HOW DO YOU HAVE BIGGER TOURNAMENTS?
You cannot over-saturate an area with tournaments!
You have to encourage players to travel, bringing together the entire region!
You must have a cohesive schedule that allows people to plan to go to big events.
During breaks players should be encouraged to play free with friends at their local park or weekday leagues or Just take a Break.

THIS YEAR:
VolleyNation has put itself in the position of being able to dramatically lower the number of events on its schedule to 19 events, a more than 25% decrease. In order to have this do any good, cooperation is going to be necessary from all the players, individuals and organizations to refrain from creating or supporting more non scheduled events. This will increase the turnouts at scheduled events dramatically over the course of the year. Bigger events are better events.

BEGINNING THIS YEAR:
In order to stop the marketing abuses that have been commonplace over the years, no promotion of any kind, be it fliers or pointed word of mouth campaigns for non-VolleyNation events will be allowed. (You don’t see people from Burger King hanging out in McDonalds telling them to go to BK) It takes unfair advantage of our marketing efforts giving nothing in return. VolleyNation events all mutually benefit from each other’s player pools.

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COMMON CONCERNS: (and responses)

Tourneys don’t start on time.
Response.
(If true, it is caused by a small number of habitually late players, normal actual start time is 9:30, which is true for most events, late fees are used when needed)

Side-Out Rules:
Response.
Many of the tenants of rally play do not make sense in doubles play. Side-Out rules encourage more dramatic and exciting play. A well-run Side-Out tournament can run and end on time.

You don’t pay out enough.
Response.
VolleyNation pays out a Minimum of 30% of the gross proceeds at all events, some events more. (Bigger events = bigger payouts)

Keep points system.
It takes a massive commitment of time to accomplish this, we are doing it this season.

Membership fee.
(It takes a tremendous amount of expense and work to keep things running and we keep it as low as possible)

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BAD IDEAS:

“Let’s randomly have a tourney fundraiser because any little bit helps.”
“Let’s have one that weekend because no one wants to travel that far.”
“There’s an open weekend, let’s put on a tourney”

All of these “reasons” detract from the greater good of having larger tournaments.

ALTERNATIVES:
If there is an open weekend or you and your friends can’t travel, find someone with a net and go play for free in a park or even just take a break. That way the schedule can run it’s normal course and turnouts will increase.

FACTS:

Volleyzoo receives 10-15 requests a year from organizations big and small wanting to hold tournaments every year…

People only have so much money they are going to spend a month on tournaments.
You cannot over-saturate the regions with tournaments or they will all be small.
(Supply vs. demand)

THE SINGLE MOST DESTRUCTIVE THING

The worst thing that can happen to having a schedule of large tournaments is random groups or individuals continually holding tournaments that are not on the schedule. It overloads areas with too many events in a row and simultaneously prevents players from traveling in mass to other events.

RESPECT THE SCHEDULE:
A tremendous amount of work and thought goes into making the schedule each year, please respect the Schedule and the tournaments will get much bigger. Respect the Schedule and the rest will take care of it self. If we can all pull together and support this effort we will begin having noticeably bigger and better events this year despite the slow economy.