AM Mailbag: The Eyes Of A Tournament Director

Our mailbag is open to the public. This week we support GTP’s Coach Chris and publish his article for him (in his words) as we take a look at a tournament through the eyes of a director. The opinions, facts, and so forth are entirely his, but that doesn’t necessarily mean AskMadden doesn’t stand behind it.

Many people think it is easy throwing a tournament.  If people think it is so easy, than everyone would be a tournament director.  There are so many things that go in to being a Tournament Director.  Money, locking in a location, promotion, set up, organizing brackets, recording scores for each game played, playoff set up,  clean up and than storage.

In order to start throwing tournaments you must have equipment.  From game systems, game discs, televisions, HDMI cables and extra controllers for the guys that do not bring their own controllers and most importantly, power strips.  Imagine the price of 10 flat screen TV’s.  Now imagine the price of systems and game discs.  Don’t forget the venue fee.  Think all that is cheap?  Not at all.

“But Chris, what about the location?”

Now you guys may think that getting a venue is easy.  First question you are asked by the Manager or Owner of the establishment is “What can you bring us?  What do we get out of it?”  Now you guys may think those two questions are the exact same.  You could not be farther from the truth.  You need to be able to not just say, but show the owner or manager (whoever you are dealing with from the establishment) what you could bring them.  It is easy to say “I can have 30 to 40 plus guys here for you” but until they see it, they will not believe you.  Once you have the location locked it, you need to work out the details such as price, amount of space you need, amount of time you need.  Throwing tournaments at a bar on a Saturday is not recommended because if there is a game on and the bar needs additional space, guess what will happen to your tournament.  That’s right, you will be asked to shut down.  Having a tournament during the week at a bar is not as bad because there is usually plenty of space.

When approaching the establishment Manager or Owner, you must present to them your ideas and what you can bring them with a business mind.  Have pictures from previous events.  Let them know you would be more than happy to put a link to their website on your site etc. etc.

Next, you need to work out a date with the owner and than promote your event to get as many locals there as possible.  Get a flyer made up (which costs money for graphic design), get copies of the flyers made up (which costs money) and than go out to your hot spots in the city and hand them out.  When handing out the flyers, you also need to sell the idea of getting  the people you are handing the flyers too to actually come to the event.  You cant just do it the day before the event scheduled. A week before your event and the days leading up to your event, you should be out on the streets handing out flyers.  You can not expect people to just show up.  I have had major success with getting randoms at our events here in Philadelphia by taking this approach.  If you are unable to hand out flyers, than look to get someone you trust to hand them out, but if you get someone else to do it, be prepared to pay that person.

The day of the event, you must be at your establishment early to set up your equipment.  So now you have to transport all your game consoles, game discs and televisions to the venue and than unload and set everything up and than make sure you have an even distribution of power going through out the room to ensure that there are no power surges on 1 outlet that would shut everything down that is plugged in from that outlet.  Once the competitiors show up, now you must have them sign in and register, once they get registered, you need to put them in brackets but make sure you do not put 2 guys from the same crew in the bracket.  You must have a mind set as to when you want to cut off buy backs.  Once you have the time set in your mind, when it comes down to it, you will have like 2 or 3 more guys trying to convince you to let them buy back into another bracket.  As the brackets get close to finishing, you must figure out who is the number 1 seed by record and point differential.  So if your papers are not in order and can not read your writing because you were writing fast because you had 3 or 4 guys come to you at 1 time to record their scores, than you are screwed.  Not everyone reports their score, so when that happens, you have to go look for them to get the score.  Once the playoffs are set, make sure you do not have 2 guys from the same crew play in the 1^st round of the playoffs because you want to give the crews an equal opportunity to win the prize.

But that’s not all..

After the tournament is over, now you must clean up all food wrappers, bottles, glasses and pack up all your equipment and than load it up and transport it back to either your storage facility or home. I recommend not putting it in a storage facility due to the weather changes and never know what could happen at a storage facility.  If you keep it all at your home, than it takes up a lot of space but at least you know it is secure and in a climate controlled location.  The most I have ever walked away with from a tournament is $215 after expenses because I give most of the money away to the winner.

If you do all this, you will have clocked in over 20 hours of work for 1 Saturday.  Now tell me guys, is it worth all of this time and effort to walk away with only $215?  To me, it is worth it because I enjoy my time with all of you fellas.

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