Tag Archives: TourneyCentral

Getting Your Soccer Tournament In The News: 8 Simple Rules For Success

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Your soccer organization – whether a club, tournament or team – requires press exposure to help you build value for your sponsors and potential player or team base. However, it can be much more than getting a team photo in the local sports section. It can include a leap onto the newspaper city pages or the A block of the television news.

Here are eight simple rules for getting your soccer organization the press coverage you want. There are more, but these are the big ones.

Rule 1: Nobody cares about you.
What people do care about is what your organization does for your community, not just for kids who play soccer. They also care about the people behind the club or tournament. Think in terms of how your soccer organization contributes to your community, how it changes the world and write your story from a third person point of view. Think beyond soccer and frame the story from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know the sport or the players in the sport.

Rule 2: Know your journalists.
What do they care about? What kind of story bends their ear? Write your story as if you are telling your news only to them. Respect their time by putting the Who, What, Why, When and Where in the first paragraph. If they can’t tell what the story is about in the first few sentences, they won’t read further.

Rule 3: Advertising and editorial don’t mix. Ever.
The editorial staff at the newspaper, television station, magazine or web site does not care how much advertising you buy or if you buy any at all. The criteria for them are the newsworthiness of your story. And don’t ever “remind” the editorial staff that you buy advertising or suggest that the sale of their news product will increase if they tell your story. Doing so is disrespectful and unprofessional and almost guarantees your news won’t run.

Rule 4: Write your press releases in AP Style.
If you are not familiar with AP Style, buy the AP Stylebook (apstylebook.com) and live by it. Your story will stand a better chance of being published if editors don’t have to rewrite it. The stylebook is a yearly edition, so be sure to keep up-to-date.

Rule 5: Be tenacious, but not annoying.
Remember rule one. If your story doesn’t run, it probably means that it wasn’t newsworthy enough, even if it was near and dear to your heart. Keep refining the stories you tell and tell a lot of them. Editors are human beings and sometimes they just give people a break for sticking with it against all odds.

Rule 6: Never, never, never tell a news organization who else published your story.
While it may be great news to your soccer organization that you were featured on ESPN2, to an editorial department, you just told them your story is old news.

Rule 7: Think hyper-local.
Newspapers especially are focused on becoming the hyper-local voice of their community and your soccer organization has built-in hyper-localism. Keep your stories focused on the local community. The more personal, the better.

Rule 8: Keep making news.
Most soccer organizations will just send out a press release before their tournament or tryouts and wonder why they don’t get press. A soccer organization is a 365/24/7 operation that makes news all year long. Keep telling these stories.

I may have misled you a bit about the “simple” part in the headline. Getting your soccer organization in the news is as simple as saying you just need to find a bunch of kids to make a soccer club. Like your soccer organization, it takes discipline, a plan, dedication and hard work. The rules are simple, but it is work. The reward is a stronger, and more recognizable brand to potential sponsors, government organizations and your community at large, which helps you achieve your soccer organization goals a little more comfortably.

How is your soccer tournament like Apple?

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This week, the Washington Post published an article on Apple, it’s new product line and how it is kicking butt all over the computer world despite being in a recession. In the article, it concedes that Apple’s success are not merely driven by Apple fanatics who will buy anything Apple makes, but by a sound, well-thought out value strategy.

Quite simply, Apple produces a quality product and makes no compromises on design and user interface. They set the price high enough to generate a profit to ensure research and development dollars for future products and don’t apologize for it nor do they adjust it based on whether or not we are in a recession. Their products don’t appeal to everyone, but the audience to which they appeal are loyal and expect quality; first time, every time.

And they are onto something. As the average PC maker continues to be squeezed by their customers who shop on price, they have fewer and fewer dollars left to innovate and improve. When a recession happens, many low-cost producers simply go out of business because they can’t afford to weather the storm. They did not prepare.

Is your soccer tournament an Apple or a PC? Is your fee/vendor/sponsorship agreements set high enough to claim value and ensure enough profitability to assure your guest teams that you will be around next year? Or in some cases, even this year? Do you take care of your guest teams enough to justify your fees?

Our advice: Set your team fees high enough to make sure there is enough profit to operate at a high-quality level. Don’t cave to arguments of teams not being able to afford your tournament. You are providing quality soccer competition and entertainment at a fair price that reflects your value. If some teams have problems affording you but have pegged your tournament as a “must attend” event, then perhaps they need to make cost-cuts elsewhere.

And don’t compromise your vendor relationships — including hotels and concessions — to make your tournament more affordable to guest teams. Don’t undervalue your volunteers and staff by cutting perks. Don’t buy cheaper awards. Don’t compromise your marketing.

And don’t cave to scheduling demands that compromises revenue. If that means shrinking the number of teams you accept in order to maintain your quality and profitability goals, then do it. If you are profitable, you can always grow in stronger economic years.

Your ultimate goal is to build a soccer tournament event that is sustainable and will benefit your soccer organization and your local community over a long period of time. Making price deals just to satisfy short-term team counts does not contribute to that goal.

Novi Jaquar Invitational on Back of the Net radio

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Allison Stier with the Jaguar Invitational is interviewed by Larry Miller with Back of the Net.

Click here to listen to the podcast or access through iTunes.
WHEN: May 8-10, 2009
WHERE: Novi, Michigan
FEES: 6v6 and 8v8 $550 11v11 $625
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Friday, Mar 13, 2009

Almost ready for St. Louis and the NSCAA

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Just in case you were following along with us, checking off the dates until the big NSCAA soccer conference in St. Louis, here is our booth status. Almost ready!

Our TourneyCentral.com NSCAA booth. A little more nip and tuck, but we're almost there.

Our TourneyCentral.com NSCAA booth. A little more nip and tuck, but we're almost there.

Meet us in St. Louis for the NSCAA.
We’re in booth 1735 and we won’t even try to sell you anything, so you can stay and chat as long as you want. Really. And, if you want to make a podcast promoting your soccer tournament, Back of the Net will help you with that. You don’t even need to be a TourneyCentral tournament.

Troy Strawberry Soccer Invitational talks to Larry Miller with Back of the Net

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David Pappas with the Troy Strawberry Soccer Invitational is interviewed by Larry Miller with Back of the Net.

Click here to listen to the podcast or access through iTunes.

Details for the Strawberry Soccer Invitational are
WHEN: May 16 – May 19, 2009
WHERE: Troy, Ohio
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Monday, Apr 20, 2009

The recession will affect soccer tournaments

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Make no mistake about it; the current recession will hurt some soccer tournaments. Attendance will be down as teams will travel to fewer and fewer tournaments. And some tournaments, especially the ones that attract teams from more affluent areas where wealth is based on stocks and high home value may feel especially high pressure to limit soccer tournament travel.

The only bright light in this whole financial mess is the low cost of gasoline. Or, is it?

While teams may be cutting the number of tournaments in their schedule, it really only matters if they cut yours. If you have worked to create a must-attend tournament event, most likely you will survive the cut.

Here are some must-attend qualities:

1. You have consistently worked to make the teams feel at home while they are guests at your event.
Have you worked to make sure their questions were answered quickly via email? If they have had hotel problems, did you help to resolve them? When there were disputes about scoring, rules, etc, did you work with each party to resolve for a win-win-win? Are your volunteers cheerful and helpful? At the end of the tournament, did the most loosingest team remark in some fashion, “We lost every game, but had a blast! We’ll be back next year!”

2. Your organization is solid.
You have control of your data and everyone knows what is going on, from the host coach at a league game to the advertising coordinator to the person in charge of registering the teams. Your web site is up-to-date at all times, even to the minute during the tournament weekend. Your front page has news, maybe even hourly during the competition.

3. You have solid sponsors
This may seem like a little thing, but adidas doesn’t just sponsor anyone. And, once you get their sponsorship, you don’t get to keep it forever without working hard at it, especially in this economy. Parents and coaches are fairly savvy about what it takes to convince a corporation to spend sponsorship dollars at a youth soccer event that only takes place for 2-3 days in a limited geographic area. A display of some well-heeled sponsors get you respect.

4. Games are played on time and are well-controlled
Don’t underestimate the power of keeping a tight control of the games on the field. Many teams have been to a lot of tournaments where nobody seems to be in charge, games are played when referees stroll onto the field and all sorts of loosey-goosey standards. Don’t be one of those events! Expect everyone to show up on time, schedule enough referees to over-cover the games and make sure the volunteer field marshals know the times, locations and duties. And, if you can’t find volunteers, pay your field marshals. They are that important, for safe play and for your brand protection.

5. Advertise and market, market, market
A lot of soccer tournaments are going to be scared of this economy and pull back their advertising. DON’T LET YOUR TOURNAMENT BE ONE OF THEM! NOW is the time to go out and become visible. Now is the time to grab market share. Now is the time to be bold. Make sure your TICO Score is up-to-date, your tournament is listed correctly at your state association and your other media like podcasts and bulletin board advertising is intact. And, get some postcards/business cards for all your coaches to hand out (ask for Don Denny.)

6. Web site
I saved this for last, but it really is the most important of all. Make sure your web site is up-to-date, and uses the latest technology to bring your guest teams real-time information including scores and standings. We recommend any and all tournaments on this list. Your web site is your front door so it should be easy to find out information. (Who, What, Where, When, How Much does this cost) The application form should be readily accessible and work without any fancy log-ins, pre registration, etc. All TourneyCentral soccer tournaments have these capabilities built in from the ground up.

Our advice: Firstly, if you don’t already have a TourneyCentral web site, get one. Secondly, if you do, make sure it is turned on and ready for 2009. Thirdly, be visible everywhere. If you can, go to the NSCAA in St. Louis. Make sure your TICO Score is current. Advertise and get cards to hand out. But mostly, believe in your event and make sure your club/host coaches, teams, parents and players are your greatest champions and they know and love your tournament as much as you do.

2009 could be make or break for a lot of events. Make sure yours is on the “make” list.

Meet us in St. Louis for the NSCAA.
We’re in booth 1735 and we won’t even try to sell you anything, so you can stay and chat as long as you want. Really. And, if you want to make a podcast promoting your soccer tournament, Back of the Net will help you with that. You don’t even need to be a TourneyCentral tournament.

Playing on the big soccer field now!

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Hey guys, we just made it into Alltop.com! This is a huge deal.

This means that all your soccer tournament news will reach a wider audience than ever before as will the blog entries we write regularly. As TourneyCentral.com continues to reshape the soccer tournament market as the premium event management software, your tournament will also get a lift because you are part of the TourneyCentral family.

So, take being including in the Alltop.com blog magazine rack as a compliment and confirmation that we each kick as… umm, grass 🙂

What is Alltop? The easiest way to describe it is to let you watch the video below. Enjoy.

Are you up or down in your applications?

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Are you up or down in application for your soccer tournament? How do you know? Are you comparing from last year? Why?

Here is an interesting and perhaps more reasonable way of looking at your numbers. Look up the birth statistics for the areas that you draw from. If you have a TourneyCentral Web site, log into your admin area and click on the Tournament PulsePoint™ tab to see where your teams are coming from.

Birth rates in Ohio

Birth rates in Ohio

Graph the birth rates by age. That is your potential market. If you see one year dramatically low, why spend more money trying to attract that age group? You may already have a large percentage of the available pool.

Just another way of looking at your marketing dollars.

Consistent design matters

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Every so often, a tournament looking to join the TourneyCentral family calls up and says something along the lines of:

We’re a very different tournament and we wany you to design a totally different web site for us. We want to look and act different than everyone else in your calendar.

When pressed, they admit that:

  • They have soccer teams apply
  • They accept soccer teams to play
  • They schedule two soccer teams against each other to play in a match to see who is the winner
  • They keep score to see who advances to take a trophy
  • They accept advertising and sponsorship
  • They are basically running a soccer tournament where they need to get large numbers of players, parents, coaches and fans to a field at a particular date and time.

So, I ask, what sort of “different” did you need? Well, we just want a different LOOK, we want menu choices to be different, we want to do our own thing.

But the irony of the matter is your guest teams don’t want you to do your own thing. They want to know how to read about your soccer tournament, they want to know how to apply easily, they want to know where the schedule is posted, they want to know how to find the scores. In short, they want to know, not guess.

Recently, I ran across this blog post that explains the whole point rather nicely. In short, a hotel decided that they wanted to be different and were going to design their hotel room card keys with the branding DOWN and the swipe strip UP. Anyone who has ever stayed in a hotel knows that the strip goes down, you look for the little arrow and insert the card with the arrow pointing toward the door. Because this has been standardized, if it doesn’t work that way, you would think it is broken, just like the author did. Valuable time and hotel resources were wasted on a customer who didn’t “understand” the hotel difference. I suspect that there was more than one confused customer on every night the hotel entertained guests.

Our Advice: Different is good, but focus different on where it makes the most sense for a soccer tournament; on your competition, your game format, the helpfulness of your staff, a high level of guest service, great pairings, etc. Different with your web site only adds to confusion and increases your tournament costs and, in some instances, drives a team away. If you hide the front door, how do you expect a team to enter?

A system like TourneyCentral has been “battle-tested” and gives teams a level of comfort that they are entering a well-managed soccer tournament. When they see that top graphic, top menu, side bar and look and feel of a “TourneyCentral” site, they know immediately they are in good hands. (a word of caution, we have developed such a solid brand over the past ten years that many events are copying our look and feel… look for the Powered By TourneyCentral.com seal at the bottom)

We continue to change and add new features to make your event stand out, but we do it in subtle ways to keep that high level of comfort and trust your guest teams have with your event.

Be different, but not weird. Different is good; weird just costs your soccer tournament time, money and teams.

The road to the 2009 NSCAA

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Our NCSAA booth is out of the case and ready for the 2009 design

Our NCSAA booth is out of the case and ready for the 2009 design

Hey soccer fans, we’re getting ready for the NSCAA in St. Louis and we got our display booth up and ready for our 2009 design.

It doesn’t look like much now, but stay tuned and follow along as we start adding really cool stuff to it!

We’re in booth 1735. I don’t know if that is a good spot of not (I’m told it is) but be sure to put us on your list of folks to see when you are at the convention.

TourneyCentral and Dayton Daily News to present a hyper-localism workshop at the 2008 NSCAA

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TourneyCentral and www.daytondailynews.com to present a workshop on hyper-localism at the 2008 NSCAA

TourneyCentral announced today that it has arranged to present a workshop, in collaboration with the Dayton Daily News (www.daytondailynews.com) on soccer organizations and hyper-localism.

Hyper-localism is the practice of reporting news stories that happening in your own neighborhoods and backyards. Club soccer is hyper-local for most newspapers and the soccer public demands coverage. Yet reporters are spread thin covering other hyper-local stories so soccer typically gets ignored.

“This workshop is the examination of a year-long hyper-local experiment whereby TourneyCentral provides www.DaytonDailyNews.com and other local Cox Ohio newspaper sites with rich human interest stories related to the tournaments it hosts in southwest Ohio,” says Gerard McLean, Principle at TourneyCentral. “We hope the the participants will walk away with a game-plan on working with your local newspapers to get the media coverage their soccer organization needs and deserves.”

The content appears on all Cox Ohio newspaper web sites, but most prominently at www.daytondailynews.com/soccer

The workshop will be held on Friday, January 18 at 10:30am and presented jointly by Ray Marcano, Internet General Manager with Cox Ohio and Gerard McLean.

About TourneyCentral
TourneyCentral.com provides comprehensive, event-focused, web-based solutions for youth soccer tournaments and is wholly owned by Rivershark, Inc. an Ohio Corporation. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, the advertising tools provide the tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

Companion and marketing partner properties consist of: The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

Visit us at the 2009 NSCAA in St. Louis, MO.

TourneyCentral facilitates tournament partnership at the 2008 NSCAA Convention

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Four tournaments, the Novi Jaquar Invitational, the adidas Warrior Soccer Classic, the Pikes Peak Invitational and the Veterans Invitational will be showing at the 2008 NSCAA Convention January 17-19, 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Four tournaments, the Novi Jaquar Invitational, the adidas Warrior Soccer Classic, the Pikes Peak Invitational and the Veterans Invitational will be showing at the 2008 NSCAA Convention January 17-19, 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland.

The collaborative effort was an initiative by TourneyCentral to expand the tournament presence within the trade.

“Tournaments of this caliber NEED to establish a presence at the NSCAA,” says Gerard McLean, Principle at TourneyCentral. “A booth at the largest soccer trade show in the US tells the marketplace that you are serious and have reached a certain level of sophistication.”

The tournaments have been placed in booth 2724 which is a corner booth.

“Great placement,” adds McLean. “They will do well and the goal is to expand out the tournament presence. Long-term, I hope every tournament we do eventually shows at the NSCAA. We’ll help them get here.”

TourneyCentral will be showing at the NSCAA in their own expanded booth, 2813, which is an endcap placement on a cross-roads aisle. Mead Cup, another TourneyCentral tournament will also be showing in their own booth, 2803 and have been at the NSCAA for the past 4 years.

About TourneyCentral
TourneyCentral.com provides comprehensive, event-focused, web-based solutions for youth soccer tournaments and is wholly owned by Rivershark, Inc. an Ohio Corporation. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, the advertising tools provide the tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

Companion and marketing partner properties consist of: The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

Visit us at the 2009 NSCAA in St. Louis, MO.

TourneyCentral soccer tournament sites are 100% compatible with iPhone

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TourneyCentral.com announces that the family of youth soccer tournaments are 100% compatible with iPhone, making iPhone the perfect on-venue mobile device for updating scores and news.

TourneyCentral.com announced today that the web sites that deliver real-time information about youth soccer tournaments are 100% compatible with iPhone. The mobile devices ship with MacOS X’s Safari web browser and allows the user to view the full web site instead of a specially formatted one as used by other popular so-called smart phones such as Blackberry and Treo.

“We have always developed on the the MacOS platform,” says Gerard McLean, president and CEO of Rivershark, Inc., TourneyCentral’s parent company. “The Safari web browser is a standards-compliant platform and it makes sense to make sure our web-based application reaches as many people as possible without requiring they use any particular web browser.” McLean adds that the display is adjusted to make sure the software also works on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Since it began development in 1998, TourneyCentral has used Mac-based software to design the web-based interface of its web site as well as organize, correct and catalog photos quickly for the tournament web sites using AppleScript, an Apple software product designed to automate repetitive tasks. With the release of MacOS X and the UNIX underpinnings, development was accelerated even more as programmers were able to test in a UNIX/MySQL environment locally on an Xserve, Apple’s server platform, before moving the software to the production-ready servers.

“What this really means for tournament directors,” McLean adds, “is that they will be able to manage their web site in real-time at the venues or en route without worrying about whether or not they have an Internet connection.” Since TourneyCentral sites have web-based scoring and news modules, including email broadcast, a tournament director is now always in touch with the guest teams.

For more information about Apple’s iPhone, visit Apple.com

About TourneyCentral
TourneyCentral.com provides comprehensive, event-focused, web-based solutions for youth soccer tournaments and is wholly owned by Rivershark, Inc. an Ohio Corporation. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, the advertising tools provide the tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

Companion and marketing partner properties consist of: The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

Visit us at the 2009 NSCAA in St. Louis, MO.