Cameron Woo, the publisher of The Bark, the New Yorker of Dog Magazines, shares some insight for building a brand within a niche market. Woo started The Bark as a newsletter to increase the amount of dog-friendly park space and expanded to become the premium dog magazine brand fewer than ten years later. The path he carved mirrors a soccer tournament growth plan almost turn for turn. Start with your loyal core group, find some common interests with those who can help you grow but may not be as passionate and.. well, I’ll let him tell it…
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After almost every tournament, a parent sends an email that goes along these lines:

I was just looking at your web site and was looking up scores with my son who plays for the blah-blah team who won the championships at your tournament.

I was very disappointed to see that the team they played in the finals was listed as the winner instead of team blah-blah.

Could you please help me explain this error to my son so he feels good about his and his teammates fine accomplishments.

The obvious explanation is It was a human error and we’ll fix it. As your son has undoubtedly discovered at his tender young age, people make mistakes. We find it incredulous that as a parent, you can’t explain that fact of life to your child. Hope you had a wonderful time at our tournament and your team returns next year!

As soccer tournaments become more real-time and the scores are reported almost instantaneously from the fields, the tolerance for any mistake at all is becoming less and less. The job of keeping track of all these scores is not becoming any easier, however.

Our Advice: Don’t make mistakes! Make sure that everyone along the score-reporting chain, including the referees, the field marshals, the score-keeper checks and double checks the accuracy of the scores. You may even want to include a score-auditor whose sole job at the tournament is to double check the scores on the web site against every game card, especially the finals.

This was posted as a Soccer America blog entry and appears at http://blogs.socceramerica.com/youth_soccer_insider/?p=53

By Tom Berkman

Tournaments and hotels — the proverbial love-hate relationship. Directors of tournaments with many out-of-town teams know they cannot live without the hotels, but many wonder at times exactly whose side the hotels are on. If your tournament is not using a sports housing service to handle the hotel responsibilities, and you are a Tournament Director that has a great relationship with every hotel you use in your city, consider yourself lucky.

However, the norm is that working with hotels can have a litany of issues and challenges that start with the contracting and end with the payment of your rebate. Here are some how-to approaches to make your interaction with the hotel community more successful:

The Hometown Event. Some tournaments move from city to city every year, while others hosted by a local club or organization are in the same location every year. The events that move every year enjoy special treatment from host cities that must often offer perks to win the bid.

The Hometown event or tournament can after a few short years be taken for granted by the hotel community, because the hotels already get the business. Don’t take it personally — the local event is often treated with less respect than it deserves.

If your tournament is in the same city every year, there are ways to regain the leverage.

A more common practice these days is requiring teams to use the hotels you have contracted with as a condition to play in your tournament. The bottom line is that, as expenses increase each year to run a tournament, generating strong rebate revenue from the hotels allows you to keep the application fee down and keep your tournament more competitive with other tournaments.

If you will require this of the teams, it changes the relationship with the hotels, as they must work with you (on your terms) to get the business.

A different form of leverage is available to you if you have the ability to move your tournament to another city (far enough away that different hotels are used), where you award your tournament to the highest bidding city.

Cities get substantial hotel tax from the hotel revenues, so even a tournament filling 500 rooms for two nights could be enough for a city to give you some cash, reduced venue fees, and/or in-kind services to get your tournament to their town.

If you are in the position to move, consider bidding it out for 2-year increments, so instead of being the hometown event, multiple cities in your state are bidding for your business. If you do this, make sure the wish list you give to each Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) covers the additional expenses to make the move and motivates you financially to make the move at all.

What To Ask For. When dealing with the hotels, no matter what city you are in, here is what you should expect from them:

* Free meeting space in exchange for naming the hotel Headquarters Hotel.

* Free or substantially reduced rates for staff/officials for naming the hotel Officials’ Hotel.

* A tournament rate that the hotel will not sell below.

* The promise that the hotel will not accept team bookings outside of your block.

* A reasonable comp ratio — at least of 1/20 paid for limited service hotels and 1/40 paid for full service hotels.

* A rebate built into the rate, non-negotiable, and the same for every hotel.

* The rebate paid no later than 30 days after the tournament

* The assurance that, if the reported numbers at a hotel seem low, you will get credit for the appropriate room-nights if you can prove a team stayed at a hotel.

Terms and Conditions in the Contracts. If your tournament has enough overnight travelers that you sign contracts with the hotels in order to ensure the rooms are set aside for your teams, then here are the contractual terms you should not agree to:

* Attrition — in any form. Not as a penalty (i.e. if you don’t use a minimum percentage of the rooms blocked — often 80 percentage), not as a right of the hotel to raise the rate, and not as a right of the hotel to reduce or eliminate your concessions

* Cancellation — cross out anything more than 30 days before arrival.

* Damage — insist that any damage done to the hotel be borne by each individual guest, not the tournament.

* Indemnification — cross it out, or change it to Mutual.

* Security — cross out any line that suggests that the hotel can require you to hire and pay for security at its discretion.

* Arbitration and/or waiving your right to a trial. Cross it out, or you could watch your rebate be arbitrated away.

What You Should Do for the Hotels. Now that you know how to protect your tournament, remember that working with hotels successfully needs to be win-win for both parties. That starts with communicating the details of your tournament to your hotels. Before you sign the first contract, here are some things they would like know:

* Do teams have to qualify to get into the tournament? Are any teams rejected or does every team that applies get accepted?

* Until what date are teams accepted? (That way, they know how late they may get reservations).

* Is it an elimination tournament (one bad day and they’re gone), or is every team there for the duration?

* Where are the venues? If there are multiple venues, does the tournament specify in advance what age brackets are playing where, thus helping the teams book in the right hotels?

This information may shape the number of rooms the hotels give you and on what nights, won’t be a cause for surprise or disappointment later on.

In terms of advertising the hotels to the teams, provide good information about each hotel, more than just a phone number and contact name.

As teams apply and you see the number of out-of-town teams has increased or declined from previous years, update the hotels with that information.

To help the hotels manage the flow of people coming and going from their hotel, if possible, give the hotels the times the teams will be playing.

Lastly, one of the most important things you can do for a hotel is to recommend and support the use of a code of conduct policy that every room signs at check-in.

If you follow that up with the promise that any team asked to leave a hotel for improper behavior will also be disqualified from playing in the tournament, you will have created an atmosphere that will keep your relationship with the hotels healthy, and coming back for more.

(Tom Berkman is General Manager and Owner of the THS Company , a sports housing service that works with over 140 client tournaments and events nationwide. Tom is a ’76 graduate of the Hilton School of Hotel & Restaurant Mgt. at the University of Houston, and spent 22 years in hotel and restaurant operations before starting THS in 1998. You can contact him at Tom@thsweb.com )

One of the things we hear consistently from smaller, regional soccer tournaments is how to compete against the larger, more well-known, branded tournament events. I am living a case-study this weekend.

My daughter is playing this weekend in a well-established, but non-TourneyCentral event. So far, I have gotten eight text messages and three vent calls from my wife who is in charge this weekend. The fields are badly marked, there are no port-a-johns on the fields, the directions getting there sucked, nobody is posting scores and on and on… (I’m not dismissing her very valid points, but I’ve heard and experienced them all before myself. My solution was to create TourneyCentral. 🙂 ) This is only the first day and they now just left to play the second day. I’ve got my cell phone fully-charged.

As I was talking to her on the phone and her voice went to the tone of the school teacher in a Charlie Brown TV show and my empathetic remarks digressed to uh-huh, ok, hmm, I began cruising around my favorite blogs. Up pops a post in The Challenge Dividend by Bob Gilbreath that nailed my experience.

In the post, he looks at a recent interaction by Donatos Pizza and American Express. Read the post to get the whole picture, but bottom line is Donatos (a local pizza chain) tries harder because they have more to lose.. and more to gain than the big, already branded, everyone knows who we are American Express (of which I am also a long-term member).

Our Advice: First, have a really good product. Starting off on the TourneyCentral platform is a good way to communicate that out to your potential guest teams. Second, reach out to the teams, put a personal touch on your soccer tournament and make the teams feel special, wanted and respected. Third, follow through with your promises.

If you are a large, well-branded tournament, think and act like you are always in second place. Never forget what you did in the early days, trying to attract teams to your tiny, unknown event. And, never stop trying to break into new markets, while never forgetting the teams and clubs that helped you get big along the way.

And, if you happen to have a Donatos Pizza in your neighborhood, call them up and offer to cut THEM a deal instead of asking them for money. When you have made it, start spreading the wealth a little bit along the way. What you give up in the short-term in money will come back to support you from a community when you may need it most. (Ok, a throw back to one of my all-time favorite movies It’s a Wonderful Life but applies here!)

Here are five easy ways to piss off your volunteers:

1. Never say please or thank you. They owe you their time because you allow them to work on your tournament.
2. Don’t bother matching up their skills with the job you need. Be sure to put someone who works in a major consumer brand marketing department on garbage detail on Sunday night.
3. Don’t acknowledge their contribution as a reason for the success of the tournament. Remember, you could do the whole thing without them if you only had the time.
4. Demand that they be available to you very late at night and on-call during the weekends. After all, you have a schedule to keep and you are very busy coaching your team… in addition to working at your day job.
5. When they are at the tournament giving their time in the middle of the day, in the rain or the hot sun, be sure to bark orders at them within earshot of your guest teams. You are much too busy fool around with civility.

Sound familiar? Even if you are not guilty of any or all of these infractions, chances are you’ve been to tournaments where you have seen this behavior.

Our advice: Be different. Be kind. Commit to creating an atmosphere where parents, grandparents and siblings WANT to volunteer at your tournament. Make it fun, however your volunteers define fun. When your volunteers are stressed out and pissed off, your guest teams feel it and it leaks over to the tournament. Guest teams, sponsors, parents feel the tension and just want to play the games and get out. When you have happy volunteers, you have a fun atmosphere on the fields and players and parents want to stick around and be a part of that for as long as possible.

And then, they can’t wait to do it all again next year.

Today, I saw a comment from a team rep come over that said this:

Our coach, John Smith has reached out to the tournament several times via e-mail in regards to us not receiving a confirmation on our acceptance into the tournament. It was only after checking the status on line that we saw that we’ve been accepted. Due to lack of follow up on your part and lack of confirmation for the tournament we are going to pull out and will be stopping payment on our check.

Got me wondering how many times the tournament sent an email to coach Smith (not his real name, of course) that went to his junk folder or he didn’t bother replying to. So, I looked it up. Four messages were sent to him, without a reply back.

Our advice: If a coach does not answer an email, CALL HIM! And, you may want to advise your teams that you will be sending emails and that if they do not hear from you within a reasonable time, CALL YOU! Email is rapidly becoming an obsolete communication tool as more and more ISPs are deciding for their customer what is and what is not spam.

And, make sure your subject lines are not spammy. A subject line like You’re Accepted!!! will probably hit the junk folder, whereas a subject line like Your team has been accepted to the 2008 Major Classic will make it all the way to it’s destination inbox. Be specific and stay away from punctuation like ? and !!!!

You may also wish to drop postcards in the mail with the team acceptance, just in case emails are not getting through. While it may seem counter-intuitive for a web site to advocate for the USPS, it is the end product, not the tools, that are the important thing.

But, please, the goal is not to point fingers around in a circle about who didn’t answer their emails. The goal is to communicate, whether that is by phone, postcard or email.

Today, I finally put the customer service number to the Wall Street Journal in my cell phone. And that is not a good thing.

I put the number in because the newspaper carrier misses my house with regularity and when I need to call them, their web site is so full of news and segmented information that I can’t ever find the number quickly.

Our Advice: Be reachable, but first, take care of those things that make teams feel like they need to call you in the first place! Keep your Frequently Asked Question up to date, your news on the front page timely, dates published when certain things are going to happen (like team acceptance and schedules). And, make sure your news is written in very simple language.

And, if the teams still feel like they need to call, keep your phone number current n each page of your web site.

I enjoy reading email that coaches, parents and team reps send soccer tournaments. It’s a great insight into our target market and keeps us on our toes about what the soccer public needs and expects from tournaments and the web site that supports it.

My favorite emails are the ones that write paragraph after paragraph of needs and concerns and then they say something like Oh, great web site, btw!

By the way??? BY THE WAY? Do they not know how hard we work on making the web site easy to use, reliable and real-time accurate? Do they not know how many weekends we have given up to make it possible for them to even notice that the web site is great? But, perhaps that is the point; at least they noticed something great when they saw it, even if it was a footnote.

Our Advice: Nobody will appreciate the blood, sweat and tears you pour into your soccer tournament than you. But, don’t expect them to. If they are not complaining about the basics like field lines, lack of port-a-potties, no water at the field, games always starting late, no referees…. you’re doing something right! Chances are they will notice that things went fine without a hitch.

Think about the last time you complained because there was no food at the grocery store. Or the last time you didn’t have a place to sleep. Yet, when was the last time you complained because the waitress was a little bit late bringing the coffee refill at a restaurant. Exactly. When the basic needs are taken care, it is only then that we find the time to complain about the minutiae.

So, the next time someone complains about having to pay for parking or a 10 minute overlap in their multiple-coach team schedule or an 8:00am game, just smile. You know you’ve taken care of the big things.

BTW, mostly nobody notices the way a TourneyCentral web site is always up and running, is accurate and is easy to use. I guess that is a good thing.

Today, I was reading Seth Godin’s blog and read a story that made a perfect argument for a TICO Score for ranking soccer tournaments.

It was hidden as a marketing post on green marketing but there, plain as day, made the perfect argument for a service like TICO Score. A simple number that assigns the health of your soccer tournament that tells everyone at a glance if you are good, bad or average.

Our advice: Send your participants to www.ticoscore.com to evaluate your tournament. Also, read www.challengedividend.com.

When we bring a soccer tournament on board, they most likely already have a web site that a volunteer has been managing. Mostly, the demands of the teams with online registration, communications, real-time scoring, schedules etc. has become overwhelming and the tournament is looking to replace that with a commercial product.

Everything usually goes along fine until they attempt to transfer their domain name to point to the new content. Most of the time, it is then that they find out the tournament, the club or the league does not legally own their domain. The volunteer or the web developer who set up the web site as a favor to the tournament back a few years most likely registered it under their own name. If the transfer is amicable, usually the transfer goes smoothly, but most often, it doesn’t. The volunteer is hurt because he/she is being replaced and takes the domain with them, leaving the tournament with a fight or a change to another domain.

Rightly so, the tournament believes they own the domain name and most often, they can prove the volunteer or developer was acting as an agent for them, but that is a very long fight. In the meantime, teams need to apply, etc. While it is always best to pursue securing intellectual property (IP) that you have developed, in many cases, it just is not pragmatic to delay your tournament until you can.

Our Advice: ALWAYS register all domains as property of the club, league or tournament, whatever your legal entity. The registrar, passwords and accounts that pay for the domain should be kept as part of the official record of the entity. And, while you are making sure your domain name is secure, also make sure the data that resides on the Web server, the account that serves the site and the source files on the volunteer’s/developer’s computer are also yours.

It may cost you money to secure your IP, but is sure beats free when you can longer use your data, domain or Web site.

On the surface, a stay-to-play rooming policy may be a good thing for your soccer tournament. It is fast becomes the de facto standard for housing at soccer tournaments. But, be aware that with a stay to play policy, teams are now expecting services.

Some of the services expectations are
– Find them rooms. If you are getting money from your stay to play policy, teams now expect you to find the rooms for them. Giving them a list of hotels and phone numbers is not longer enough for a soccer tournament with a stay to play policy.
– Service complaints. If the teams have problems with hotels, they are YOUR problems, not theirs. Have a contact number and someone on staff to deal with the hotels and resolve issues.
– Cancellation issues. If your tournament cancels or the team cancels, the teams expect a full refund of their room fees and will not tolerate hotels holding cancellation fees, regardless of what was signed. Most of these transactions are credit card transactions and card companies will do chargebacks without regard for agreements. If the room was not used, the charge will most likely not stick.

Our Advice: By all means, establish a stay to play policy for your soccer tournament, but do not expect that to be passive income. Put someone in charge who has the flexible schedule to work with hotels in the daytime and teams on nights and weekends. And, have this person available during registration and on the first day of competition to deal with hotel issues.

Make sure this person also has a relationship with the hotels and that all the GMs know who you are and have all the details about the soccer tournament.

And, lastly, this position is probably too important and demanding to be a volunteer position. Consider paying your housing coordinator a flat fee or a percentage of the rooming charges.

Of course, you can always opt to use a housing agency, but be sure to pick a reputable one who has a history of great customer service. Rooming revenue is nothing if you have to get involved with disputes between the housing agency, teams and hotels with every complaint.

There are a lot of spring tournaments closing registration and accepting teams. For 2008, on average, TourneyCentral applications are up and average of 38% over this time last year and soccer tournaments are cutting more teams due to field limits, referees limits and just overall bad fit.

As you can imagine, this is an increased opportunity for team managers, coaches and club presidents to send vicious email. What I call a drive-by emailing.

Our Advice: First, take a deep breath and fight the urge to reply in the same tone and manner. It may seem personal, but it is not. Email hides the humanity of the conversation and it is easy to blast off on a nameless, faceless machine. It doesn’t make it more excusable or easier to take, but… well, just breath.

Second, do not reply via email. Look up the head coach’s phone number and place a call to him or her. Once you start talking human being to human being, it is a lot harder to say really mean things to each other. There are those people here and there who can say mean thing to anther human being without remorse, but they are few and far between. If the coach you are talking to is one of those people, he/she is only validating your wisdom of choice by not accepting their team. If he/she is that much of a jerk BEFORE they get to your tournament, think about what a handful they will be in person!

Third, follow up the conversation with the email. If it is the head coach that sent you the drive-by, confirm what you talked about. If it is the team manager or club president or other person who has an illusion of influence, confirm that you spoke with the head coach of the team and encourage they to speak directly with the head coach. Leave it at that; do not offer additional details. If the head coach wishes to share, then he/she will. Do not engage further in any additional discussion via reply email.

Rule one: Remove technology as soon as possible from any conversation that is best handled by human beings. Machines have no feelings and they don’t care about yours. People, on the other hand, do and assess the impact of their words and body language many, many times during a single conversation. Use that power.

Look at common things that you see everyday in new and different ways. Here is an example.