Five free things to give your soccer dad for Father’s Day

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It’s Father’s Day again and millions of soccer dads are gearing up to spend most of it at the soccer fields at a tournament somewhere. But before the magic day comes, there will be millions of soccer players coming off the fields, tired from playing two games. And they are stressed out because they still haven’t bought that perfect Father’s Day present.

If you are one of these soccer players, gather ’round; this article is for you.

As a soccer dad, I used to kinda dread Father’s Day. I always told my kids I needed nothing and really meant it. Nonetheless, we would almost always go out to a restaurant for dinner after a tournament — later if we won the final — with a bunch of other tired soccer dads who secretly just wanted to get home and nap.

So, kids, here are five free things you can give your soccer dad on Father’s Day that he will really like:

1. Be his Concession Gopher. Whatever your dad wants from the concession stand at the tournament, go get for him. No arguments, no “mom doesn’t want you eating that.” Really, just make it happen.

2. An early morning text saying “Happy Father’s Day. I love you.” If you can beat your siblings to it, all the better; you’ll be his favorite for the day (kidding…)

3. Staying quiet in the back seat even when he gets lost. Yes, he knows he is lost and you’ll be late and it is his fault, but not telling him will be a huge gift. Really.

4. Have fun on the field. Sure he’d like you to score and lead the team to victory, but he’d much rather you enjoyed your day at the tournament.

5. A hug before going to bed. You don’t even need to say anything.

Going mobile

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Smartphones are now 53% of the cell phone market. Right now, 87% of all cell phones sold are smartphones. Within the next year, flip phones will be all but obsolete.

Apps and mini-web browsers with 4G or LTE are the de-facto standard of internet access at soccer fields. It is rare that at least half the touchline doesn’t have access to your tournament web site in real time.

And that means scores and standings in real time.

It used to to mean that for teams to get real-time access to scores, you would need to push them out via SMS. For that, you would need to set up an elaborate sign-up system, somehow verify the cell phone number (or not) and send out scores as they were updated. In short, the teams relied on push rather than pull to get the scores.

Not any more. Now, with smartphones equipped with web browsers, social media apps and web-apps, fans can get their own scores and standings anytime without waiting for tournaments to push them out.

Our Advice: Don’t set up an SMS service. Flip phones are the past. By the end of the holiday shopping season, anyone holding out on a smartphone for a good deal will find one, tilting the smartphone into the 70%+ market.

Fortunately, your TourneyCentral tournament site is already mobile-ready.

1. QR Code: Each site is equipped with a QR Code that smartphone users can scan with an app for DEALS, Scores and News. Even if the user does not have a scan app, they can just click on the QR Code to go right to the web-app page.

2. Twitter: Set up a twitter account. When you update scores, your confirmation screen will give you an option to tweet out which divisions were updated. The tweet will also contain a link to the web-app which the QR Code is attached. Your teams can follow your twitter account and turn on notifications at their phone, saving you the hassle of managing SMS lists.

Even if they don’t want to get a twitter account, they can just have SMS messages when you send a tweet by sending a text message to 40404 with the message FOLLOW TWITTERACCOUNT from their cell phone. When the tournament is over, they simply send another text message to 40404 with the message UNFOLLOW TWITTERACCOUNT to stop getting notifications.

3. Facebook: You can also post the scores updates to your Facebook page where friends will be then able to get updates if they friend/like you and have updates turned on in their notifications.

The good thing about using social media to manage your scores push is the user is controlling how they get scores notifications without you spending time (or money) managing SMS lists, whether they be automated or not. Many apps — like twitter and facebook — allow the user to control how they get notified, either through native alerts, SMS or email. And don’t worry about educating them on the app. If they get a smartphone and discover they can get notifications from you, they’ll figure it out quickly.

Just make sure you have your QR Code visible and you market your twitter handle and your facebook page. The content will do the rest.

As the mobile market matures, you can bet TourneyCentral will be there, adding features to your web-app as needed, far ahead of the next trend.

Meeting friends at the NSCAA

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Working hard at the booth. Annalisa Van Houten tournament director of the
Novi Jaguar Invitational and Carol Maas, tournament director of the
adidas Warrior Classic and Fall Classic.

Thursday night, we ran into our good friends Bobby Kramig, head coach for the Championship
Miami RedHawks and Carol Maas, tournament director of the
adidas Warrior Classic and Fall Classic.

Elizabeth Weimer of Site Search and Carol Maas, tournament director of the
adidas Warrior Classic and Fall Classic.

Putting it together at the 2013 NSCAA

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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

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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

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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

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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!

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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.

The dangers of a single-interest at a soccer tournament

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Five blind men with an elephant

There is an old joke about five blind men describing an elephant. The one who feels the tusks insist that an elephant is made up of hard stone, shaped to a pointy end. The man feeling the ears swears an elephant is a huge tarp. And so on, each forming his own opinion on what an elephant is based on his own personal experience. Of course, any seeing person would recognize the elephant is the sum total of all of these observations, even though each’s observations are entirely accurate.

This is what a soccer tournament is like sometimes. The referee assignor may be entirely focused on getting referees assigned that he forgets the game scheduler has coaches with special scheduling needs. The game scheduler may forget that the field coordinator has to work with restrictions on field use imposed by the parks department. The ad sales person may forget that the tournament director has profit considerations and can’t pay for the extra three field banners, and so on.

Gone are the days when a few coaches could get some teams together and play some games over the weekend and call it a tournament. The modern soccer tournament is less about soccer and more about building an event around soccer. It must be efficient, comprehensive, competitive and collaborative, both with the soccer community and the community at large.

Here at TourneyCentral, we think that is a very good thing. It shows that soccer is evolving into the mainstream of American culture.

Our Advice: A successful soccer tournament is a complicated organization with a lot of moving parts, many of which appear to be in conflict with each other. It needs a general manager (tournament director) who has the skills to motivate each “department” to excellence, but also keep the overall goal in mind and on track.

When the referee assignor, the college coach coordinator or the game scheduler is enabled to drive the mission of the tournament, s/he will most likely do so to the detriment of the other departments. We have seen tournaments go bust in the span of a year simply because the focus shifted to accommodate one person’s myopic vision.

Don’t be that kind of event. The teams come to your tournament with an overall expectation of excellence in ALL areas, from a website that is easy and quick to use to frictionless hotel accommodations to great scheduling and easy access to the fields. Your community expects your soccer tournament to reflect positively on it and produce guest teams that have a good experience visiting, win or lose.

In the end, your teams should never see the individual “departments” that make up your tournament.

Setting clear expectations for scheduling conflicts

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I was tooling around on one of our tournament web sites, prepping up for the weekend and making sure everything was ready to go when I ran across this frequently-asked question. I thought the answer was brilliant in that it set clear expectations for scheduling conflicts, far in advance and in plain view of the public.

What is the policy on schedule requests?

We will do what we can to accommodate your requests, however, the following types of conflict requests WILL NOT be considered as a legitimate request:

  • Can you schedule a game no earlier than noon because our coach is not available?
  • Can you schedule a game in the afternoon because we are arriving from out of state the night before or first morning of the tournament?
  • I have 6 teams in the tournament and want to get to all the games in one weekend?
  • I have 4 teams in the tournament and want to get to all the games in one weekend?
  • I have 3 teams in the tournament and want to get to all the games in one weekend?
  • Can you schedule one game the first day, and two on the second?
  • Can you schedule two games on the first day, and one on the second?
  • Can you reschedule the semi-finals and/or finals to accommodate the 2+ teams I have in the semi-finals and/or finals?
  • Can you reschedule Sunday games to accommodate my teams departure flight times?
  • Can you schedule games on adjacent fields so I can coach two games at once?

Please note that it takes hours and hours to make the tournament game and referee assignment schedule and every schedule change is a big deal. It is impossible to take in to consideration 3 or more teams playing the same weekend. For coaches taking multiple teams to a tournament we encourage you to have assistant coaches who can coach the team in your absence. At best we can try to accommodate 2 teams playing in the same weekend.

I especially like that the requests are termed “not legitimate.” It is a bit like running out of gas on the freeway. While it may be an emergency to you, it is not a legitimate break down as it was foreseen and highly preventable. You will still get a ticket for stopping on the freeway.

Our Advice: We’ve commented on multiple team coaches, late Saturday starts and game conflicts before and our views are pretty well-known. (Go ahead and read the blog posts if you want.. we’ve been ranting on this since 2006.) It is not enough to merely have a policy about multi-team coaches and conflicts; you have to communicate the expectations and boundaries clearly and make sure your staff is 100% on board.

Coaches will keep chipping away at you, your staff or a club coach to find that soft spot in the armor. Don’t let them. Whatever your policy is, stick with it or you will end up with a lot more stress than one coach’s grousing. It’s always better to have one coach irritated at you for not getting what s/he wanted than all of them mad as heck because you didn’t play fairly by your own rules.

Using Google Plus for your soccer tournament

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GooglePlus for Soccer Tournaments

The latest player in the suite of tools known as social media is Google Plus, or more commonly seen as G+ in buttons. While it can’t boast anywhere near the number of users Facebook and Twitter have, it has one advantage the others don’t — Google Search. However, it is growing fast.

Most Internet users start off a web session on google.com, whether or not they know the direct web address of the site they are looking for. Many simply type in keywords like “soccer tournaments in Ohio” or “soccer tournament software.” If these keywords are in your G+ posts, you have a greater chance of being found at or near the top of a search result.

Getting started is easy, but you need a Google Account. If you have a Gmail account, you are already there. Simply go to http://plus.google.com and set a profile for yourself.

Once you have a profile, you can then set up a Page for the soccer tournament. Underneath your name, you will see a page symbol. Click on that to “Manage your pages.” Create your soccer tournament page, upload your logo and start sharing. Be sure to add one more person as an administrator and secure the login/password as part of your tournament assets so that it can be seamlessly transferred to a new tournament director if need be later on.

The instructions for Google+ are sorta “discover as you go” but a good book to read is Google+ for Business by Chris Brogan.

Our Advice: Set up a Google Plus page for your soccer tournament. Repost your front page news, scores, sponsor offers and photos to your page. Don’t worry so much about interacting on your page as a social media channel just yet; that will probably come next year.

Be sure to include keywords in your post and photo captions as these keywords are pushed directly into the Google search engine. The sooner you start, the better head start you will have on all the other soccer tournaments who will discover and set up on Google Plus next year. Be first.

All TourneyCentral events support Google+ In your Admin>Web Site Maintenance Module>Variables you can add your G+ page to the social media sites on the left sidebar along with Twitter and Facebook. (See TheGameOfSoccer.com for a sample)

The TourneyCentral G+ page is here. We post photos, blog posts (including this one) as well as interesting photos fans may share.

This is part of a series on Social Media for Soccer Tournaments. We encourage you to read all the articles below.

Our Mad Men ad

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Mad Men Season 5

It’s no secret that we’re pretty rabid Mad Men fans around the TourneyCentral offices. During the first four seasons, Monday mornings usually hosted a lively discussion time as we deconstructed the episode from the previous night. While drinking strong coffee, of course… nothing stronger. Really.

So we’re pretty excited that season five is just a few weeks away on March 25, 2012. Then we found out that Newsweek is publishing its March 19 issue designed like it is 1964 and they are encouraging their advertisers to submit their ads for that issue designed as circa 1964 ads.

And that we could not resist. We’re not advertising in Newsweek but we are running the ad we may have submitted on the front page of our website. Close enough, right?

Unfortunately, soccer in America in the ’60s was almost nonexistent. There were no competitive youth soccer tournaments ads we could look up and model after. But if soccer tournaments advertised in 1964, we think the ad may have looked kinda like this.

Mad Men Ad

We had to keep the dimensions to fit into a website and not a magazine page and language like “click here” would certainly have been odd in 1964, but we think it hits the mark. We hope you agree.

Here is the Mad Men clip that inspired the headline and the copy.

Our Advice: You may not be a Mad Men fan and that’s ok. The show is not for everyone. What we think is important is that you reach out beyond just soccer and connect with the community your event is a part of. For us, it is that cultural world of old-school advertising. For you, it may be your local park district or the arts department at the high school or even a local rock band. When you reach out to the other interests your club teams are involved in, you create good will for your soccer tournament. People see your event as integral to their community.

When you become part of a community, you may find advertisers and sponsors are more likely to support your tournament. Regardless of the financial impact, being part of a larger community is certainly more fun.

And if you are a Mad Men fan, two full hours on March 25th. See you there.

Trust us. This stuff matters

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If you have spent any time online lately, you’ve probably noticed that there have been some issues of some companies and their privacy agreements. Google has come out with a new policy that combines ALL their properties under one agreement. That means if you have a YouTube account, a G+ page, a Gmail account, a Google Calendar, etc. all of this now is swept under one identity. And if you have multiple accounts, all of those accounts are tied together under you as one user.

More recently, some apps were caught uploading your entire phone book from your iPhone or Android smart phone — without telling you — when you installed their app. They apologize and claim to have removed all users’ data from their servers, but who really knows.

And of course, everyone’s favorite — Facebook — has a long history of deserving our mistrust with their ever-changing privacy policy and moving the settings around so we can’t find and change them easily.

Our Advice: It has taken a long time for people to trust the Internet. As the ability for services to sell services and goods erodes in the wake of alternative free services, there will always be a temptation to monetize customer data to advertisers and sponsors. In fact, you may have already been approached by sponsors asking for your list of teams, players and coaches.

The trust your teams gives you to keep their data away from marketers is not easily gained and can be lost in moments. Once you release data out, it can never be gotten back. Ever. You will be putting those coaches on mailing lists for years to come as the list get sold over and over and over.

At TourneyCentral, we won’t ever rent, sell, lend, lease or otherwise give out email addresses. In fact, every tournament we host agrees to that privacy policy as part of their use agreement.

Trust us. It’s not just something we say to get your business. It’s how we do business.

Credit cards at the fields just got easier – Square

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Square credit card reader

A few weeks ago, we signed up for a Square account to test with a small consumer product line we have that is mobile.

Wow, were we impressed.

The sign up process was easy. We simply needed an EIN number, a verifiable bank account and we were set up to accept credit cards (on site only, no phone or Internet sales.) Within a week, Square shipped a credit card swipe reader which gets plugged into an iPhone, iPad or Android smartphone. Download the app, log in and you are taking credit cards. You can even take a picture of the customer holding up the product they bought as part of the receipt!

There are no set up fees, no equipment to buy. Square sends the small reader free of charge. The fee is 2.75% per swipe for all cards (higher for manual entry) The funds are transferred into our account later that night and available the next business day.

Our Advice: Sign up with Square and start taking credit cards at the fields for t-shirts and other concessions. Be sure to control the sign up process at the treasurer level and above and make sure the account is set up under the tournament’s brand. Square sends out one free reader as part of the account, but I think they will send out more if needed for multiple locations. We will send them an email and follow up when they reply. Answer is online at this page.

Control the card readers as you would any other financially sensitive equipment. Establish as few points of purchase as possible and only with trusted staff. You may even want to purchase iPads for use by the concessions staff only so your login credentials and accounts are not compromised. Change the passwords immediately after the event or shift change.

You will need an internet connection or smartphone (iPhone, Android) with 3G at the fields.

2012 is the year soccer tournaments will become mobile very quickly. Technology and services like Square will help us get there.