Our Numbers Speak for Themselves

“Our Numbers Speak for Themselves”

This is the tag line on the 2012 NASC Sports Event  Symposium marketing materials, and the attached article backs the claim. We surveyed participants in Greensboro, and 92% reported they did business with someone they met at the symposium.

Here is another proof: Visit Lorain County (OH) met the folks from Tough Mudder, and look what happened!

Registrations for Hartford are currently running ahead of Greensboro. This is a great reminder to fill out your registration form now…particularly if you are one of the approximately 100 member organizations that decided not to go to Greensboro!

How far behind do you wish to fall?

- Don

Two Super Bowls and Two Super Women!

Wow! Two straight Super Bowls and two straight female NASC member executives! If ever there was a doubt whether women could succeed in the sports event industry (there wasn’t) those doubts were put to rest in Dallas and for this year in Indianapolis.

Don Schumacher, Executive Director of NASC, interviews Tara Green, Chief Revenue Officer for American Airlines Center and current NASC chair, who was the COO for Super Bowl XLV.

Tara Green, current chair of the NASC, was Chief Operating Officer last year. She worked for the host committee for three years and spent six months on the bid. As you will remember, all they had to overcome was everything usual plus dealing with a new building, temporary seating, and a modest little ice storm!

Allison Melangton has been President and CEO of this year’s event since 2008! Before that she was with the Indiana Sports Corporation and USA Gymnastics.

Congratulations to two outstanding executives, and power to the women of the NASC!

We men think multi-tasking is walking and talking. Sorry, guys.

- Don

Check out Don’s interview with Tara Green here: http://www.youtube.com/user/NASCoffice?feature=mhum#p/u/4/K22jbNJa4TI

Sports Commission and CVB Relations

The topic of CVB and sport commission relations continues to pop up in our industry’s discussions.  It’s not surprising.  The topic has been around since before the NASC’s founding!  It’s pretty obvious—and there are far too many examples—anytime there is a CVB and sports commission in the same city, there is a chance conflict might arise.  Squabbles over resources, poorly assigned responsibilities, and claims of credit are far too common.

Sometimes missions overlap and often personalities clash.

Unresolved fights not only hurt both organizations, but also create inefficiencies that place a community at a disadvantage in sport event recruitment.  None of this has to be the case.  It would be nice to be able to say that resolution or avoidance of conflicts is easily corrected; they are not.  Let’s  look at some strategies to find methods that work for a few areas.

Personalities:    To work in our business, a strong personality is a required organizational leadership asset.  Pig-headedness should not be part of this definition.  If there are conflicts between organizations’ leaders, each should look to find ways to end the strife.  Without resolution of personality conflicts, eventually one of two bad things will happen.  Someone will lose or both will lose.  Nobody “wins” when stubbornness prevails.

Overlapping Missions:   Communities cannot afford two organizations with overlapping missions.  Eventually—especially in tough times—community business and political leaders may be forced to make choices.  Often the culprit in having two organizations that conflict is the governance by their respective boards.  Executive directors who desire cooperation should engage their board members, review the organization’s mission, and better define goals and objectives.   If you can’t build complementary organizational relationships, you can expect one (or both) organizations to face scrutiny and public questioning about your stewardship of community resources.

Duplicative Efforts:  Concentration on what your organization does best is a successful approach to consider and effective coordination with destination partners can avoid duplication.  There is enough variation in how sports commissions and convention bureaus meet community needs to avoid having each do the same work.  In our community, we brought in outside consultants to help us focus our sport and other tourism organizations to fit into the overall destination brand and marketing efforts.  We learned what we each do best and gained mutual respect for each group’s competence.

Claiming Credit:   Think about sharing credit because claiming credit for success is a trap.  If two groups have jointly gone after an event, it is obvious they should share credit.  Not so obvious is that even if you had the most to do with bringing an event to town, there is no harm to share the win!  The “Golden Rule” might be something to consider.  Besides if you claim credit on a regular basis, when projections aren’t met, getting blamed might just follow.

About the Guest Contributor – Jack Hughes, CSEE is the Executive Director of the  Gainesville Sports Commission, the 20-plus- year-old sports commission formerly known as the Gainesville Sports Organizing Committee. The GSC works closely with its tourism partner, VisitGainesville to host as many as 40 sports events annually. Prior to this he served on the Gainesville/Hall County (Georgia) Sports Council and CVB. His more than 25 years of experience includes the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics, the Centennial Olympic Games, three Olympic Festivals, 1993 World University Games, the US National Hot Air Balloon Championship and the original Earth Day. Hughes is a Certified Sports Event Executive (CSEE) and served as the Chair of the NASC in 2008-2009.

Why do facility owners/operators require insurance?

If you sell or produce sports events you must address the need for the event to have its own insurance and to make sure that insurance adds the facility as an additional insured! There is no reasonable way to expect the facility to take the risk of an incident free event. It is equally unreasonable to expect them to carry all coverage necessary on their own policy.

What you should expect is to sign a contract requiring the event to carry its own insurance. The coverage must be drafted by risk managers to meet minimum standards. Normally this includes specific types of policies, minimum limits of coverage, and special endorsements like “additional insured” status for the premises owner.

Please do not make promises to an event owner without insuring yourself by following these procedures.

You can learn everything else you need to know to grow your events by attending the 2012 NASC Sports Event Symposium in Hartford, CT April 16-19.

See you in class!!

Don

NASC Members Make Things Better for the Communities They Serve

Having just returned from visits to six of our member cities in just over a month I am struck by how important issues have become like computing visitor spending, effective relationships with the local hospitality community, “stay to play,” all issues relating to room contributions and commissions, troubling issues with a few third party room booking services, and how to compute possible return on investment before the bid.

In our recent CSEE modules in Las Vegas we attempted to discuss most aspects of economic impact and visitor spending plus current issues and best practices concerning the hotel industry.

We missed the rest of you, and could probably go back and repeat the two sessions without going over much of the same material. This tells me we can never spend enough time addressing every issue above.

I will address visitor spending in the next few lines and go on to the rest of the topics in coming days.

Economists spend much of their careers on issues relating to spending and resulting impacts. I personally believe things would be better if we stuck to room nights and estimates of direct visitor spending. Unfortunately that’s a tough challenge. Some of us are locked into computations with multipliers that tend to produce large numbers. If we start counting direct spending only our monthly and annual numbers will look like we are failing to hit our marks.

Please keep things as simple as you can. Stress estimates and not fact. Provide some information on how the number was computed. Try not to get into issues like the creation of new jobs…they happen, but not due simply to our efforts. Leave all of the “extras” to academia!

At the end of the day, our members are making things better for the communities served. This can be reflected in visitor spending, the economic impact of that spending, an increase in room nights, or by improving the quality of life for our fellow residents.

The latter is what got many of us started in the first place!

-Don

Create the Win-Win with area media

At a breakout session during an NASC Sports Event Symposium there was discussion regarding how best to work with your local medias to educate your community on what you do and why. It was brought up that many local media’s are struggling and are looking for new ideas. Considering we ask a lot of our local newspaper’s sports department it only made sense to determine how we could help them – try to find a way to create that “win-win scenario”.

So I got the idea of offering our staff to write a weekly article giving the inside scoop on what’s going on in the world of amateur sports; locally, regionally and nationally. I met with the leadership of our local newspaper and pitched the idea. The basic concept was that most things published today are readily available to most readers regarding major sports stories through numerous other resources. Local newsworthy items of interest that were not available via the internet would be of value – yet they were getting it at no cost. They agreed to give it a try and we created the “Amateur Update” as a weekly newspaper sports section column focusing on the happenings of the amateur sports world.

So, we went to work. We shared stories about what the sports commission is, how and why we belong to the NASC, what we hear and learn at the Symposium, how we attract and select future events, what is the outcome of bid presentations, how our board works, and the list goes on. Our sales manager wrote about sales efforts, our operations manager wrote about preparation and duties of hosting events. Before long, we found that the local newspaper was thrilled with the column as it had not only exceeded their expectations but garnered numerous positive comments from the community. Now, more than eighteen months later, it is a column that is followed by many.

Some weeks we struggle for new content but with the new twists and changes of the world we deal with – we always seem to come up with something of interest. Most importantly we are supplying our community with information on who we are and what we do in an interesting and effective manner.

We are now looking at how we can expand on this and move into the television and radio media’s with an “amateur Athlete of the week” or “amateur update minute” to keep the community informed.  Communications of this type not only help to educate the community on what sports commissions do – but can also act as an arm of sales – making people aware of your presence so they can bring ideas or connections to you of potential future events.

So consider this when working with your local media outlets.  Keep the idea in mind of how you can help them achieve their goals and success. Perhaps an opportunity will open up that benefits them and also helps you promote what you do and how you run your sports commission – creating the win-win scenario we all like to be a part of.

About the Guest Contributor:  Ed Hruska, CSEE Rochester Amateur Sports Commission

Ed Hruska spent most of his life involved with leadership roles in amateur sports in some manner before being hired as the Executive Director in 2003. He served on the Sports Commission Board of Directors from 1996 – 2002 and was Board President in 1999. He has also served as chair of the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau and was elected to the Rochester City Council in 2004 – a seat he still holds. Recently Ed received an appointment to the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission Board of Directors. Ed earned his CSEE in 2007 and has been a member of the Member Mentoring committee over recent years.

NASC Announces First Annual Survey of Host Organizations

The NASC is pleased to announce the first ever comprehensive survey of NASC Active category members (host organizations). The study is being conducted for us by the Ohio University (OU) Graduate Program in Sports Administration. An ad-hoc panel of NASC board members has worked with OU and NASC staff to develop this survey.  The primary contact for each Active category member organization received a link to the online survey on November 15th.  If you need an NASC staff member to resend the link to the survey, contact us at 513-281-3888 orNASC@SportsCommissions.org.

We need to make two very important points:

1. Your response is needed! If this study is to provide meaningful results that can help guide your future planning, we need full participation.

2. As with most good things, there is a cost: the survey could take between 20 and 30 minutes to complete. We suggest glancing through the questions and then collecting the data needed before you start.

The deadline for return of all questionnaires is December 15, 2011.

As incentives, every member returning their completed questionnaire by December 1, 2011 will be eligible for a $500 gift card. If your company permits you to keep the card, Merry Christmas! If not, your company can donate the card to a charity of your choice, providing a better Christmas for others!

Every member entered in this first drawing who does not win will be placed in a second drawing.  Immediately after December 15, the second drawing will be held for two $250 gift cards.

Your questionnaires will be automatically returned to the Ohio University team for analysis and tabulation.

The results will be featured on our web site and form the basis of our report on the status of our industry at the NASC Sports Event Symposium in Hartford, CT in April.

- Don

Third party housing services, site selection, and room rebates

When is it a good idea to use a third party to book rooms? Should the third party also select cities? What constitutes a “reasonable” total amount of up-charge per room?

In my opinion, the answers are sometimes, never, and nothing above $5-10.

There can be circumstances when the CVB or the event simply does not have the capability to book rooms. At these times a reputable housing service can be of significant assistance. Be sure, however, to check the amount of experience with sports events. The type, kind, and location of each property in relation to the competition sites are of the highest importance to a successful sports event.

Many third party services have just discovered sports events. Only a very few have been at it for around ten years, and I know of only one that started in sports.

I cannot imagine an acceptable set of circumstances allowing the housing service to select sites…unless the event owner just does not want to do the work (they are content to find out what the quality of the competition sites and housing arrangements are on arrival!) or, worse, they would rather get a guaranteed payout per room above and beyond all other factors.

“We are only in this for the kids!” Sure.

There is no place in our industry for event owners who do not care enough about their participants to vet the details versus other choices. There is also no place for host organizations who simply want a commission on each room above all other factors.

“Stay to play” should not be used to cover for these practices.

We should give more thought to team registration fees. Why not include any up-charges in that fee? Anything else becomes an additional tax on participants…the very folks we work so hard to get to town.

How about you? What do you think?

-Don

How the Certified Sports Event Executive Program Has Helped Me Advance In My Career

The Certified Sports Event Executive (CSEE) Program is a continuing education program open only to NASC Members.   The CSEE program provides participants with up-to-date, useful knowledge on an array of topics that are meant to increase your productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in your job.  At the completion of the program, each participant receives the CSEE designation. The CSEE Program has been an extremely useful tool in my career, and I am a proud graduate.

I have beenin the Sports Industry for 13 years, and I owe a large thank you to the NASC and its CSEE Program.  The CSEE Program has kept me updated on key issues and topics that are directly related to this career.  Although, I have worked in many different areas of the Sports Industry: Collegiate Athletic Department  (Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas), Event Rights Holder (NAIA), Sports Commission (Olathe, Kansas Sports Commission) and now a Convention and Visitors Bureau (Bryan-College Station, Texas), I have relied on the knowledge I have gained from CSEE in each career move.

Perhaps one of the most noticeable effects I have experienced by obtaining my CSEE has been in my current position at the Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau.  Once I had completed the CSEE program, I began to see that I was more respected in the industry, community and by my supervisor.  In fact, I was promoted from the Director of Sports to the Director of Sales-Sports & Conventions.  I am now responsible for both the sports market and conventions market for the bureau.  I contribute this success to CSEE and use the education I have received through the program to achieve my career goals every day.  Also, participants of the program are so tight knit that I know I can contact any one of the CSEE graduates or program participants to get best practices and useful ideas when I need assistance.  If you are wondering if the CSEE Program would be a good investment for you or your current place of business…my answer is a resounding YES!!!

~ Kindra

Kindra Fry, CSEE Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau
Kindra is the Director of Sports for the Bryan-College Station Convention and Visitors Bureau where she has been since 2004. The sports market in Bryan-College Station is thriving and in her time in Aggieland, Kindra has increased hotel room nights by 300%. Prior to the convention and visitors bureau world, she served as the marketing assistant and an event coordinator with the NAIA and has experience in the collegiate athletics field as well. Kindra has been a member of NASC since 2002 and was awarded her CSEE in April 2008. Phone: (979) 595-2686, Email: kindra@bcscvb.org

Why attend the NASC Sports Event Symposium?

The 2012 NASC Sports Event Symposium in Hartford marks the twentieth anniversary of the NASC! As one of our founders I was involved in all of the planning meetings leading to the initial meeting in 1992 and have remained involved ever since. From 1989 to 1998 I served as the executive director of what was the Greater Cincinnati Sports & Events Commission, a privately funded not-for-profit that represented our market. In order to be competitive, I attended every meeting the NASC held. Missing a meeting was unthinkable.

You need to do the same.

• To be competitive you simply must make sales contacts at the symposium!
• To be competitive you simply must attend special sessions designed specifically to help you get at least your share of the market!
• To be competitive you simply must learn from your peers. You could, of course, make your own mistakes but avoiding them can sure help you stay employed!

You cannot find another conference, meeting, or trade show where you can accomplish all of these tasks! No one but the NASC combines lead generation with the latest developments and peer-to-peer learning.

Plus, we are YOUR association. We have set new attendance records every year, including 2011. At that, 125 member organizations stayed home! It can be tough out there without help.

Over 5000 persons attended the recent ASAE meetings in St. Louis. The biggest take-away for members were the education sessions, not lead generation.

Ninety-two percent (92%) of NASC Sports Event Symposium attendees report developing business as the result of attendance at the symposium.

The question is not why to attend…the question is, how can you miss it? It costs a lot more in lost business to stay home.

Next year’s budgets are in process. Make sure Hartford is in the mix.

- Don