Do it. Then, set it up on your TourneyCentral website. By this time next year, you’ll either be in the game with Social Media or playing catch-up.
We are seeing more and more requests from coaches for the soccer tournament to give them the list of teams that have already applied for them to “evaluate” whether or not the tournament would be a good fit for their team. This has us scratching our heads a bit.
Nobody likes to pay money to compete in a tournament only to get stuck in a division with top level teams or, in my opinion, stuck with teams that offer no competition. I get that. But I don’t get is why the guest team coach feels the need to evaluate the teams that have applied prior to applying to a tournament.
Perhaps it is an erosion of trust between soccer tournaments and soccer coaches. Perhaps it is an increased need for the coach to “control” every aspect of the game. Perhaps it is increased pressure from the parents on the coach to place their team in tournaments where they can be “competitive” (whatever that ultimately means.)
Chris Brogan, who is a bit of a guru in the Social Media space, wrote a book called Trust Agents. It deals primarily with trust in online social media spaces like Twitter, Facebook, etc. but it touches a bit on how trust is becoming a currency. As tournaments are becoming more sophisticated, they will need to learn also on how to deal in a trust economy. It’s a quick, easy read.
Our advice: Always be giving guest teams a reason to trust you. Post your schedule from last year and encourage them to take a look at the teams that applied and analyze the point spreads. Every TourneyCentral soccer tournament is a 365/24/7 event that has last year’s schedule available until the application deadline. Use that to your advantage.
Take a really hard, objective look at your seeding. Do your club teams seems to walk away with the trophies every year? Why? Do you have an opinion that your club teams should be able to win your own tournament? Why? Given the choice between bringing in competitive teams for your club teams to play and getting better versus winning a trophy by seeding your teams lower, which is more valuable for the long-term growth of your club? Your tournament? Do guest teams walk off grumbling about how “the fix is in” for the club teams to win? If so, change that.
Trust is everything and will only become more valuable. If teams don’t trust you to place them correctly in your tournament, they will eventually go elsewhere. When they trust you, they’ll quit asking and let your history and reputation speak for itself.
With the recession pulling into it’s second (or third) year, we’re seeing a lot of teams request a late Saturday morning start so they don’t have to book rooms into a hotel for Friday night. As you can imagine, accommodating this request puts a serious strain on the scheduling as most of the time, the start times are determined by the number of fields and the number of daylight hours available. While you can sometimes squeak out another field somewhere, tacking another hour of sunlight on the end of a day is impossible.
So what to do? You don’t want to turn away a team if you don’t have to, but re-writing the laws of nature to fit an economic reality is just not going to happen. When most teams are now asking for a late Saturday start, it become mathematically impossible to grant the request.
Our advice: Publish a cut off date for late Saturday start requests. Instead of trying an Early Bird discount or other pricing scheme to get teams to apply early, have a date or volume cut off. Perhaps only the first two teams for each age group can request a late Saturday start. Once those requests are used up, there are no more. And, while you are at it, do the same for multiple-team coaches. It rewards the teams with special requests to apply early without compromising the price and value of your tournament.
Be sure to promote visibly and keep track of the number of requests. Reward the requester handsomely and make it crystal clear that the reason you are honoring (or denying) the request is because they applied and paid early (or not.) Once you start doing this, competition for special considerations next year will be fierce.
Is your soccer tournament better off this year than it was last year? How do you know?
Unless you measure against goals and benchmarks, you really have no way of knowing. While you may have more money in the bank, was it because you sold more t-shirts or was it because the teams increased over last year? Or maybe your schedule was tighter. Or maybe your team numbers increased over last year, but you somehow found yourself with less money? How could that be?
Unless you are running your soccer tournament like a business with financial tools such as profit and loss (P&L) statements, budgets, cash flow projections, revenue and expense reports and other measurement tools like rankings and surveys, you really have no way of knowing. Because the goals of each soccer tournament vary from event to event, there are no right or wrong measurements, but here are a few things to measure as you move through the various phases of your soccer tournament.
1. Project and watch cash flow.
Starting with day one to day 365, you should have cash flow projections. Day one is defined as the day after this year’s tournament and the start of next year’s tournament cycle. (You didn’t take the day after your tournament off, did you?) You will probably wish to divide up the cash flow projections into months, but project out on the same income and expense cycle as the previous year so that you can compare cycles year to year. As an example, Labor Day may fall in the same month each year, but the number of days preceding it in September may be different year to year. Now, comparing your cash in and out for the previous year, are you operating a more positive cash flow each month? While a more positive cash flow is important, don’t give up asset purchases for short-term cash goals.
2. Track profit performance as a percentage.
Always measure profitability as a percentage rather than a dollar figure so you will have an accurate yardstick year to year. Keep in mind that the soccer tournament business has a cycle. You may have a run of three incredibly profitable years and then the next two may dip down a bit, then move up. Once you have a longer history, you will be able to predict profitability and plan inventories (like concessions, shirts, etc) accordingly.
3. Know your demographic metrics.
How many times have you had a tournament where one year you have far too many of one age group and then next year, you are struggling to get a division together for that same age group? Did you check the overall birth rates in your local area or from areas you pull from? Or maybe a league installed a new age-based requirement? If you are able to predict the flow of players year to year, you are better prepared to either market to them or prepare a smaller division and focus your attention on the more populous ages.
Age is just one metric you can use, but there are many others, including travel costs from certain regions, school schedules, league requirements, state association rules, etc. The point here is to know your target market; don’t just shotgun out your marketing and see what sticks.
4. Measure happiness.
Revenue is what happens when people buy things. Profitability is what happens when happy people are eager to buy your soccer tournament experience. MEASURE HAPPINESS. Most of the teams competing in your soccer tournament will not take home trophies, so only a fraction of happiness can be attributed to winning. The majority of teams will judge your soccer tournament on whether or not they had fun.
While measuring fun is a very elusive metric, the three big factors appear to be a) hotel quality, b) food quality and c) respect. Hotels and food are fairly straightforward to measure and control, but measuring and influencing respect is slippery. It all comes down to the attitude of the volunteers, the HQ tent, the flow at registration, the way the coaches were talked to, the way the referees controlled the game and how much of your “frugality” was exposed during the tournament.
Encourage teams to give you feedback, whether that is directly via email or gathered through ranking and feedback systems such as www.gotsoccer.com, www.ticoscore.com or bulletin boards like www.backofthenet.com. Then, when “unhappiness trends” appear, DO SOMETHING to fix it. Don’t ignore it.
If a few are willing to complain, many more are willing to just keep silent and simply not come back.
A soccer tournament is a business. While your goals may be to give the soccer community a fun experience, you need to be able to stay in business to accomplish that goal. These are just some of the measurements you should be using for your soccer tournament, but is by no means a complete list. Knowing more about what makes your event profitable within your niche or target market area is your competitive advantage that you should be honing with each season. But, you can only know how far you have come by knowing where you have already been.
Gerard McLean is President/CEO of Rivershark, Inc. the parent company of www.tourneycentral.com. TourneyCentral produces an end-to-end, web-based soccer tournament management system that handles everything from registration through scheduling and scoring. McLean is also the editor and host of the companion podcast and blog, The Touchline. His Fortune 500 experience with Target Stores and Huffy Corporation, along with various positions at private companies, has forever sealed his obsession with constantly measuring success performance.
At some point, you may need to break your soccer tournament free from the “mom and pop” pack, ditch the volunteer economics and fundraiser-based budgets and start running it like a “real company.” You will most likely be looking to do business with other companies that are “real companies” with employees, voicemail systems, receptionists, conference rooms and offices. And, these offices won’t resemble anything like a dining room table piled high with soccer gear.
Here are some quick tips in dealing with “real companies.”
1. Soccer is most likely not their passion.
Chances are, soccer is not their passion. While it is always best to work with companies who understand soccer and know the game, that should not be enough of a criterion to do business with them. Nor should the lack of soccer smarts be a criterion to exclude them. You are seeking out professional services and you will be better served if they understand their business and you remain the soccer expert. Unless, of course, you are seeking soccer marketing services; then, soccer better be their passion.
2. Prepare to pay market rates.
True professionals know the value of their goods and services and are less inclined to bargain that value away. While you may attempt to persuade the company to support your local club, league or soccer tournament with a sponsorship, advertisement or discount, only a few will likely oblige. If you pay less than market rates, you will most likely only get the value of goods or services you pay for, which may not be enough to get what you really need.
3. Prepare to do business during business hours.
When dealing with a “real company,” chances are they will not be there to discuss the changes you need done to your web site, brochure or accounting program at 11:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning like your volunteer was. Also, lunch hour does not qualify as business hours, even though it is in the middle of the day. Be prepared to discuss your project, take phone calls and do meetings during business hours. And, if you can’t, make sure someone in your soccer tournament with authority can. There are a few things more annoying to professionals than constant project delays due to the client’s inability to meet or give approvals in a timely fashion.
4. Pay your invoices on time and in full.
Among the many things that keep “real companies” from doing business with volunteer-based management groups is the fear that getting invoices paid on time and in full will be an issue. Being a 501c(3) does not give you a pass on paying on time. Nor does the excuse that your treasurer is out of the country on vacation and can’t be reached qualify as a legitimate explanation. If you take no other advice from this article, take this point to heart.
5. It’s not personal.
A “real company” cares about providing the very best service that they can. After all, it is their reputation on the line as well. Sometimes, they will tell you things that you may not want to hear, but you need to know to bring your tournament to the next level. Value that, even if their comments sound like a stinging insult. It’s not personal.
So, get out there and do business with “real companies,” but expect to be treated like you are also a “real company.”
Gerard McLean is President/CEO of Rivershark Inc., a “real company” that develops database-driven web-based applications like jo bbank engines, membership databases, etc. for trade groups and the retail services industry. Rivershark also owns www.TourneyCentral.com, which provides soccer tournament services to soccer clubs. While most soccer tournaments are not yet “real businesses,” he claims it is a lot of fun. And since he is the boss, they keep doing it. McLean is convinced that soccer tournaments will eventually become “real business” and wants to be part of that when it happens.