Soccer Tournament Review

On the surface, a stay-to-play rooming policy may be a good thing for your soccer tournament. It is fast becomes the de facto standard for housing at soccer tournaments. But, be aware that with a stay to play policy, teams are now expecting services.

Some of the services expectations are
- Find them rooms. If you are getting money from your stay to play policy, teams now expect you to find the rooms for them. Giving them a list of hotels and phone numbers is not longer enough for a soccer tournament with a stay to play policy.
- Service complaints. If the teams have problems with hotels, they are YOUR problems, not theirs. Have a contact number and someone on staff to deal with the hotels and resolve issues.
- Cancellation issues. If your tournament cancels or the team cancels, the teams expect a full refund of their room fees and will not tolerate hotels holding “cancellation fees,” regardless of what was signed. Most of these transactions are credit card transactions and card companies will do chargebacks without regard for agreements. If the room was not used, the charge will most likely not stick.

Our Advice: By all means, establish a stay to play policy for your soccer tournament, but do not expect that to be passive income. Put someone in charge who has the flexible schedule to work with hotels in the daytime and teams on nights and weekends. And, have this person available during registration and on the first day of competition to deal with hotel issues.

Make sure this person also has a relationship with the hotels and that all the GMs know who you are and have all the details about the soccer tournament.

And, lastly, this position is probably too important and demanding to be a volunteer position. Consider paying your housing coordinator a flat fee or a percentage of the rooming charges.

Of course, you can always opt to use a housing agency, but be sure to pick a reputable one who has a history of great customer service. Rooming revenue is nothing if you have to get involved with disputes between the housing agency, teams and hotels with every complaint.

There are a lot of spring tournaments closing registration and accepting teams. For 2008, on average, TourneyCentral applications are up and average of 38% over this time last year and soccer tournaments are cutting more teams due to field limits, referees limits and just overall bad fit.

As you can imagine, this is an increased opportunity for team managers, coaches and club presidents to send vicious email. What I call a “drive-by” emailing.

Our Advice: First, take a deep breath and fight the urge to reply in the same tone and manner. It may seem personal, but it is not. Email hides the humanity of the conversation and it is easy to “blast off” on a nameless, faceless machine. It doesn’t make it more excusable or easier to take, but… well, just breath.

Second, do not reply via email. Look up the head coach’s phone number and place a call to him or her. Once you start talking human being to human being, it is a lot harder to say really mean things to each other. There are those people here and there who can say mean thing to anther human being without remorse, but they are few and far between. If the coach you are talking to is one of those people, he/she is only validating your wisdom of choice by not accepting their team. If he/she is that much of a jerk BEFORE they get to your tournament, think about what a handful they will be in person!

Third, follow up the conversation with the email. If it is the head coach that sent you the “drive-by,” confirm what you talked about. If it is the team manager or club president or other person who has an “illusion of influence,” confirm that you spoke with the head coach of the team and encourage they to speak directly with the head coach. Leave it at that; do not offer additional details. If the head coach wishes to share, then he/she will. Do not engage further in any additional discussion via reply email.

Rule one: Remove technology as soon as possible from any conversation that is best handled by human beings. Machines have no feelings and they don’t care about yours. People, on the other hand, do and assess the impact of their words and body language many, many times during a single conversation. Use that power.

Look at common things that you see everyday in new and different ways. Here is an example.

You run a competitive tournament and a group of teams from the same club has applied as a block. Most of the teams are high-caliber and they are able to compete at the level you have set for your tournament. But, there are some B and C level teams in the group that just will not be able to compete.

You accept teams, but you cut the B and C level teams. Immediately, you get a letter from the DOC, club president, etc, threatening to pull the entire club from your tournament if you do not include the less competitive teams. What do you do? If you don’t accept the less-competitive teams, the club may go elsewhere. If you do accept the teams, then your brand of being a competitive tournament suffers.

Our advice: As more and more clubs are making multiple team and DOC-led coaching the norm, accepting individual teams on their merit alone, without regard for the club needs is becoming a challenge. Here is a what we think.

Ultimately, the DOC or the multiple team coach has made a decision to coach the teams, splitting up their time among the teams. They applied to your tournament, knowing full well what your selection criteria is. The parents of the players made the decision to put their kid in the team coached by the multiple-team coach, DOC, etc, knowing that they may eventually have to make these hard decisions. It is ultimately the coach who is responsible for putting his/her team in this situation. Keep this point in mind at all times.

If the DOC pulls all the teams and tries to find another tournament to accept them as a block, they are going to run into the same problem you have with the other tournament. If they put their teams into a less competitive tournament, the parents of the elite-level teams are not going to be happy with the competition and eventually, will leave this DOC for someone else who shares their vision. You know this, the DOC knows this. Keep your leverage.

Make sure you communicate expectations to DOCs or multiple team coaches that you are evaluating teams individually, based on their ability to compete, not based on whether or not they are part of a club contingent. Be very clear with the DOC and cc the club president, coach, team rep and everyone you can think of. Get a confirmation of the terms and conditions IN WRITING (email) before considering accepting the team into your tournament. Nothing less than your tournament brand is at stake here.

Post the terms and conditions of application on your application form and make sure it is checked off. With TourneyCentral sites, the T&C are placed on the application, are sent to the coach via email, are written into the team Message Center. You can now edit the T&C in your Web Site Maint Module>Variables.

Create another tournament for less-competitive teams that plays along side your competitive tournament. One is the Cup and the other is a Challenge. But, be very clear in your marketing that the Cup does not accept less than elite teams and the Challenge does not allow competitive teams.

The key here is to maintain your brand integrity, but also to manage expectations! DOC and multiple team coaching is here to stay, regardless of how bad an idea it is. The trick is to make sure it does not derail your tournament in the process.