I have been driving from my home to the office the same way for the past three years or so. However, this morning, through a combination of weather-related and social happenstance, I found myself driving to work through a residential plat that exited out to the main road that leads into my office complex. What I had not noticed the three years I rutted out for myself is that homes had sprung up on either side and on the ends of the main road. I knew where I was, but nothing looked familiar. The area had changed without me noticing, even though I had driven by the same point every day for three years. I found myself surprised by this revelation.

Our Advice: No matter how well you think you know your tournament, take a look at it from different points of view frequently. How do your sponsors see you? How does the community see your event? Are you a great boom for business or are you just a traffic-jam every year? How do teams traveling in from out-of-the-area see your event? How does inviting teams from other areas change the dynamics of your tournament?

There are no right or wrong answers, but you should never find yourself surprised at the changing landscape. Always be aware of change. Oh, and take a different way to work every day. You never know when you’ll discover what you already knew!

This weekend I was asked to sub for my friend’s recreation league basketball team. The game was in an unfamiliar town. I e-mailed him for an address to get directions. Here is what I was sent:

Take 75 S to 70 West and get off at Eaton Rt. 127 exit. Turn left off the exit and go a few miles pass Kmart and Wal-Mart. At second light where a CVS is on the left and Speedway on the right, turn left onto Lexington Rd. You will stop at Maple don’t turn, stay on Lexington. The next stop sign is at East. You can see the church from that stop. The First Church of God is right there at corner of East and Lexington. It has a blue roof.
Wow, are you lost? Are these directions driving your crazy? You can imagine the frustration I was feeling as I tried to negotiate these directions and drive at the same time. I was traveling alone, so it made it even more difficult. My drive time was 30 minutes longer because of the way these directions were written.

Our Advice: BE DIRECT WITH YOUR DIRECTIONS. Start with basic information like site address, contact person and emergency phone number. Then use a modern form of providing directions (Mapquest, Google, Yahoo, etc). Always be sure to check accuracy of these directions before posting to the public. Imagine how frustrated your teams would be if they had to sort through the directions listed above to make it to your tournament. This can foul up your event very quickly. Let’s face it! One of the most basic elements to managing a successful tournament is to have teams, coaches and referees arrive on time, safely to their game site. All those associated with your event deserve easy to read, accurate and reliable directions to their game site.
Use the website maintenance module to post directions and layout maps for all sites used by your event. This module allows directors to post directions with a map through Google. There is even a feature allowing for latitude and longitude. Talk about precise. Spectators will also appreciate information related to pets, restroom facilities, smoking policy, concessions, etc. This information is crucial to helping promote a positive on-site experience for all parties involved in your event. After all, you want happy players, coaches, volunteers, spectators and referees to participate in your tournament

This blog entry is really just a shameless plug for a sponsor of the Go-o-o-oalrilla Classic.

This past weekend, ABC’s Good Morning America did a five minute segment on supermarkets and featured Jungle Jim’s almost exclusively (Stew Leonard’s and Wegmans also got a plug). Jungle Jim’s sponsors the Go-o-o-oalrilla Classic in Miamitown, Ohio (West Cincinnati).

You can see the video here or read the story here.

Why am I telling you this? Why would I not! A sponsor of a one of our tournaments just got five whole minutes on a national news show! Anyone who has ever tried to get press for their business knows how hard this is to achieve. I will tell everyone I know, including people with and without media connections. They will watch the video or read the story and they will tell more people. Pretty soon, Jungle Jim’s will not only be seen as that wonderful, wacky grocery store but they will also be seen as the community-based business who gives back to their community. As studies show, there just is no greater marketing ROI than when you have penetrated the hearts of your community. Youth sports is the expressway with built-in on ramps to the community.

Our Advice: If you have a sponsor of your event, watch the news, read the newspapers, get plugged in. And, when you see your sponsor gets some press, shout it out to everyone you know! Be proud of your sponsor’s success because their success is yours. And be sure to drop them a quick email or personal note of congratulations.

I was listening to CSPAN the other day and there was a senator at the microphone, explaining the amount of work in a gallon of gasoline. His explanation went something like: Each gallon gas contains as much work potential as 12 men working an entire year. In short, it takes the effort of 12 men working an entire year to push a car as far as a gallon of gas will take it.

He went on the compare the work output of a locamotive to 100,000 men, etc. but his point was: In our technological world, common folk have at our disposal exponentially more energy to move things than did people thousands (or even hundreds) of years ago when all they had were their hands and strong backs, maybe a plough and an ox.

This got me thinking about the amount of work-units the web-based tools of a TourneyCentral site gives an average tournament. Getting in touch with hundreds of referees is a click and email away. Sending the teams their game schedule is the same amount of work. Scheduling a tournament requires fewer volunteers as does posting scores. One gallon of Internet moves your tournament further down the road faster and with less effort than even a few years ago.

Our Advice: If you are running a soccer tournament without the TourneyCentral tools… why?? click here and get signed up today. If you are already using TourneyCentral, but only a few of the tools, take a moment and explore your modules more fully. The whole idea is to make you more efficient and effective, all the while reducing your workload. Burn some Internet fuel; we’ll make more!

When we were driving from Englewood to Indianapolis on I70 this past weekend to go to the NSCAA, we passed under a big sign at the state border that welcomed us to Ohio (I know, we were leaving, but that isn’t the point). On the sign, it has our red-white-blue Ohio logo, our state slogan and the name of the Governor and Lt. Governor. In November, we elected a new Governor, who was inaugurated the first week of January.

The sign had a small sign over the old Governor’s name and had the new Governor’s name printed on it. I counted 56 days between the election and the inauguration, which I think is probably enough time to order new signs. But, apparently not because there were these pieces of duct tape on the signs with the new folks printed on it.

All of this says one or more of the following:

• We didn’t plan in advance for a change in leadership
• We didn’t care enough to make new signs
• We didn’t want to spend the money on a new sign to change just one part of it.
• Hey, the new guy is going to be out of office in four years anyway and we’ll just have to make a new sign.
• Some other facet of bureaucracy that makes no sense.

Regardless of the reason, the message delivered to every motorist passing under those signs — subconsciously or otherwise — is Welcome to Ohio, the Duct Tape State.

Our advice: Don’t create systems that you can’t maintain properly. And when you make a system and want to keep it, don’t try to manage changes on the cheap. It will just look like you put a piece of duct tape on your event.

If you are living in Ohio, or even just care about this issue, and want to write Gov. Ted Strickland, his address is: Governor’s Office, Riffe Center, 77 South High Street, Columbus, OH 43215. (I couldn’t find an email address on the contact page of www.ohio.gov, which is a blog entry for another day.) If you just want your name added to the letter TourneyCentral will write, just offer feedback.

Yesterday, I saw a demo for Apple’s new iPhone. At that very moment Steve Jobs scrolled across the screen using a slight touch of his fingers, I hated my Treo 700w. I will buy an iPhone when they come out, even though they are partnered with Cingular Wireless and it will cost a fortune to break my contract with Verizon Wireless. I don’t even care how much the iPhone costs.

Judging from some of the pricing schemes we have seen this past spring season, pricing a tournament appears to be one of the trickier things about managing the event. But it needn’t be. The rule is a hard and fast one that has not changed since we began bartering each other for goods and services. Here it is: Price your tournament to what the market will bear.

Something about the rule seems to have been lost in translation, especially pricing for the lower age groups. For example, many events are now offering a 8v8 and 11v11 at a certain age group. From our prespective, the price should be the same since the experience of competing in a tournament is the same and the ability to win a trophy is the same, regardless of the number of players per side. Yet, many events are putting in multi-tiered pricing based on the number per side. This is unnessesarily complicated and violates the primary rule of pricing.

I suspect that much of the pricing discussion runs along the lines of Well, since we have fewer players per team, the cost should be adjusted so the per player cost is consistent or even worse it only cost us one referee pay at 6v6, so we should charge less.

Which brings us to the second rule of pricing: Never price to your costs. Always price to the value you provide.

What many tournaments appear to be forgetting is that the pricing for the lower age groups is designed to create a LOSS LEADER category. Even if you fail to cover your costs for the lower age groups, you will most definately make up for it in merchandise, concessions and repeat business for many more years to come. Younger teams buy more stuff and teams tend to go back to the tournaments they had fun at when they were U8, 9 and 10.

Our Advice: Keep your pricing simple. Most tournament events don’t need more than 2 tiers of pricing; entry level teams that are just starting travel (U8/9-10) and older teams that are looking for more competition. You should be looking to get as much money out of the teams as the market will bear while they should be looking to get as much value out of your tournament as possible. As long as each feels they got a good deal, the price is right. And make sure your younger teams have fun!

Next pricing blog entry: What is your market?

I brought some work home last night, plugged in my laptop and dug in, when my mouse starting acting crazy. It was on its last legs and I knew it. So, I ran down the the local Office Depot and picked up a replacement mouse. I didn’t think too much about it, a mouse is a mouse, right?

After working for about an hour with this replacement mouse, my wrist hurt, my fingers were sore and I felt like I was draggin a brick around. The manufacturer used cheap tactile keys, a heavy cord and .. well, I got what I paid for. But, it moved the cursor, clicked where I wanted and did everything a mouse is supposed to do. It just didn’t go that extra two feet.

It got me thinking about all sorts of other times that an inattention to detail spoiled other events in my recent past. No awning outside the coffee-place drive up window on a rainy morning. A blast of hot air from the furnace vent over my table at lunch. The on-hold time with Verizon Wireless when I just had a quick question. The single window at the Post Office during the lunch rush. When they stated moving the traffic cones on I70 at 3:00pm instead of 3:00am. Nothing huge, just little things that could keep a pleasant experience from becoming an annoyance.

Our advice: NEVER ignore the details. Are your schedules easy to read? Do your traffic directions read to someone who is from out of town or do they make assumptions that everyone knows where something is? Do you have signs posted visibly? On your tshirt table, are the piles clearly labled by size? Do your teams know your web site address by heart? I’m sure you can think of more.

Teams want to come to your event and have fun. By making sure that the details are buttoned up, they are less likely to have a pleasant experience tainted by small annoyances that can become big issues. To quote Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Exactitude in small matters is the very soul of discipline. Make sure your event is disciplined and your ship is tight!

A friend of mine told me about a holiday tradition within their family. Her family is huge! Several aunts, uncles and cousins. Instead of getting eachother the obligatory necktie and perfume each year, they decide to support a different charity during the holiday season. All interested parties make a donation to the cause instead of purchasing a gift. This money is then given to a local charity of the groups choice the week after Christmas. The charity is always relevant to someone in their family. Giving it even more meaning!

Our Advice: Is someone in your soccer community in need? Do you know of a player from a guest team that is in need? Can you support a local charity? These are all ways your event can give back to the community during the Holiday season. This is more meaningful way to share Holiday spirit within your tournament committee. Set up a Holiday Foundation within your tournament committee and share the funds with a deserving group, individual or family. The recipient will be ever grateful, you will feel wonderful and they will be a friend of your event for life. It is a win-win for everyone.

Recently, I had a conversation with a tournament that is having growing pains. They want to leap into the premier quality tournaments and to do that, they need to accept more traveling teams and start rejecting some local teams that do not provide as much competition. As with most events, they can not expand to more fields because there are none. However, they have a local sponsor who is very much against them cutting local teams.

On the one hand, they need to grow to remain viable. On the other, they could lose their main sponsor if they do.

Our Advice: Growth is painful and doubly so if that growth means the loss of a sponsor. For every local sponsor, there are more regional sponsors. The trick is to convince the regional sponsor that you are a hub site that brings a soccer community together for an experience of their brand and then carries it back to their home towns; like bees pollinating flowers.

Geographic location does not matter as much for regional brands. Market saturation does. And if you can help spread their brand recognition be bringing a group together in one place, your tournament will have value for the brand as it helps them saturate more markets for a lot less cost.

A sponsor should never stunt your growth or resentment will eventually set in, your volunteers and staff will lose passion for the tournament and your event will wither into just another tournament.

I was standing in line at the Post Office waiting for my mail when I overheard a conversation a woman was having with the clerk at the counter. Apparently, she was sent a package through DHL, but it had not arrived. As the clerk tried to explain that the complaint was not against the USPS, but DHL, the woman simply did not know or did not care. To her, a package was sent; she did not get it and so it must be the realm of the U S Post Office to sort it all out.

The clerk finally gave up and told her to call DHL. And she didn’t have their number. They are in the phonebook was the reply. I suspect that customer will be telling her friends for several weeks — maybe months — that the Post Office lost her package and didn’t care. Even though that is not entirely the truth.

Our Advice: When dealing with vendors or third-party providers for your tournament, make sure they have the same vision of customer service that you do for your event. For example, if a photographer provides photos for your event, a parent orders some and does not receive them, the parent will most likely complain to you. While you may not have anything to do with the fulfillment of their photos, the parent will most likely not care. For all they know, they attended YOUR tournament and ordered photos from YOU.

When resolving the complaint, make sure you look up the phone number of the photographer for the parent and follow up with a resolution. If not handled properly, all the parent will ever remember and tell their friends is, I went to that tournament and got cheated out of a photo…

I recently installed crown molding in my house. For anyone who has ever done that, it is life’s ultimate lesson in humility. The angles and math needed to accomplish this seemingly simple task is staggering. After sawing through about 10 feet of expensive molding, I decided to seek out some help.

So, I went down to Lowes and bought a book. This book had a web site. It is clean, simple and did only one thing well — sold products and information to install molding and trim. It didn’t assume I wanted to receive CrownMolding Monthly, the e-newsletter on everything new and exciting on crown molding, take a tour of their factory, etc. The goal was to get me to solve my problem. It did that very well.

When I need to install crown molding again in the future, I know the web site will be there and I trust that I will be able to get me through any angle problems, regardless of how complex. This is the perfect relationship that a destination web site should have with its readers.

How does this all relate to soccer tournaments? Your tournament is a destination. Teams come to participate in your event and need to know only a few things: Who, what, where, when and how much. Too often, we come across tournament sites that try to engage visitors with the sponsoring organization, community information to a staggering degree, the total history of the tournament, trivia, polls and surveys, chat boards, and on and on and on. Ultimately, teams want a quality experience at a level which they can compete and get better in an atmosphere of mutual respect and fun. Anything that gets in the way of that on your web site is visual junk.

Our Advice: Stick to the basics. Seek out and destroy any web page on your site that does not contribute to streamlining the application, communication and participation process. Go to your web site link that you publish. Count the number of clicks it takes to get to your application. Is is more than one? If so, why? Can your guest teams find the tournament from the page you publish? Too many tournament events hide their tournament on a club page, forcing a potential guest team to hunt for the front door to the tournament. Each tournament should have its own domain identity. After all, teams are coming to participate in your TOURNAMENT, not watch a couple of your club games. Simple is best; less is more.

I was invited this week to the Tuesday Night Pickers by a local friend. The Pickers are a group of everyday people from all walks of life who love to play music. This group started 13 years ago in a small barn in Southern Ohio that transforms into a music studio every Tuesday night.

They continue to play each week in memory of a former host who passed unexpectedly! In his memory, they toast his love of music, enthusiasm for life and his time in the military. Then the true fun begins. Each member of the group takes turns with the microphone and begins the jam session. There are fiddle, bongo, guitar, harmonica, bass and madolin players. Not to mention the footstompers and the hand clappers. A grand total of 786 guests have signed the logbook. I was honored to be the 786th person. This book represents the sense of friendship that this weekly tradition has developed.

Advice: What traditions have you established with your soccer tournament? Do you have teams,clubs or volunteers who mark their calendars every Tuesday Night for your event? Can you create a guestbook to see who really is enjoying your event? This weekly tradition has created so much positive energy for some many! Just think how wonderful it would be to create the same buzz regarding a tradition your event started!

Bill Hodson with 90:00 Magazine shares some tips for tournaments on working with the soccer media. The rant line for 90:00 Soccer Radio is 714-693-5090, ext 310 but first listen to the podcast to see how to use it well.

Listen to the podcast and then offer some feedback. Each feedback posting is eligible to win an iPod at the NSCAA and USYouth.

I had the rare opportunity yesterday to speak with advertising sales guys with two soccer magazines. They each wanted me to buy advertising and I really want to buy advertising, so you would think this would be a win-win for us both.

The one rep told me about his CPM, per page rate, seven times impression… all the things you would expect. But then when I started talking about the soccer tournament industry, how TourneyCentral saw an opportunity to shape and guide this industry and how we saw an opportunity for a soccer magazine to help with that vision… nothing, no passion, no enthusiasm… he just wanted to sell me an ad.

Later on, I also spoke with another rep. He started off the same way.. CPM, per page, etc, etc. But when I started talking about our vision of changing the tournament world and how there was an opportunity for a soccer magazine, he threw his script out and started getting excited about how he could share in being a part of it. His magazine is young, only has a US circulation of 20% of the biggest — not ideal — but he will probably get my business… and I will help him with his. Together, we will grow and become the authority for the soccer tournament industry.

Our advice: Change the world with a passion! Don’t just have a tournament; think about how what you do changes the world for the better for each one of your participants, your sponsors, your community. Think about how your tournament will contribute to the soccer tournament industry.

SEEK OUT people who also want to change the world (in or out of soccer!) and find a way to include them in your event. The relationship is usually a lot of hard work to maintain, but well worth the effort, is a heck of a lot more fun and will allow you to grow exponentially. QUIT working with people who drag you down or don’t have your passion. Approach each sponsor, each team, each player, each coach, each parent, each stakeholder of your event with the passion that it takes to change the world. Most of the time, the passion won’t be returned with the same intensity, but when it is, change happens!