Do's and Don'ts of running weekly competitive events.

Whether you have been running weekly tournaments at your venue/s for years or you’re thinking about starting one for the first time I’m sure you’ll be able to find some useful information below. A little background, I’ve been running weekly tournaments in San Diego, CA for over 4 years (636 events and counting!) and have learned a lot along the way!

DO Use social media! Facebook and Instagram are a must and take less than a minute a day if you follow my guide here: “How To Make Your Weekly Tournament A Success!”

DON’T Use Facebook advertising for events. You may have different results than I have had, but for me it does not work at all for promoting for a single or running event. Instead use Facebook ads to advertise your page.

DO Run large monthly events! I run one monthly tournament on the first Saturday afternoon of every month. This event has a $20-$40 buyin with the prizes usually reaching $1,000+. It’s something the players look forward to and it’s a way to increase revenue on an otherwise slow Saturday afternoon!

DON’T Guarantee a large prize at monthly events. You can run into trouble if you bite off more than you can crew, and in my experience guaranteeing a big prize to entice people to come out does not pay off. The amount of extra people coming does not offset the extra risk.

DO Offer players discounts and gifts, maybe a free drink, for inviting friends. It’s simple and goes a long way to increasing your tournaments word of mouth. There is no better advertising than the advertising your customers will do for you!

DON’T Keep giving the same gifts to the same customers inviting the same people. This DON’T was kind of hard to come up with because in almost all cases you want to do promotions for bringing people in, even hiring promoters. But if a customer is trying to take advantage of your generosity, let them know that this deal is a one time thing.

DO Print and laminate rules beforehand. This goes a long way in being clear about what the rules are and how breaking them will be handled.

DON’T Flip flop. Don’t do it, once you make a decision stick with it unless new information is brought to you.