Shortly after publishing the post on Meerkat, twitter released its own video-streaming app called Periscope. Since the two tools are so familiar, we’re just republishing our blog post, replacing Meerkat with Periscope. You decide which you want to use.

A couple months ago, a state soccer association asked how they might live-stream video from the site as the soccer games were being played at their tournaments. While possible, the costs to pull that off were over whelming.

Not so any more.

Hot on the heels of Meerkat, Periscope has been taking the Internet by storm, even being used by broadcast and cable TV to provide some behind-the-scenes look at how TV news comes together.

What is Periscope?
Periscope is an iPhone App (Android coming out soon hopefully) that turns any iPhone into a broadcast video camera. Basically, you download the app, log in with your twitter account and press the stream button. You can also get fancy and put in a title for your streaming session or enter a delay time to start counting down when your session will begin. When your twitter followers have also downloaded the stream and turned on notifications, they will get a notification that you are either live or you have set a delayed stream. They then click on the link in your twitter timeline to start watching whatever you are pointing your camera phone to.

There are other features like flipping the cameras around to point toward you, a chat button that functions like twitter as well as a “hearts” button. Once you are done streaming, you can save your stream to your camera or just let it disappear, much like Snapchat. It gets saved to the twitter servers for 24 hours and then disappears.

Our advice
Firstly, build out your networks. Since Periscope relies on a strong twitter network, you should focus on there. Running up to your tournament, set up some behind-the-scenes meerkat sessions such as a welcome message from the tournament director or a Q&A session where you encourage questions be submitted live via meerkat.

Visit an advertiser/sponsor and periscope the experience. Ask the owner/manager to invite the teams or welcome them. Do this before, during and after the tournament.

Invite parents to live-cast the games during the entire weekend. Post a large banner with the periscope logo and a white space where anyone willing to live-cast can put their twitter handle so fans and players can connect and watch each others’ periscope. Convert this into a front page, sticky story so people can find and follow the live video streams from your tournament.

Assign someone from your tournament to be the official periscope stream from the tournament. Video games, the HQ, interview vendors, show the action, show the fun. Show the teams that decided to go to another tournament instead of yours how much fun they are missing!

I’m sure there are all sorts of other ways you can use periscope for your event. Feel free to share them with us and we’ll post your creativity right here.

It’s almost as cool as real gold. Get your free 2015 challenge coin by visiting our booth at the NSCAA.

Booth 307 — sharing with Premier Athletic Advertising — so check out their calendar of tournaments for your team while you are there.

And ask about TourneyCentral, of course. They use our software for many of their soccer tournament events.

See you at the NSCAA next weekend.

Every so often, we get approached by a tournament who wants to have teams sign up to get scores as text messages on their phones. While tournaments have the ability to send text messages out to teams using the Team Apps Module, that feature is rapidly deteriorating.

Here’s why.

Texting (SMS) using a web browser is just really an email trick, one that the cell phone companies would really we rather not do and are making it more difficult with each passing year. In order for texting by the web to work, we need not only the cell phone number but the provider. This is something the team provides upon application if they want to get text messages from the tournament.

Therein lies the rub. Brands have misused trust so much that nobody wants them to be part of their inner text messaging circle. Or — more accurately — to NOT text them. For better or worse, your soccer tournament is seen as a brand.

But this is TourneyCentral so we have a solution, one that is more in-line with where texting is going long-term.

By this time next year, texting will be dead and messaging will have taken its place. It’s a subtle distinction but messaging allows the user to control the messages locally and not rely on a service to “take them off the list.” When the user no longer wants to hear from you, *poof* you’re gone.

One popular messaging service is Twitter. Twitter is versatile enough so that even teams who don’t want to sign up for the service can still get “text” messages from you.

Our advice: The first step is to set up a twitter account for your tournament. People with twitter accounts can follow and get either notifications or text messages when you tweet. People without twitter and don’t want twitter can text to 40404 and put FOLLOW yourevent in the message. (UNFOLLOW yourevent when they want you to go away)

When you update your scores, there is a Tweet button on your confirmation screen. You have to be signed in and this will compose a tweet that you can then send to anyone following you, with a link to your mobile web app.

– Market your twitter follow (or 40404) to the teams.
– Tweet your scores as they are updated
– Tweet anything like DEALS or weather
– If you want to get gutsy, tweet photos using your phone (or Vine)

Check out our blog in more depth. We’re all over social media for soccer tournaments. Here and here for some specific ideas.