Soccer Tournament Review

TourneyCentral now has a Twitter account. If you also have a Twitter account, you can follow our Tweets at http://twitter.com/tourneycentral.

If you really don’t know what Twitter is, watch the video.

Today, I saw a comment from a team rep come over that said this:

Our coach, John Smith has reached out to the tournament several times via e-mail in regards to us not receiving a confirmation on our acceptance into the tournament. It was only after checking the status on line that we saw that we’ve been accepted. Due to lack of follow up on your part and lack of confirmation for the tournament we are going to pull out and will be stopping payment on our check.

Got me wondering how many times the tournament sent an email to coach Smith (not his real name, of course) that went to his junk folder or he didn’t bother replying to. So, I looked it up. Four messages were sent to him, without a reply back.

Our advice: If a coach does not answer an email, CALL HIM! And, you may want to advise your teams that you will be sending emails and that if they do not hear from you within a reasonable time, CALL YOU! Email is rapidly becoming an obsolete communication tool as more and more ISPs are deciding for their customer what is and what is not spam.

And, make sure your subject lines are not “spammy.” A subject line like “You’re Accepted!!!” will probably hit the junk folder, whereas a subject line like “Your team has been accepted to the 2008 Major Classic” will make it all the way to it’s destination inbox. Be specific and stay away from punctuation like ? and !!!!

You may also wish to drop postcards in the mail with the team acceptance, just in case emails are not getting through. While it may seem counter-intuitive for a web site to advocate for the USPS, it is the end product, not the tools, that are the important thing.

But, please, the goal is not to point fingers around in a circle about who didn’t answer their emails. The goal is to communicate, whether that is by phone, postcard or email.

Today, I finally put the customer service number to the Wall Street Journal in my cell phone. And that is not a good thing.

I put the number in because the newspaper carrier misses my house with regularity and when I need to call them, their web site is so full of news and segmented information that I can’t ever find the number quickly.

Our Advice: Be reachable, but first, take care of those things that make teams feel like they need to call you in the first place! Keep your Frequently Asked Question up to date, your news on the front page timely, dates published when certain things are going to happen (like team acceptance and schedules). And, make sure your news is written in very simple language.

And, if the teams still feel like they need to call, keep your phone number current n each page of your web site.

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.

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.