Tourney Central recently was a major sponsor of the Montgomery County-Dayton (Ohio) Convention and Visitors Bureau Ambassador Awards Breakfast. This is a well established annual event recognizing community leaders who bring large events and visitors to the area. Several key figures were in attendance including past award winners, county commissioners, local media and CVB staff. The event was inspirational, filled with community pride and offered great networking opportunities. Eight individuals were recognized this year! They included conference planners to a Junior Olympic Volleyball tournament director. The audience was just as diverse; from National Park Service staff to members of the local hotel industry.

Our advice: Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you sponsor this event? These type of events offer a great opportunity to promote your soccer event, demonstrate civic pride and show dignitaries your event adds value to the local community. We did see representatives from a couple local soccer tournaments. In our opinion, this isn’t enough. Every tournament in the area should have attended. Tournament Directors should seek out local visitors bureau staff to discuss hotel trends, sponsorship patterns and collaborate on promoting your event. Consider attending or sponsoring community events in your area that can provide similar value.

As I was leaving the office yesterday, the phone rang. I was going to let it go to voicemail, but I picked it up. It was a friend of mine with a soccer magazine and he just had an advertiser move from a 1/4 page ad to a full page. Great news for him, but he now had a 1/4 hole he needed to fill and the magazine goes on the press Monday morning.

Would you be interested in putting an ad in? he asks. He offered me a deal I could not pass up. The only thing is he would need the artwork by end of business Friday and he needed to know it would pass preflight. Fortunately, I has some ad files all ready to go, so it was a matter of just emailing him the artwork.

Our advice: You never know when a great advertising deal will come up. Sometimes, you can even get a free ad from a newspaper, newsletter, blog, web site or other tournament program if you just had the ad copy ready to go. You should always have ads of different sizes (1/4, 1/2 and full page, black and white and full color along with web banners of 120×90, 728×90 and 468×60) ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Charlie Kadupski with The Sport Source explains what college coaches look for in student athletes and how soccer players and their parents can best prepare for college scholarships.

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

Marty Mankamyer, the tournament director for the Pikes Peak Invitational and Front Range Invitational, both in Colorado Springs, shares some thoughts on what makes for a profitable soccer tournament.

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

How profitable is your soccer tournament? Is it viable?

Before you answer that question, do a quick calculation. Add up all the volunteer hours that were donated by your parents and tournament stake holders. Multiply this figure by the minimum wage (use 6.85/hr as that will probably become the new minimum very shortly.) Then multiply this by 8.5% to account for SUTA and FUTA. (We won’t do worker’s compensation cost or anything like that, but if you want to be entirely accurate for your state, you might want to think about that.) This is your real labor cost.

Now add this to your expenses. Is your tournament still in the black? If it is not, your tournament is not viable.

Our advice: If your tournament is not viable, take a look at your team fees. Can you raise them without losing teams? If the answer is no, why not? Are you just another tournament? Examine everything your volunteers are doing. Are ALL these tasks necessary? Can you automate some of these tasks without reducing quality? While it may sound counter-intuitive, what would happen if you paid key people like your sponsor sales or hotel coordination? Would they produce more if compensated? If you spent some money on advertising, would you attract better teams or entire clubs?

The answers are not easy and one does not fit every tournament, but the questions do. And they don’t help you if you don’t ask them and answer them honestly.