That is a common sentiment among people involved in tournament management. You want to make your tournament better. You want it to be more profitable for your club. It’s just so much work…and you need to take a break until next year.

The good news is that it doesn’t need to be that much work year-after-year. Below you will find some hints on reducing the tournament management workload and improving your tournament planning.

Reducing Tournament Management Workload

One Hint Only: Use the Internet

You will find that the biggest part of running a tournament is communication. My message to all those running tournaments today is to use the internet. The internet is helpful for regular club and league management…and EXTREMELY helpful in tournament management.

The reason for the heightened importance of using internet is geography. People from out of town are more likely to have questions. Every phone call, fax and envelop that you receive takes up your time, and you need to minimize your time answering question if you are going to do all of your tournament planning.

Here are just a few ways,

• Promotion: Notify clubs and teams about your tournament through a single email blast and have all tournament information available on your website.
• Registration: Accept online team registration and team fee payment.
• Schedules: Post all of your schedules on your website; Refer all coaches and managers to that website as a primary resource.
• Results: Post results to your website as they happen. Teams can find out when and where to show up on day two if game results are instantly available.

Improving your Tournament Planning

Step 1: Define your Tournament

I’m not talking about the tournament you had last year. I’m talking about the tournament that you’re going to have. Your dream tournament. Explicitly define your goals, and making them measurable. For example, define the size (number of teams), geographic scope, number of days, types of prizes, level of competition, amount of money you want to raise, etc. Once have identified and prioritized your goals, you can work backwards from those goals to see what needs to be done to make them a reality.

Step 2: Define your Organization Structure

A large part of managing a tournament is clearly defining what roles have to be filled. I recommend that you split your roles into three distinct groups.

1. Marketing: Bringing in the teams…the right number of teams, from the right areas, and at the right level of competition. The key driver of your tournament success is the teams that attend. Selecting and targeting clubs & teams that will help you achieve your goals is very important.

   Most of the marketing work happens before the tournament day. It includes the process of promoting to clubs, attracting sponsors, communicating and answering questions, accepting registrations, and collecting the tournament fees.

2. Operations: Operations takes the inputs from marketing and delivers the expected product. This includes booking the number of required fields, purchasing prizes, booking hotels, renting communication equipment, renting tents and port-a-potties, filing tournament sanctioning forms, creating a schedule, etc.

   Obviously the role of operations is extremely important. I recommend that a checklist be created which can be used year-after-year. You will find that the workload becomes much lighter when you know what work it is you have to do.

3. Finance: Last but not least, the finance role. Budgeting and controlling the revenues and expenses is an extremely important part of running a tournament. The marketing and operations people are going to be spending & collecting lots of money. The finance role provides information to both groups - ensuring that they spend and collect the right amount of money!