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!

As I was reading my email today, I came across probably the dumbest reply to a tournament invitation ever. It read, and I quote As a rule, we do not attend tournaments unless we set up a relationship with the club whereby that club send us equal numbers of teams to our tournament. You can check out our tournament info on our website at ….

Wow! I was floored! The ONLY way this tournament can attract teams to their event is by getting other clubs to agree to go to theirs? Why not just hand each other a check for the entry fee and be done with it. You go first.

Our Advice: Focus on making your tournament a MUST ATTEND event for your target market by being the best in your category. You won’t have to worry about attracting enough teams to compete in your tournament, but you might have to worry about how to turn some away. Read our marketing white paper.

However you celebrate (and even if you don’t – Jim in Canada, Jette, Peter, Helle, Cecilie, Christian, Werner, Ronnie, Helle and Christian in Denmark) we here at TourneyCentral and the Tournament Review wish you and yours a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving Holiday.

And Lisa in Texas, take Thursday off… everything will be ok on Friday regardless! Next week will be busy enough.

Our advice: Take a few moments, breeze into your team database and send all your teams a short, personal note to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving. Remember, you are on 365, 24/7!

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.

Jack Taylor, the tournament director for the Arsenal Challenge Cup in Cincinnati, Ohio shares some thoughts on what makes for a successful advertising and sponsorship program for a 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.

We are now on iTunes with a weekly (well, that’s the plan) podcast, usually posted Wed-Thurs. On the weekly show, we will have an interesting conversation with someone who is either in the soccer tournament business, supplies to the industry or is just a fun guest to talk to about the game.

So, subscribe today by clicking on the icon at the top of this page. If you don’t have iTunes, get it also at the top of the page.

To kick off our iTunes podcasts, we are giving away two iPods at the NSCAA and USYouth Conventions. Every time you offer feedback on a posting in this blog, you will be entered into the drawing. (Your feedback does need to be meaningful. You can’t just say Good job or Nice site even thought that does make us feel good.)

We are booth number 1138 at the NSCAA in Indy and we’re still waiting on our booth number for the USYouth. Stop on by; we’ll be podcasting from the booth as well.

During the last six years, I have been fortunate to manage Special Olympics Soccer, Softball and Basketball tournaments for athletes with disabilities in Ohio. Our tournament committee takes pride in offering an event that promotes healthy competition and physical exercise while providing a festive atmosphere for all who participate. These events have quickly gained a postive reputation in eyes of many involved with Special Olympics in Ohio. There are so many reasons for this feeling, from professional staff and caring volunteers to unique entertainment for visitors between games. These are the more obvious ways our tournament staff contribute to this reputation. One of the more subtle, but most effectives techniques is: WE MAKE PEOPLE FEEL WELCOME

Our Advice: Imagine the team who drove across the state or country to attend your event. Maybe they got stuck in traffic, a player got sick on the van or the coach just got a phone call from a frustrated parent. Then they show up at YOUR EVENT to: check into their hotel, register their team and go to their first game. What kind of environment are they coming to? Are they showing up to an event that is generally excited they are there or do they deal with staff/volunteers counting down the minutes until their shift is over? Suggestions follow for creating a welcoming atmosphere. Creativity and attention to detail are important.

Greeters at your tournament hotels
Welcome banners at local businesses, city limit signs, game sites,exit ramps, etc.
Personalized good luck postcards in team rooms and banners at all game sites.
Display spirit center messages in the hotel lobby, registration site and field sites.
Host a welcome/registration reception

I saw the power of this at a Special Olympics Softball Tournament this summer. Ashtabula County(Northeast corner of Ohio) drove 5 hours to participate in the event hosted in Troy(Southwest Ohio). Their team was tired and stressed because of traffic and their team van got a flat tire. The registration volunteers dealt with them in a very professional manner answering any questions they had. Then they went to Diamond #1 to play their first game. Awaiting them at their dugout were two signs. One said Play Hard Ashtabula County and the other said Thanks for coming Ashtabula County. Their coach was overwhelmed to tears because of how welcome they felt. Quickly they forgot about their five hour drive and flat tire. This how you want teams to leave your event. They will come back!!

Every morning, I drive my daughter to school. Well, more correctly, she drives and I ride because she has a learner’s permit. And every morning, we pass by a housing development that is one house, a piece of gutted farmland and this sign that appears to the left.

The developer needed a sign and needed it high off the road. So he did what any good builder (but bad brand manager) did and made a big pile of dirt and put the sign on this big pile. On a conscious level, I know that it is a sign on a pile of dirt. But on a subconscious level, I can’t help but see a freshly dug grave with a headstone.

Morbid? Probably. But even as I KNOW it is just a sign, my subconscious mind keep making references to a grave site.. and the inevitable jokes about the housing market, where good homes go to die, and a whole lot of other tasteless jokes that probably are not really appropriate.

Our advice: Take an objective look at the signs, tents, displays, posters, flyers, mailers and yes, even your web site. Do you see any grave markers? Sometimes they are not so obvious to spot because you, like the home builder, just had a problem that needed a quick solution. When you find them (and you will) replace them with signs that are more in line with your tournament brand.