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.

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.

Last weekend at the 2008 NSCAA Convention in Baltimore, TourneyCentral had a cake on display, made by the awesomely cool artists of Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes, The Food Network) It was big, it smelled delicious, it drew a crowd and it was awesome.

The cake artists at Charm City Cakes OWN their market. Duff decided at some point that being a good cake creator was just not going to be enough and that he was going to own awesome. As examples, the piping of the goalie gloves was intricate. The ball was perfectly round. The gloves were to scale with the ball. The cake was a product of years spent honing a craft and a unwavering dedication to awesome. Even a simple sheet cake from Charm City Cakes, I suspect, has elements of awesome baked and decorated in and on it. In spite of their fame, they were just regular people, taking calls, answering emails, fretting over whether I was happy with the cake or not.

Our advice: We’ve all been to “just another tournament” and it always has that certain “nothing special” feel. And then we’ve been to AWESOME tournaments when it almost doesn’t matter that our team didn’t place or even win any games. But everyone wants to go back.

Strive to be that tournament that everyone wants to come back to, win or lose. Look at your tournament from the point of view of the teams. What makes these events awesome? It may be the simple things that have nothing to do with the competition on the pitch, like a smile from the volunteers at every turn, a great hotel stay, upbeat energy from the HQ tent (yes, teams can feel tension!).. simple things — like awesomeness — that are hard to describe and harder yet to create as a formula. Yet, you know if when you “feel” it.

Behind the scenes as an attempt to get into the essence of awesome. When we booked into the NSCAA in Baltimore, I knew I just had to get an Ace of Cakes cake. This was back in September, 2007. I dropped them an email, asking if they would be interested in making a soccer cake for the exhibit booth, how much, etc. I really didn’t expect anything back because these guys are famous and I’m not, but Jessica sent me an email back within a day with a “yes, we can and want to” and a price (which I thought was way too low for an “Ace Cake”) We signed an agreement, did the money thing and we had our cake booked. On a phone call later that week, Mary Alice then asked what I wanted the cake to look like, what flavor, etc.

My response was “You guys are the artists, so whatever you want within a soccer theme. And pick your favorite flavor for the cake.” The phone call immediately turned from an order-taking into a creative session, where the tone of her voice got that bit of excitement edge. We hashed through several design ideas and came up with a soccer ball being caught by a pair of goalie gloves. And, the entire bakery would sign the “game ball” (which I thought they would charge extra for, but didn’t.) I suspect the creative process kept going all the way through until delivery.

From the emails through the phone calls, through the on time delivery during a Baltimore snow storm, to the excitement Mark (he delivered to the show) felt about the huge soccer show (while we were “ooing” and “ahhhing” over the cake; he was “ooing” and “ahhhing” over the huge soccer show, which made US feel like WE were the ones who were doing something special!), these guys were about the most awesome folks I have ever bought anything from. Ever.

The real product they are selling is not really just cake, but awesomeness that focused everything on the customer experience. Never for a moment, did they forget that the real product was an intimate, authentic customer experience. And they were responsible for managing and steering that. And they did it with ease, grace, professionalism, genuine excitement, pleasure and a sense of humor. Simply awesome