Soccer Tournament Review

I was invited this week to the Tuesday Night Pickers by a local friend. The “Pickers” are a group of everyday people from all walks of life who love to play music. This group started 13 years ago in a small barn in Southern Ohio that transforms into a music studio every Tuesday night.

They continue to play each week in memory of a former host who passed unexpectedly! In his memory, they toast his love of music, enthusiasm for life and his time in the military. Then the true fun begins. Each member of the group takes turns with the microphone and begins the “jam” session. There are fiddle, bongo, guitar, harmonica, bass and madolin players. Not to mention the footstompers and the hand clappers. A grand total of 786 guests have signed the logbook. I was honored to be the 786th person. This book represents the sense of friendship that this weekly tradition has developed.

Advice: What traditions have you established with your soccer tournament? Do you have teams,clubs or volunteers who mark their calendars every “Tuesday Night” for your event? Can you create a guestbook to see who really is enjoying your event? This weekly tradition has created so much positive energy for some many! Just think how wonderful it would be to create the same buzz regarding a tradition your event started!

Bill Hodson with 90:00 Magazine shares some tips for tournaments on working with the soccer media. The “rant line” for 90:00 Soccer Radio is 714-693-5090, ext 310 but first listen to the podcast to see how to use it well.

Listen to the podcast and then offer some feedback. Each feedback posting is eligible to win an iPod at the NSCAA and USYouth.

I had the rare opportunity yesterday to speak with advertising sales guys with two soccer magazines. They each wanted me to buy advertising and I really want to buy advertising, so you would think this would be a win-win for us both.

The one rep told me about his CPM, per page rate, seven times impression… all the things you would expect. But then when I started talking about the soccer tournament industry, how TourneyCentral saw an opportunity to shape and guide this industry and how we saw an opportunity for a soccer magazine to help with that vision… nothing, no passion, no enthusiasm… he just wanted to sell me an ad.

Later on, I also spoke with another rep. He started off the same way.. CPM, per page, etc, etc. But when I started talking about our vision of changing the tournament world and how there was an opportunity for a soccer magazine, he threw his script out and started getting excited about how he could share in being a part of it. His magazine is young, only has a US circulation of 20% of the biggest — not ideal — but he will probably get my business… and I will help him with his. Together, we will grow and become the authority for the soccer tournament industry.

Our advice: Change the world with a passion! Don’t just have a tournament; think about how what you do changes the world for the better for each one of your participants, your sponsors, your community. Think about how your tournament will contribute to the soccer tournament industry.

SEEK OUT people who also want to change the world (in or out of soccer!) and find a way to include them in your event. The relationship is usually a lot of hard work to maintain, but well worth the effort, is a heck of a lot more fun and will allow you to grow exponentially. QUIT working with people who drag you down or don’t have your passion. Approach each sponsor, each team, each player, each coach, each parent, each stakeholder of your event with the passion that it takes to change the world. Most of the time, the passion won’t be returned with the same intensity, but when it is, change happens!

As I was reading my email today, I came across probably the dumbest reply to a tournament invitation ever. It read, and I quote “As a rule, we do not attend tournaments unless we set up a relationship with the club whereby that club send us equal numbers of teams to our tournament. You can check out our tournament info on our website at ….”

Wow! I was floored! The ONLY way this tournament can attract teams to their event is by getting other clubs to agree to go to theirs? Why not just hand each other a check for the entry fee and be done with it. You go first.

Our Advice: Focus on making your tournament a MUST ATTEND event for your target market by being the best in your category. You won’t have to worry about attracting enough teams to compete in your tournament, but you might have to worry about how to turn some away. Read our marketing white paper.

However you celebrate (and even if you don’t - Jim in Canada, Jette, Peter, Helle, Cecilie, Christian, Werner, Ronnie, Helle and Christian in Denmark) we here at TourneyCentral and the Tournament Review wish you and yours a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving Holiday.

And Lisa in Texas, take Thursday off… everything will be ok on Friday regardless! Next week will be busy enough.

Our advice: Take a few moments, breeze into your team database and send all your teams a short, personal note to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving. Remember, you are on 365, 24/7!

Tourney Central recently was a major sponsor of the Montgomery County-Dayton (Ohio) Convention and Visitors Bureau Ambassador Awards Breakfast. This is a well established annual event recognizing community leaders who bring large events and visitors to the area. Several key figures were in attendance including past award winners, county commissioners, local media and CVB staff. The event was inspirational, filled with community pride and offered great networking opportunities. Eight individuals were recognized this year! They included conference planners to a Junior Olympic Volleyball tournament director. The audience was just as diverse; from National Park Service staff to members of the local hotel industry.

Our advice: Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you sponsor this event? These type of events offer a great opportunity to promote your soccer event, demonstrate civic pride and show dignitaries your event adds value to the local community. We did see representatives from a couple local soccer tournaments. In our opinion, this isn’t enough. Every tournament in the area should have attended. Tournament Directors should seek out local visitors bureau staff to discuss hotel trends, sponsorship patterns and collaborate on promoting your event. Consider attending or sponsoring community events in your area that can provide similar value.

As I was leaving the office yesterday, the phone rang. I was going to let it go to voicemail, but I picked it up. It was a friend of mine with a soccer magazine and he just had an advertiser move from a 1/4 page ad to a full page. Great news for him, but he now had a 1/4 “hole” he needed to fill and the magazine goes on the press Monday morning.

“Would you be interested in putting an ad in?” he asks. He offered me a deal I could not pass up. The only thing is he would need the artwork by end of business Friday and he needed to know it would pass preflight. Fortunately, I has some ad files all ready to go, so it was a matter of just emailing him the artwork.

Our advice: You never know when a great advertising deal will come up. Sometimes, you can even get a free ad from a newspaper, newsletter, blog, web site or other tournament program if you just had the ad copy ready to go. You should always have ads of different sizes (1/4, 1/2 and full page, black and white and full color along with web banners of 120×90, 728×90 and 468×60) ready to go at a moment’s notice.