Tag Archives: Soccer Tournament

Getting Your Soccer Tournament In The News: 8 Simple Rules For Success

Tournaments, ,

Your soccer organization – whether a club, tournament or team – requires press exposure to help you build value for your sponsors and potential player or team base. However, it can be much more than getting a team photo in the local sports section. It can include a leap onto the newspaper city pages or the A block of the television news.

Here are eight simple rules for getting your soccer organization the press coverage you want. There are more, but these are the big ones.

Rule 1: Nobody cares about you.
What people do care about is what your organization does for your community, not just for kids who play soccer. They also care about the people behind the club or tournament. Think in terms of how your soccer organization contributes to your community, how it changes the world and write your story from a third person point of view. Think beyond soccer and frame the story from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know the sport or the players in the sport.

Rule 2: Know your journalists.
What do they care about? What kind of story bends their ear? Write your story as if you are telling your news only to them. Respect their time by putting the Who, What, Why, When and Where in the first paragraph. If they can’t tell what the story is about in the first few sentences, they won’t read further.

Rule 3: Advertising and editorial don’t mix. Ever.
The editorial staff at the newspaper, television station, magazine or web site does not care how much advertising you buy or if you buy any at all. The criteria for them are the newsworthiness of your story. And don’t ever “remind” the editorial staff that you buy advertising or suggest that the sale of their news product will increase if they tell your story. Doing so is disrespectful and unprofessional and almost guarantees your news won’t run.

Rule 4: Write your press releases in AP Style.
If you are not familiar with AP Style, buy the AP Stylebook (apstylebook.com) and live by it. Your story will stand a better chance of being published if editors don’t have to rewrite it. The stylebook is a yearly edition, so be sure to keep up-to-date.

Rule 5: Be tenacious, but not annoying.
Remember rule one. If your story doesn’t run, it probably means that it wasn’t newsworthy enough, even if it was near and dear to your heart. Keep refining the stories you tell and tell a lot of them. Editors are human beings and sometimes they just give people a break for sticking with it against all odds.

Rule 6: Never, never, never tell a news organization who else published your story.
While it may be great news to your soccer organization that you were featured on ESPN2, to an editorial department, you just told them your story is old news.

Rule 7: Think hyper-local.
Newspapers especially are focused on becoming the hyper-local voice of their community and your soccer organization has built-in hyper-localism. Keep your stories focused on the local community. The more personal, the better.

Rule 8: Keep making news.
Most soccer organizations will just send out a press release before their tournament or tryouts and wonder why they don’t get press. A soccer organization is a 365/24/7 operation that makes news all year long. Keep telling these stories.

I may have misled you a bit about the “simple” part in the headline. Getting your soccer organization in the news is as simple as saying you just need to find a bunch of kids to make a soccer club. Like your soccer organization, it takes discipline, a plan, dedication and hard work. The rules are simple, but it is work. The reward is a stronger, and more recognizable brand to potential sponsors, government organizations and your community at large, which helps you achieve your soccer organization goals a little more comfortably.

Are you using unemployment data to guide your soccer tournament marketing?

Tournaments, , , , , ,

The average soccer tournament pulls teams from 3-5 states, including adjoining states and the home state. For many, their home state is the largest draw, followed by a primary state. With the recession in full swing, it may be affecting your ability to draw teams from states that have traditionally sent lots of teams but now has a high unemployment rate.

For example, the average competitive tournament in Ohio typically pulls a large contingent of teams from Michigan. But if you take a quick look at some unemployment statistics, it should not come as a shock that convincing teams that normally came down without question is getting harder to do. In addition, you may have to resort to discounting for multiple teams, juggle the schedule to work around a hotel minimum stay; all effective short-term tactics, but long-term strangulation for your tournament brand.

A better approach may be a more well-rounded, distributed marketing plan where one state’s financial plight does not adversely affect your tournament planning. In short, spread your marketing dollars around to states one over; those that may be in a better financial position to attend. You’ll get some fresh blood in your tournament and you will be less dependent on the unemployment rate.

The time to start marketing to other states in before you need teams from financially healthy states. Hoping and praying the teams from distressed states will still come is not a marketing plan.

Parents will always spend money on their kids, but there are limits. Many are cutting the number of tournaments and only putting one or two travel events on the calendar. Make sure yours is in the mix by making sure they know you are there.

The economy will recover eventually and when it does, your marketing efforts will continue to pay back as newer teams who could not afford it during the recession try your soccer tournament out. And, as sure as the recovery is coming, so too is another recession. Be ready by always marketing smart.

Watch the trends. Sometimes being a great soccer program is just not enough.

How is your soccer tournament like Apple?

Tournaments, , , , , , , ,

This week, the Washington Post published an article on Apple, it’s new product line and how it is kicking butt all over the computer world despite being in a recession. In the article, it concedes that Apple’s success are not merely driven by Apple fanatics who will buy anything Apple makes, but by a sound, well-thought out value strategy.

Quite simply, Apple produces a quality product and makes no compromises on design and user interface. They set the price high enough to generate a profit to ensure research and development dollars for future products and don’t apologize for it nor do they adjust it based on whether or not we are in a recession. Their products don’t appeal to everyone, but the audience to which they appeal are loyal and expect quality; first time, every time.

And they are onto something. As the average PC maker continues to be squeezed by their customers who shop on price, they have fewer and fewer dollars left to innovate and improve. When a recession happens, many low-cost producers simply go out of business because they can’t afford to weather the storm. They did not prepare.

Is your soccer tournament an Apple or a PC? Is your fee/vendor/sponsorship agreements set high enough to claim value and ensure enough profitability to assure your guest teams that you will be around next year? Or in some cases, even this year? Do you take care of your guest teams enough to justify your fees?

Our advice: Set your team fees high enough to make sure there is enough profit to operate at a high-quality level. Don’t cave to arguments of teams not being able to afford your tournament. You are providing quality soccer competition and entertainment at a fair price that reflects your value. If some teams have problems affording you but have pegged your tournament as a “must attend” event, then perhaps they need to make cost-cuts elsewhere.

And don’t compromise your vendor relationships — including hotels and concessions — to make your tournament more affordable to guest teams. Don’t undervalue your volunteers and staff by cutting perks. Don’t buy cheaper awards. Don’t compromise your marketing.

And don’t cave to scheduling demands that compromises revenue. If that means shrinking the number of teams you accept in order to maintain your quality and profitability goals, then do it. If you are profitable, you can always grow in stronger economic years.

Your ultimate goal is to build a soccer tournament event that is sustainable and will benefit your soccer organization and your local community over a long period of time. Making price deals just to satisfy short-term team counts does not contribute to that goal.

Almost ready for St. Louis and the NSCAA

NSCAA, Tournaments, , , , ,

Just in case you were following along with us, checking off the dates until the big NSCAA soccer conference in St. Louis, here is our booth status. Almost ready!

Our TourneyCentral.com NSCAA booth. A little more nip and tuck, but we're almost there.

Our TourneyCentral.com NSCAA booth. A little more nip and tuck, but we're almost there.

Meet us in St. Louis for the NSCAA.
We’re in booth 1735 and we won’t even try to sell you anything, so you can stay and chat as long as you want. Really. And, if you want to make a podcast promoting your soccer tournament, Back of the Net will help you with that. You don’t even need to be a TourneyCentral tournament.

Soccer Tournament Travel Stats Analysis

Tournaments, , , ,

I was going through some old documents during a New Year cleaning and discovered this analysis given to a tournament several years ago. It is all still very relevant; perhaps even more so given the larger soccer tournament audience on the Internet.

I hope it provides some insight, especially the opportunities sections.

1. It is important to note that most searches are done by TEAM MANAGERS or COACHES who are acting on behalf of their entire team. The average player represents 2.4 visitors to a tournament. The average number of players per team is 16 with tournaments who host teams over U14 (14 for teams who stop at U14)

When calculating the impact of the searches, you should use the number of searches done, in this case, at the peak of 51, as being (51×16)x2.4 or 1,958 individual users. There will be some statistical variance on this as there are some teams who pass along the web site information prior to the event to parents and these parents are individual searches, but even at 80% of the searches being done by team managers and coaches, the number is still significant. (1,566) The question here is: Would a local restaurant be happy with and additional 1,500 visitors on a weekend, some with return visits? Average lunch at 5.00×1566=$7,830.

2. The searches that are the most significant and immediate are: (in order: Coupons, Hotels, Restaurants.) The searches are more or less significant depending on the point in the tournament cycle.
Pre acceptance: Hotel searches are seen at about 6 weeks out, when applications start picking up. This is most likely due to a task-orientation form the coach or team manager. However, the traffic, while it peaks, is mostly spread over a period of 2 weeks. We see another traffic lift when the acceptance is sent out, but significant traffic is seen when the schedule is posted.

We have no independent data to support this activity. However, we believe, through anecdotal data, that team managers are “in the zone” after the schedule is posted and they are looking for confirmation data, maybe switching to a hotel that is closer to their games or searching for directions as they put together their travel packs for the parents. Again, judging from the limited number of individual IP addresses used for the searches, we believe that most of the hotel searches are done by the team manager or coach, not the players and/or their parents.

Opportunities:
1) Knowing that people search for and find hotels on this schedule gives hotels an opportunity to market at acceptance and schedule.

2) The application process can perhaps ask if they have booked into a hotel and get a confirmation number.

3) The tournament can maybe offer directed email marketing to teams who have not confirmed a hotel booking and offer these contacts to hotels for a “last minute” offer, etc. NOTE: The tournament should NEVER give out email or mailing addresses of coaches or teams. All advertising opportunities should be handled by the tournament. Great use of Twitter or SMS.

Restaurant/Coupon Searches: People love a good deal. We promote the coupons through a fixed placement button along the left rail of any page on the site, which accounts for 80%+ of our searches for coupons. With the v.3 upgrade, our searches will be even more targeted to establishments that support the tournament through web-based advertising. Again, great use of Twitter.

Traffic is steady for the coupons the month previous and bumps up about a month before the event. We see peek traffic following the acceptance and again at the schedule, much the same traffic patterns as the hotel. The coupons do have some sustainability during the event, however, whereas the hotel searches dropped off on Friday, the coupon searches continued, though not at the rate they did the week prior to the tournament.

The traffic patterns of the tournament were imposed against a similar tournament, but one that sold 22 web-based coupons. A significantly different pattern was formed: 1) 62% of searches looked on multiple deals. 2) traffic at the peaks were 256% higher than the peaks shown for the tournament and 3) peaks were not are sharply defined by “lulls” of non search days, i.e., traffic was highly sustained the 2 weeks prior to the tournament, and rose sharply the week previous. The more deals there were, the more people searched.

We also saw a significant number of repeat visitors’ search almost daily the week prior to the tournament. However, since there were no deals to look at, the traffic did not sustain or grow.

Opportunities:
1) Until now, restaurants were always hard to get advertising dollars from as they felt they would always get “their fair share of the traffic.” This was true as most food decisions were a matter of luck. After the game, the players would get into the car, take a random right or left turn out of the park and see what looked good. Now, restaurants can have players and their families COMMITTED to them BEFORE they get to the tournament.

2) Restaurants can offer a “pre-booking” or even take orders and payment for food BEFORE the team even gets into town. Imagine if the restaurant put up a web page, linked from the expanded listing on the tournament web site, that took a seating reservation, menu order and credit card payment BEFORE the team came into town. There would be no waiting in the huge mob in the lobby, no waiting for food orders and the team could leave when they were done eating, instead of waiting for the check.. then waiting in line to pay.

3) Follow up and customer loyalty. The restaurant could tie in their order to a particular team and have the tournament then send out a follow up coupon deal for an establishment in their local town.. Example: Eat at a Perkins in Evansville and then when you get home to Dayton, there is a coupon offer in your email, good for the local Dayton Perkins, which expires in 2 weeks.

Churches/Worship: HUGE opportunity to sell advertising here… Not a whole lot of searching, but this is a growing market segment, especially the Christian, nondenominational segment.

Family Entertainment: Again, pretty much the same pattern as coupons and restaurants. Many of the same opportunities exist for this sector as well.

Traffic and search patterns are typical of what we see in other tournament events, with the exception of marked “lulls” in the coupon area. But this is easily solved by selling more web-based advertising.

The soccer tournament market is on line and wants to be on line. They like the ability to search for deals, research hotels and other places of interest on the same site as everything else is happening.

It is important to note that while the tournament can give their advertisers, sponsors and supporters GREAT visibility through the web site, they can also make businesses who don’t support the tournament, invisible. When presented with rich travel information that is concise and appears complete, why would a team manager, coach, parent or player search any other travel database for a city they are unfamiliar with?

They wouldn’t and won’t.