How to make your weekly tournament a success.
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!
-Be prepared! Print sign in sheets and table/court numbers here: http://tournament-wizard.com/site/printresources
-Print out and laminate rules for the game so there are no conflicts
-Instagram is your friend! It’s extremely easy to setup and it will make posts to ALL your social medias at once (how convenient and easy!). Come up with an informative post and slap as many local hashtags as you can on it (yes I know, ugh hashtags, but it works!). Hashtags will make sure that your post will appear to the widest audience possible. Keep in mind Instagram limits you to only 30 hashtags. Here is a sample of what I use on Tuesday nights in San Diego:
It's taco Tuesday and that means beer pong at Jts on mission gorge! Free to play with $100 in prizes! Sign ups start at 9pm and games begin at 10. Remember that your rank and stats will be kept on tournament-wizard.com. Come join the party and get a round on me for new players! #tournamentwizard #beerpong #bp #sandiego #sd #throwup #love #cali #california #hilife #619 #happiness #lifestyle #mycity #entertainer #smile #newsommfriends #goodtimes #bestfriends #picoftheday #tuesday #tacotuesday #dope #whoop #fun #fox5 #sunny #drinking #winning
-Also to maintain your followers make sure to check it once a week and add anyone who has “liked your photo” usually these people will follow you back insuring they will always see your events! There is an app called Crowdfire that I use to remove people you follow who don’t follow you back, I clean out my followers about once a month.
-This goes along with the Instagram posting, and isn’t something revolutionary, but make sure to take a picture of 1st and 2nd place (or more) holding up their winnings. This does a number of things, 1. It will be eye catching as you continue to post pictures of different people winning money at your events, week in and week out. 2. The players really want to be in that picture to show off to their friends, making them more likely to make it out every week.
-Create the event ahead of time make sure to use “weekly event”, tournament wizard will automatically create the event in advance in the future!
-Setup tables/courts about an hour before start to start sparking interest and allowing patrons that show up early to begin playing.
-When you make a ruling stick with it, never flip flop unless you gather new information that changes your decision.
-If you mess something up, forgot to add a team to the bracket, etc or even if it’s something out of your control (forfeiting a team that took too long to show up for their game, but later showed up) apologize and give a gift or promise a gift in the future. Usually I’ll buy that team a drink or promise them free entry to my next event or a free drink at my next event. This incentivizes them to come back again even though they may have felt “cheated” at your last event.
-Take the time to get to know your players, it really goes a long way and will increase the chance that they will return and return with friends!
Free to play is the way to go! Instead of charging an entry fee that might be a barrier for some players guarantee a small prize and allow everyone to play for free, I’ve seen double if not triple my attendance since switching to free to play!
-Have prizes ready to pay out as soon as the event is finished
Signing up on the website is free, follow this link to sign up: http://tournament-wizard.com/
Check “Organizer” under “Register Now” and fill out your information.