Soccer Tournament Review

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

My daughter had a high school tournament to play this weekend on she asked for pasta for Friday night dinner. I remembered the Pizza Hut commercials where they showed these big trays of “3 pounds of pasta.” So, I ordered the Tuscan chicken alfredo, thinking that it would be somewhat delicious. Everyone on the commercial seemed happy enough.

We got the box of pasta, flipped open the lid and were let down almost immediately. The pasta was not a deep dish of cheesy goodness, smothered in rich, creamy alfredo sauce like they showed on TV. Instead, it was a single layer of helpless, lifeless, over-cooked pasta curls with some quasi-grilled chicken barely there on top. It tasted like pizza and had the texture of oatmeal. Rufus enjoyed most of it the day after.

Our advice: Don’t oversell your tournament! Make sure what you deliver at least looks like the product you are advertising. You may be able to get one or two teams to buy a really good sales job, but they won’t be back. And, chance are, they will tell friends.

One of the things we hear consistently from smaller, regional soccer tournaments is how to compete against the larger, more well-known, branded tournament events. I am living a case-study this weekend.

My daughter is playing this weekend in a well-established, but non-TourneyCentral event. So far, I have gotten eight text messages and three “vent calls” from my wife who is in charge this weekend. “The fields are badly marked”, “there are no port-a-johns on the fields”, “the directions getting there sucked”, “nobody is posting scores” and on and on… (I’m not dismissing her very valid points, but I’ve heard and experienced them all before myself. My solution was to create TourneyCentral. ) This is only the first day and they now just left to play the second day. I’ve got my cell phone fully-charged.

As I was talking to her on the phone and her voice went to the tone of the school teacher in a Charlie Brown TV show and my empathetic remarks digressed to “uh-huh, ok, hmm”, I began cruising around my favorite blogs. Up pops a post in The Challenge Dividend by Bob Gilbreath that nailed my experience.

In the post, he looks at a recent interaction by Donatos Pizza and American Express. Read the post to get the whole picture, but bottom line is Donatos (a local pizza chain) tries harder because they have more to lose.. and more to gain than the big, “already branded, everyone knows who we are” American Express (of which I am also a long-term member).

Our Advice: First, have a really good product. Starting off on the TourneyCentral platform is a good way to communicate that out to your potential guest teams. Second, reach out to the teams, put a personal touch on your soccer tournament and make the teams feel special, wanted and respected. Third, follow through with your promises.

If you are a large, well-branded tournament, think and act like you are always in second place. Never forget what you did in the early days, trying to attract teams to your tiny, unknown event. And, never stop trying to break into new markets, while never forgetting the teams and clubs that helped you get big along the way.

And, if you happen to have a Donatos Pizza in your neighborhood, call them up and offer to cut THEM a deal instead of asking them for money. When you have made it, start spreading the wealth a little bit along the way. What you give up in the short-term in money will come back to support you from a community when you may need it most. (Ok, a throw back to one of my all-time favorite movies It’s a Wonderful Life but applies here!)

I enjoy reading email that coaches, parents and team reps send soccer tournaments. It’s a great insight into our target market and keeps us on our toes about what the soccer public needs and expects from tournaments and the web site that supports it.

My favorite emails are the ones that write paragraph after paragraph of needs and concerns and then they say something like “Oh, great web site, btw!”

By the way??? BY THE WAY? Do they not know how hard we work on making the web site easy to use, reliable and real-time accurate? Do they not know how many weekends we have given up to make it possible for them to even notice that the web site is great? But, perhaps that is the point; at least they noticed something great when they saw it, even if it was a footnote.

Our Advice: Nobody will appreciate the blood, sweat and tears you pour into your soccer tournament than you. But, don’t expect them to. If they are not complaining about the basics like field lines, lack of port-a-potties, no water at the field, games always starting late, no referees…. you’re doing something right! Chances are they will notice that things went fine without a hitch.

Think about the last time you complained because there was no food at the grocery store. Or the last time you didn’t have a place to sleep. Yet, when was the last time you complained because the waitress was a little bit late bringing the coffee refill at a restaurant. Exactly. When the basic needs are taken care, it is only then that we find the time to complain about the minutiae.

So, the next time someone complains about having to pay for parking or a 10 minute overlap in their multiple-coach team schedule or an 8:00am game, just smile. You know you’ve taken care of the big things.

BTW, mostly nobody notices the way a TourneyCentral web site is always up and running, is accurate and is easy to use. I guess that is a good thing.

Today, I was reading Seth Godin’s blog and read a story that made a perfect argument for a TICO Score for ranking soccer tournaments.

It was hidden as a marketing post on “green marketing” but there, plain as day, made the perfect argument for a service like TICO Score. A simple number that assigns the health of your soccer tournament that tells everyone at a glance if you are good, bad or average.

Our advice: Send your participants to www.ticoscore.com to evaluate your tournament. Also, read www.challengedividend.com.

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.