Every coach has always looked to save money on tournament fees, but with the economy where it is, there seems to be more pressure to go after the mulit-team discounts. The logic coaches use is that it is more cost-effective for you to take in multiple teams as your marketing costs are lower, your management time is less, etc. But that is a myth.
Here is why it is a bad investment for soccer tournaments.
Lower marketing costs
You have a quality soccer tournament event and the club knows it. That is primarily why they want to bring all their teams to your event, especially at the beginning and end of a season. Having all the teams together in one place bonds the players, the parents and makes for a stronger club. You have already made that investment and lowering your fees will not allow you to recoup that investment. Isn’t that why you invested marketing dollars, to attract multiple teams from the same club?
Lower management costs
The myth here is that it will take less effort to manage multiple teams from the same club because your management costs are lower. But, the opposite is actually true. A coach may have coaching responsibility for multiple teams, making scheduling more difficult as you work around coaching conflicts. Parents may have players on different teams who may also have a expectation that since their club is bringing you more business, they should be able to get preferential scheduling treatment as well. They may not ask for it, but they sure as heck will tell everyone on the touchline how they have to “choose” between kids because the tournament doesn’t care.
In addition, you still have the same number of team reps to deal with and most likely, the payments will come in slower because the teams have perceived “leverage.”
A team drops out
If one team drops out and you have already given the discount based on the number of teams they sent, but are no longer sending, do you then go back and ask for the full amount for each team? Not likely.
Hotel rooms
If the club is sending the teams to your soccer tournament as a bonding experience, most likely they will want hotel rooms close together. If you are not prepared to accommodate that or your hotel market can’t sustain that, you will be only offering the discounted teams an opportunity to gripe and complain all weekend long.
More discounts
The multiple team discount does not end with the team fees. It moves into comp rooms for coaches, comp apparel for coaches, special accommodations on the field and anything else the coach can think to ask for. After all, you gave in on the application fee discount.
Our advice: Discounts are almost always a bad idea. It leads to “privilege thinking,” additional management costs and little brand loyalty. It is always better to sink the investment money that you would have given away in discounts into building a better soccer tournament experience that teams and clubs would pay you EXTRA to participate in. (Of course, you would not accept bribes to consider an application, but it would be a nice touch.)
Servicing guest teams at a soccer tournament isn’t the same as packing multiple items shipped to the same address. The management cost does not decrease with each team; it increases. And, having a “bundle” of teams that are comprised of human beings all with separate expectations of the experience complicates that even more.
The coach may ask for a discount, but what s/he really wants is value, which includes respect. Focus on building value for your soccer tournament event and you will be able to charge more than what you ever thought you could. Recession or not.
We routinely send out postcards to most of the soccer tournaments we know of. The photo to the left is typically what comes back after a mailing. In all, we get about 20% of all postcards we send out returned back because the address is no longer valid.