Is your soccer tournament using Twitter?

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.

Tell me which teams have applied and I will apply to your soccer tournament if I like them

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.

No scheduling conflicts and late Sat games

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.

Measure for soccer tournament success. Then do it again, and again

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.

How to run your soccer tournament like a pro

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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