Planning to organize your next tournament or sports event? As a tournament organizer, here is a quick checklist of top 10 things you should look out for while choosing your tournament venue:
- Location, location, location: Ensure that the venue is well connected with public transport and/or easily accessible through own transport. More central the location, the more your tournament registrations.
- Sports infrastructure at the venue: Does the facility have the right sports flooring, or lighting or other equipment such as nets which is tournament quality
- Number of courts or grounds: As an organizer you want your tournament to run fast and smooth. You want to have multiple matches happening in parallel so that you do not lose time. Does the venue have enough courts or grounds to support the scale of the event that you are planning?
- Cost of booking the venue: Obviously cost is an important factor while planning your tournament. While the venue might be tournament standard, but do you want to end up burning a hole in your pocket in the process?
- Footfall at the venue: Sometimes, busy venues could be better for you as they might get you more registrations for your event since there are regulars who visit the facility. Spreading the word among the regular members of the venue might be enough for your tournament to be a success!
- Water and snacks: Sportspeople (and your officials) need access to pure drinking water and some healthy snacks to refuel themselves while they are participating in your tournament. Ensure that the venue has access to such basic facilities of food and drink.
- Restrooms and changing rooms: Players and your officials need to change before or after their game and need to visit restrooms during the tournament. Ensure that there are enough clean washrooms for men and women or you will end up pissing off your participants
- Audience seating: Players will inevitably be accompanied by their friends, partners, coaches, sponsors etc.. who will all be lurking around the courts. Do you have enough space and seating area to accommodate them so that they do not spill over to your courts?
- Opening and closing ceremony: Does the venue support your opening and closing events? Would you require any public announcement equipment, banners, or stage area that needs to be setup at the venue for your ceremony?
- Layout map of the tournament: As a tournament organiser, you need to mentally play the whole layout plan like where your officials will be seated, where the registrations will be happening, where the players will be waiting, how they will be entering and exiting the courts, etc. etc.. The venue that you choose should be loyally supporting your mental layout map, to make your tournament a grand success.
With a good venue satisfying the above criteria and with the help of great tournament management system like What’s Score, your tournament is bound to be a success!
