Soccer Tournament Review

You stress over your soccer tournament shirt design every year and every year, it is the same question; “Will it sell?” “Am I going to be stuck with excess inventory?” Getting to “Yes, it will sell” and “No, you won’t have excess inventory” is surprisingly easy.

American Eagle, Hollister, Abercrombie, Aeropostale and Old Navy are doing your market research for you right now! If you hop on their web sites (or, even better, go shopping in their stores) you will find what kids in your target market are buying. Simply adapt your logo and soccer tournament design to match the trendy looks and you’ve got yourself a winning shirt design.

Don’t just copy a design you find hanging, however and be sure that you work with an artist that can take the style and adapt it to make it uniquely yours. After all, soccer players are still coming to your event and the shirt should reflect your brand.

Our advice: Pay attention to trends outside the soccer world. It may hurt to watch a little MTV or pay attention to the story line on The Hills, but a little “research time” in front of the tv and in the shopping malls may just be what keeps your shirt design fresh and selling quickly. And, please hire a talented, forward-thinking designer for your shirt (and pay market rates!)… this little bit of investment will go a long way toward beefing up your bottom line.

A tournament recently sent out emails to teams that had applied, but not yet paid their application fees. The emails that were the most “direct” were sent to the teams that had applied several months ago, had made several promises to pay (check is in the mail, our club treasurer pays, etc, etc)

The email sent reminded the team that:

All fairly benign, but necessary points to make when trying to collect from a team.

One team came back at the tournament, lashing out at them for making money more important than the opportunity for kids to play soccer. In their response diatribe, lots of accusations about being “mean” and “not respecting the customer” were offered. In short, the team rep was lashing out at the tournament for expecting the team to pay on time and in full, like they had agreed to do when they applied.

Our advice: Never be afraid to ask for money and never be afraid to cut them for not paying on time. The agreement the team makes with you when they apply is that you will provide soccer entertainment and competition in exchange for a team fee. And, that the team fee be paid before they are accepted.

If the shoe were on the other foot and you agreed to start the tournament on Saturday morning, but just didn’t get around to it until Tuesday afternoon, how many teams would forgive you? Yet, paying late is somehow ok for the teams? Not really.

And lastly, the charge of “disrespecting your customer” for asking for payment is just a deflection. At TourneyCentral, all our customers are important, but the ones who pay on time and in full are our most important, regardless of their volume. The ones who don’t pay on time are one of our competitor’s problems next year.