Putting it together at the 2013 NSCAA

Tournaments

We’ve arrived at the NSCAA show and are putting our booth together. Welcome to the “behind the scenes” look at how a show booth comes together.

We will post photos as it progresses…

Be sure to stop by booth number 5201 later tonight to find out more about how we can help you attract more teams, more sponsors and manage your soccer tournament event more efficiently.

It doesn’t look like much now, but it soon will

The skin is on and the tournament logos attached. Almost there…

And the other side is coming together

And we are ready for business. See everyone back here tonight!

The 2013 NSCAA

Tournaments

It’s mid-December and that only means two things: The Holidays are almost here and preparation for the NSCAA Annual Conference is in full swing! TourneyCentral will be exhibiting again as we do every year.

Be sure to stop by booth number 5201 to find out more about how we can help you attract more teams, more sponsors and manage your soccer tournament event more efficiently.

Start your new soccer tournament off right – VIDEO

Tournaments, , ,

Marcy has just been named her club's soccer tournament director. She searches for the best solution to help her manage all the tasks that go along with hosting a soccer tournament. What she finds is a hodge-podge of solutions, all held together with digital duct tape. Click play to see what her solution was.

Our first video

Grandma and grandpa want to see their grandson Billy play in his first away soccer tournament. How will they find the right field and times Billy plays?

Fortunately, Billy's coach applied to a TourneyCentral soccer tournament so finding all this information was easy.
Billy's grandma went to the website, clicked on Schedules, found Billy's team name and got his schedule in seconds.

Soccer tournaments 365/24/7

Tournaments,

Last week, we added the first 2013 event to our soccer tournament calendar, the Cincinnati West Soccer Fest to be held May 4 – May 5, 2013. The next season has already begun.

Then it occurs to us that with the Internet running 365 days a year, seven days a week and twenty-four hours a day, the tournament season never really ends. You are barely done hosting a spectacular weekend of games, fun and memories when the teams are already asking, “when is your tournament going to be held for next year?”

Are you ready for that?

In this always on world we’ve created, someone is always watching you, even in the off season. They want to be a part of your event and that is a good thing, even though it seems like a lot of pressure at first blush. It is always easier to maintain momentum than getting caught in a constant start-stop-start-stop routine.

Our advice: Act as if your event is always happening, even though you think nobody is watching or cares. Google never sleeps so anything you put out there on the Internet about your soccer tournament will get picked up and added to the index and library you’ve already created.

Your website is always getting traffic. Sure, during the tournament weekend it is going crazy with traffic to the scores, standings and DEALS but if your event needs 250 teams, that is only 250 or so visits within a forty to fifty week period your application is open. Why not keep the front door unlocked all year round if there is no downside?

Assign a small group of people to work on next year. This only needs to be 2-3 people. Their role is to watch what works or doesn’t work well for this year and be ready to turn over suggestions to the tournament committee immediately after the current year concludes. Often, the tournament committee is so exhausted after the weekend that — while they mean to get started on next year’s event quickly — they never get to it. Then, it is later in the year and panic ensues. A dedicated forward team doesn’t suffer that exhaustion.

Lastly, make a commitment early for next year. Get your sanctioning forms completed, lock down the venue and the dates, sign the hotel contracts, get yourself on the calendar and turn your web site over to next year. Make it real as soon as you can. It is an advantage.

Some assembly required. Here’s your bag of parts!

Tournaments

assembly-parts

At some point in time during the past couple of years, vendors quit selling “solutions” and are now selling bags of parts. They have an app to do this part and a web site to do this. Their Windows-PC software manages this part on your desktop, doesn’t do Macs, iPads or iPhones. And your website? Well, they don’t know how to do that, but they are pretty sure it’s easy.

“Do you want to talk to our tech people?” the sales person asks.

And you talk to their tech people but the tech people only know how to screw in this part to that other part. They don’t know (or care) how the whole thing works. Their job is only to get you to understand how their parts works.

And you hang up, frustrated that nobody quite knows how all the parts fit together so you can just get on with the business of putting on your soccer tournament!

Our Advice: Quit buying parts from junk dealers, expecting to find the best deal on website hosting, scheduling, referee assigning or hotel rooming. Instead, focus your energy on providing the best overall experience to your guest teams using an integrated, comprehensive solution.

At TourneyCentral, all our modules — from team applications through scheduling and scoring to referee assignments — all work together. They were built by people who were tasked to create soccer tournaments, not just fill up hotel rooms or tweet out stuff. We’ve all been there and we continue to be there.

At the end of the weekend, you want your guest teams talking about how tight your tournament was, not how irritating it was to book a room or find a score. You want to deliver a fully-assembled tournament, not just a bag of parts.