Tag Archives: Soccer

Tweet Inspires Local Student to Design Ace of Cakes Soccer Cake

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“Can anyone draw a Maryland blue crab attacking a soccer ball like a monster truck?” That tweet from TourneyCentral.com President Gerard McLean moved 16-year-old Nicole Manzo, a junior at Fairmont High School, to try her hand at designing a cake. McLean forwarded the design to Charm City Cakes, the star of the popular television show, “Ace of Cakes,” on the Food Network.

TourneyCentral.com is using the resulting masterpiece cake to promote their complete end-to-end soccer tournament management system at the upcoming National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Convention in Baltimore, Maryland on January 13-15, 2011. The annual event is a showplace of soccer education, awards and exhibits for soccer coaches and youth tournament organizers nationwide.

The request actually got to Nicole secondhand through her mother Karen Manzo, who is a business associate of McLean’s. According to Karen, Nicole is an “Awesome artist,” whose first job was as a face painter at the Italian Fest. She continues to volunteer for that event and others as time permits. In addition to artistic pursuits, Nicole is a dedicated business student who is, “determined to own her own business some day.” On the extra-curricular front, the younger Manzo is a three-sport athlete spending time competing in field hockey, swimming and track.

ABOUT TOURNEYCENTRAL
TourneyCentral is the only fully integrated, event-focused online solution for youth soccer tournaments. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, advertising tools provide tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. TourneyCentral will be attending the NSCAA Conference in Baltimore in January 2011. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

What GotSoccer GotWrong about TourneyCentral

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Recently, GotSoccer sent out a press release outlining the difference between their tournament management software and TourneyCentral. We, of course, were immediately flattered; not because we particularly care about what GotSoccer thinks of our product but because that told us that their customers and prospects were asking them about TourneyCentral. And they had to defend their product against ours.

That makes us happy.

But GotSoccer did get a few things wrong about TourneyCentral. After all, accuracy at a soccer tournament is very important, even more so when you trust software to drive your event. Accuracy makes sure the right teams (including referees) show up on time and at the correct fields and the right teams advance. Accuracy is critical to most soccer teams, coaches, parents and players when it comes to standings and who gets the trophy. If you are going to start comparing yourself to the big dogs in the yard, it’s important to get the big things right.

Here are just a few things GotSoccer GotWrong about TourneyCentral:
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Increasing a sponsor’s footprint at your soccer tournament

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This morning I received an email from a tournament director to see if we could make the sponsor logo bigger. I took a look at the listings under the DEALS area and noticed the logo was already at the maximum size and in the top position. But I also noticed the sponsor had no Super Deal, no additional coupon, no links to their Facebook Fan page or posted video. Fortunately, there is still some time to get these things up and running.

For a player, parent or coach visiting the tournament website, there is no reason to click on the logo if there is no additional information. They know all that is going to happen is a visit to the sponsor’s website. But they don’t know why they would go there other than being sold something, so they don’t click.

Sometimes the easiest thing to ask for is to “make the logo bigger” but the more effective strategy is to make the sponsorship footprint bigger. Think what your sponsor means to the player, parent or coach. Ask the sponsor what special information they have for your audience and make that the SuperDeal. Then ask for a flyer or coupon This does not even need to be a discount, just more information targeted to your tournament-goers and their fans. And a video never, ever hurts. It could even be the sponsor welcoming the teams to your tournament.

If you want to go further, you can post a news story on your front page and email it to the teams. If your sponsor relies on foot traffic during the event, you could send text messages from the Team Applications Module to the team contacts, sparingly of course. You could also tweet out offers using your twitter account.

Think about how you can increase your sponsor’s footprint instead of just their logo size. Chances are, if they have success in year one, they’ll keep coming back every year.

Tell me which teams have applied and I will apply to your soccer tournament if I like them

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We are seeing more and more requests from coaches for the soccer tournament to give them the list of teams that have already applied for them to “evaluate” whether or not the tournament would be a good fit for their team. This has us scratching our heads a bit.

Nobody likes to pay money to compete in a tournament only to get stuck in a division with top level teams or, in my opinion, stuck with teams that offer no competition. I get that. But I don’t get is why the guest team coach feels the need to evaluate the teams that have applied prior to applying to a tournament.

Perhaps it is an erosion of trust between soccer tournaments and soccer coaches. Perhaps it is an increased need for the coach to “control” every aspect of the game. Perhaps it is increased pressure from the parents on the coach to place their team in tournaments where they can be “competitive” (whatever that ultimately means.)

Chris Brogan, who is a bit of a guru in the Social Media space, wrote a book called Trust Agents. It deals primarily with trust in online social media spaces like Twitter, Facebook, etc. but it touches a bit on how trust is becoming a currency. As tournaments are becoming more sophisticated, they will need to learn also on how to deal in a trust economy. It’s a quick, easy read.

Our advice: Always be giving guest teams a reason to trust you. Post your schedule from last year and encourage them to take a look at the teams that applied and analyze the point spreads. Every TourneyCentral soccer tournament is a 365/24/7 event that has last year’s schedule available until the application deadline. Use that to your advantage.

Take a really hard, objective look at your seeding. Do your club teams seems to walk away with the trophies every year? Why? Do you have an opinion that your club teams should be able to win your own tournament? Why? Given the choice between bringing in competitive teams for your club teams to play and getting better versus winning a trophy by seeding your teams lower, which is more valuable for the long-term growth of your club? Your tournament? Do guest teams walk off grumbling about how “the fix is in” for the club teams to win? If so, change that.

Trust is everything and will only become more valuable. If teams don’t trust you to place them correctly in your tournament, they will eventually go elsewhere. When they trust you, they’ll quit asking and let your history and reputation speak for itself.

No scheduling conflicts and late Sat games

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With the recession pulling into it’s second (or third) year, we’re seeing a lot of teams request a late Saturday morning start so they don’t have to book rooms into a hotel for Friday night. As you can imagine, accommodating this request puts a serious strain on the scheduling as most of the time, the start times are determined by the number of fields and the number of daylight hours available. While you can sometimes squeak out another field somewhere, tacking another hour of sunlight on the end of a day is impossible.

So what to do? You don’t want to turn away a team if you don’t have to, but re-writing the laws of nature to fit an economic reality is just not going to happen. When most teams are now asking for a late Saturday start, it become mathematically impossible to grant the request.

Our advice: Publish a cut off date for late Saturday start requests. Instead of trying an Early Bird discount or other pricing scheme to get teams to apply early, have a date or volume cut off. Perhaps only the first two teams for each age group can request a late Saturday start. Once those requests are used up, there are no more. And, while you are at it, do the same for multiple-team coaches. It rewards the teams with special requests to apply early without compromising the price and value of your tournament.

Be sure to promote visibly and keep track of the number of requests. Reward the requester handsomely and make it crystal clear that the reason you are honoring (or denying) the request is because they applied and paid early (or not.) Once you start doing this, competition for special considerations next year will be fierce.