Soccer Tournament Review

Sometimes I run across something that is just so stupid I have to say something. WePlay.com is that level of stupid.

Reported by the New York Times and blogged about, WePlay.com is a site that is a social network for kids who play sports. I would have shrugged this story off except at the 2008 NSCAA and US Youth Soccer shows, there have been entire companies built on creating social networks for soccer. Kids can upload their video, share soccer stories, put in their practice schedule, etc, etc.

And, all doomed to fail. Here is why.

Youth sports in America is something kids DO, not who they are. Segmenting kids’ lives into specific interests is just not going to work because the kids themselves resist the labels. Today, for 90:00 minutes, they are a soccer player, then later this afternoon, they are a music enthusiast and after that, they are a blogger. Tomorrow, they will be a student, then a peer counselor, followed by a fashion consultant. They may become a soccer player again for about 40:00 minutes of the required 90:00

They already have a WePlay.com called MySpace and Facebook. Before WePlay.com launched, the developers and their financial backers should have taken a long hard look at what makes MySpace and Facebook tick. And, segmenting social networks into specific interests is the antithesis of a social network.

In some respects, our calendar of soccer tournaments could be called a social network. But, we’re not and are not delusional about the amount of time and attention players, coaches and family give to the tournament. We are almost relentless about our “90:00 minute attention span” rule. Focus on them when they are playing, do not expect they will care about you before or after. But, be grateful if they do!

Our Advice: Do not get caught up in imagining the teams care more about your soccer tournament than it being a great entertainment venue for a weekend. It is and will be nothing more to your guest teams and their families. Instead, focus your time and energy into providing them with a great time while they are your guests. Strive to capture their attention for 91:00 minutes while they are your guests.

For your on-line presence, keep your tournament web site as close to real-time as possible. Also, soccer tournaments should to focus on providing Widgets (Facebook apps) that kids and parents can bring the tournament into their Facebook, MySpace pages. Integrating interests is how kids see themselves. Parents and marketers need to quit seeing kids as “the soccer player”, “the actor”, “the singer”, “the bandie”, etc. Take a look at a typical soccer-playing kid’s Facebook page and my point here is established. (BTW, every TourneyCentral tournament has a widget teams can grab from their application page and paste into the team, club site that has the schedule, news and DEALS build in real-time.)

Focus on providing a great time; the players and their families will take care of making your soccer tournament part of their networks all by themselves.

During the past few months, email junk (or spam) has become a huge issue and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have begun taking on the problem themselves, in many cases filtering legitimate email. Specifically for soccer tournament news, it is affecting the way we communicate to coaches and referees, such as you sending out from the Team Applications Module or the confirmations coaches receive when they apply.

Here are two examples of what many ISPs consider “spam”:
1) A coach has four teams she wants to enter into your soccer tournament. She completes the first application and gets a confirmation, no problem. Because the contact information is similar for the 2nd-4th teams, she hits the back button, changes the information and re-submits, generating a second, third and fourth application. While you will get the applications to the database, she may get the email confirmations as she is now receiving four emails that are coming from the same server, that have similar subject lines.. in short, her confirmations now look like spam to her ISP. They delete them without ever asking her if she wants them delivered. Gone.

2) You run a local soccer tournament and most of the teams buy their high speed cable from one provider, say rr.com (monopoly? maybe..). You send out a broadcast email, accepting teams. Since your messages to each team is similar to all the others, with the exception of the recipient, team name, teamID, etc… to the ISP, it looks like a couple hundred emails, all flooding into their users, from the same server, in a short period of time… MUST BE SPAM! They block the email and your coaches never see the emails.

In each case, the emails sent are clearly NOT spam. But, computers are basically very dumb and don’t know that. If you pair that up with frustrated, overworked ISP system administrators who have to deal with consumer expectations of being able to remove all spam (their marketing and sales people told you they could, right?) you have a system that makes email pretty useless.

A recent post by Media Post explains what consumers think happens when they report email as spam. Just for the record, as a responsible email provider, TourneyCentral is obligated to respond to each spam report or risk being “black listed” by the reporting ISP. Since we can’t risk that happening to your tournament, we are now spending dozens of hours a month replying to tech support departments at Roadrunner, Verizon, Coxnet, etc. .. after being on hold for dozens more hours….

Our Advice: Email as a sole source of communication to your teams is rapidly becoming obsolete. We suggest strongly that you now assume that your email will not get through and search for other ways to make sure your message does.

Do send email, but also post news on the front page, encourage your teams (and referees) to check their Message Center often, urge them to build and install the soccer tournament widget (available through their team application) on their team or club web site, call them after they make an application to confirm you received it (do this in weekly batches). You may even consider a small postcard sent via USPS, confirming the team’s application and TeamID. (Bet you can sell this as sponsorship!) All of this is a bit extra work, but it will result in a tighter connection of your teams to your tournament.

At TourneyCentral, we are looking at ways to work around email. In addition to email, applicants can now elect to have a confirmation of their application, along with their TeamID, sent to their mobile device, the Team Widget, your front page news and referee message now appears on the TourneyCentral Soccer Tournament Calendar and all messages sent from the Team Apps broadcast get written to the team Message Center. We are also close to some technology with OneCall Now to send a text to speech message to your teams.

The business of soccer tournaments never stands still and the ones that survive and thrive are those that continue to evolve as trends, technology and team needs change. TourneyCentral will be here to provide services that enable you to evolve ahead of the pack!

Remember last week when gas prices were $3.45 and up? I got a call from a friend of mine who was in line south of town at a gas station that was selling gas for $3.14 a gallon. The cars were lined up to buy gas that was almost sure to be in short supply soon if they didn’t hurry.

This week, prices went to $3.07 and are probably even going lower as I write this. There are no lines of cars, there is no news story reporting on the local UDF that is selling gas for $3.07/gallon. $3.14 is no longer a bargin.

What changed? Well, nothing except the perception of value! Same gas filling up the same cars by the same people. Same gas stations, yet the same people who thought $3.14 was a BARGAIN last week, couldn’t care less about $3.07 this week. It is all about perception of what is valuable.

Our advice: How much value do teams perceive your soccer tournament to have? What about your market do you know that would create that “line of cars down the block” of teams begging to get into your tournament? How can you create a buzz about your value? I don’t have the answers, but I do have the questions, which is always a good place to start.

Most of the time, value has nothing to do with the price of something, but how much demand there is for what you have. What kind of demand are you creating for your tournament? Sometimes, it is as easy as being the most fun weekend soccer players will have in their season, not always the most competitive. Take a look around and find that something special that gives your tournament value. Create a perception of demand. Sell it and the teams will line up around the block.

As more parents are pushing their kids into sports for the college scholarship dream, the “market” is getting tighter. The New York Time is running an article series that is very interesting. The link to the article is below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/sports/10scholarships.html

I don’t want to give away the WHOLE article, but it ends with this:

“Ten thousand per kid per year is not an unreasonable estimate,” he said. “But we never looked at it as a financial transaction. You are misguided if you do it for that reason. You cannot recoup what you put in if you think of it that way. It was their passion — still is — and we wanted to indulge that.

“So what if we didn’t take vacations for a few years.”

Pat Taylor, who started playing soccer at 4, said it took him about a month to accept that his dream of playing varsity soccer on scholarship in college would not happen. He looks back fondly on his youth career but also wishes he knew at the start what he knows now about the process.

“The whole thing really is a crapshoot, but no one ever says that out loud,” he said. “On every team I played on, every single person there thought for sure that they would play in college. I thought so, too. Just by the numbers, it’s completely unrealistic.

“And if I had it to do over, I would have skipped a practice every now and then to go to a concert or a movie with my friends. I missed out on a lot of things for soccer. I wish I could have some of that time back.

Our Advice: Keep in mind that most kids playing in your soccer tournament will never be good enough or lucky enough to play in college. The least you (and their parents!) can give them is weekend of fun.

When I was young and thought I knew everything, I had a job as Leadership/Sales Training Manager at Huffy. One year, we flew all the field managers into Breckenridge, CO for a leadership seminar. It was a great time and everything was themed to health, fitness and balance.

Lunch was healthy, breakfast was healthy and after about 4 days of health food, we had a near riot on our hands. The managers wanted sausage and eggs for breakfast and meat and potatoes — followed by fattening desserts — for dinner. For them, it was all about getting away, being entertained, networking. The leadership workshop and healthy habits workshops was all just a way to justify the indulgence into entertainment.

The lesson I learned from that experience was this: The quality of the workshop/conference/etc will always be rated by the quality of the food and entertainment. The best keynote speakers in the world will not save you from a skinless, baked rubber chicken lunch.

Our advice: A soccer tournament is a lot like a leadership conference. Intellectually, you can justify the trip as a great soccer experience, good competition, etc, etc, but the reality is it is almost always about entertainment value. Great hotels, great food, great friends and the tournament is a good experience, win or lose. If the hotel stinks, the food is lousy, the parking is horrid; even winning teams will not have a good experience.

It seems this year that hotel complaints are up. Way up. Hoteliers are not returning requests for rooms, they are not booking teams into rooms until they have been formally accepted and just overall, treating teams with disregard. As a tournament director, you can’t ignore this and must take action. Make sure you have a good relationship with hotels, but always remember that without your tournament, they are not booking rooms.

A soccer tournament is about 20% soccer and 80% entertainment. The hotel is a major part of the entertainment formula. When you forget this by ignoring hotel concerns, not staffing the concessions area, running out of tshirts early — even if your competition is outstanding — teams will not have a good time and will start looking for any other tournament experience but yours.

This weekend, snowstorms ripped through Ohio and left anywhere from 13 inches to over 2 feet of snow everywhere. It is melting and will probably be gone in a few days, but for the early season soccer tournaments, it has caused all sorts of rumors about tournaments being cancelled.

Teams that travel from outside the area only hear the sensational stories the news puts out about the bad weather because it makes news. Flooding, tornado devastation, huge snow accumulation numbers, etc. may not accurately describe the ground conditions that is happening in and around your tournament. Yet your guest teams don’t know that unless you tell them.

Our Advice: Control your event. Always. Don’t let rumors take control of your message or you will be spending unnecessary time and energy responding to rumors and assumptions people make simply because they don’t know what is going on.

Be proactive about the status of your tournament and post up news on your front page, in your FAQs, in the Quick News and if necessary, send out an email to the coaches. Even if you don’t know yet what action you will take, you may want to tell them that. But, always with a promise you will update them via your Web site when you have made a decision.

You can’t control the weather, but you can control how you communicate about how it affects your tournament.