Tournament attendance help

[indiana-utah]

Thanks to everyone who has posted so far, it's a huge help, and will help us focus on some areas we need to improve on.

Really appreciated.

[Darkson]

This forum is not a good place to market, it's dead, Facebook and Twitter are the way forward.

Disagree here - I've always had much more contact/sign-ups via this forum than I have from Facebook (most people that put themselves as interested on FB have already contacted me here).
But...
It doesn't hurt to advertise everywhere - I used to post here, FB, Twitter, Google+ (when it existed), the Cyanide BB forum, FUMBBL, BBTactics, league forums (that I knew), league FB pages (that I knew), even local Wargaming groups that might play Blood Bowl - all with a couple of centralised places to contact (I used the tournament thread here, our FB page and our website). I didn't spam them, it was one post and gone, unless someone replied, but not everyone will see the info in the same place, so get it out there.

[fromherashes]

I have a similar issue in Aberdeen, though Granite Bowl III is sitting at 30 attendees at the moment. It’s always an issue to get folks to travel. We try to combat that by making it a two day so folks can make a weekend of it (I know that increases costs but it makes it more worthwhile in my opinion). It’s a tough one though and usually a gamble for us.

For us as players up here though the closest tournament to us that isn’t Granite Bowl is Bridie Bowl in Arbroath (around an hour away). All the other tournaments in Scotland are 2 and a half hours drive, so a 5 hour round trip or a hotel stay. However I regularly press gang our guys and there’s usually about 10 people from Aberdeen at each Scottish tournament.

That’s just the start of it though, we had 3 teams from Aberdeen at UKTC ( a 7-8 hour car trip one way) and we had a team at Europen (11hrs). We also have around 6 going to NAF champs (9hrs). Luckily for most I’m happy to drive those to keep down costs for everyone. Though with the expense of those and the expense of attending a standard tournament in Scotland requiring a hotel stay the likelihood of us attending other English based tournaments is slim (though I have looked at Newcastle a couple of times, it always falls on awkward dates for me)

Everyone in YorKshire/Midlands is spoiled for choice in my opinion, I’d love to have that amount of tournaments in close proximity. And the ability to get people to attend from other relatively “local” clubs (well certainly in comparison to up here) is enviable.

I feel your pain.

[indiana-utah]

I have a similar issue in Aberdeen, though Granite Bowl III is sitting at 30 attendees at the moment. It’s always an issue to get folks to travel. We try to combat that by making it a two day so folks can make a weekend of it (I know that increases costs but it makes it more worthwhile in my opinion). It’s a tough one though and usually a gamble for us.

For us as players up here though the closest tournament to us that isn’t Granite Bowl is Bridie Bowl in Arbroath (around an hour away). All the other tournaments in Scotland are 2 and a half hours drive, so a 5 hour round trip or a hotel stay. However I regularly press gang our guys and there’s usually about 10 people from Aberdeen at each Scottish tournament.

That’s just the start of it though, we had 3 teams from Aberdeen at UKTC ( a 7-8 hour car trip one way) and we had a team at Europen (11hrs). We also have around 6 going to NAF champs (9hrs). Luckily for most I’m happy to drive those to keep down costs for everyone. Though with the expense of those and the expense of attending a standard tournament in Scotland requiring a hotel stay the likelihood of us attending other English based tournaments is slim (though I have looked at Newcastle a couple of times, it always falls on awkward dates for me)

Everyone in YorKshire/Midlands is spoiled for choice in my opinion, I’d love to have that amount of tournaments in close proximity. And the ability to get people to attend from other relatively “local” clubs (well certainly in comparison to up here) is enviable.

I feel your pain.

The Yorkshire attendance record is 24 coaches! (Not including UKTC of course - which defies the usual amount of people willing to travel to Yorkshire.)
This year we have paid for 48 seats, struggling to get even 24 people to pay up right now

Once the kids are older, and if the dates work, I'm certainly up for attending some Scottish events (Grandparents were Scottish, so I'm a proud Yorkshire Scott!).

[Danny]

This forum is not a good place to market, it's dead, Facebook and Twitter are the way forward.

Disagree here - I've always had much more contact/sign-ups via this forum than I have from Facebook (most people that put themselves as interested on FB have already contacted me here).
But...
It doesn't hurt to advertise everywhere - I used to post here, FB, Twitter, Google+ (when it existed), the Cyanide BB forum, FUMBBL, BBTactics, league forums (that I knew), league FB pages (that I knew), even local Wargaming groups that might play Blood Bowl - all with a couple of centralised places to contact (I used the tournament thread here, our FB page and our website). I didn't spam them, it was one post and gone, unless someone replied, but not everyone will see the info in the same place, so get it out there.

Talking about this over here https://www.facebook.com/groups/bloodbo ... 69?sfns=cl seems to differ a lot per tournament. Which tournament do you run?

[Darkson]

I ran ARBBL Open (currently handed over to someone else) from 2008-2018 (with a year off in 2016) and the ARBBL Pick'n'Mix.

We've had between 14 (our first) and 46 coaches, but the tournament calendar was a lot less full then. When I started there was nothing in the south of England apart from the Spiky Open and Pearlies in London - now there's at least 20 tournaments in that area, and probably a lot more than I'm missing.

On one hand, that great, as it means there is a lot more choice for coaches ("don't like a certain ruleset, doesn't matter, go to another one the week after"), on the other hand because there is so much choice that (apart from the hardcore coach that can make an event every weekend) it does dilute the coach numbers somewhat (a couple of years ago I had to make a choice between two events [and TOs!] I wanted to support, just because there was only a fortnight between them).

[Littleleadperson]

Hi all,

In 2015 Yorkshire went from being a local league only community, and joined the wider world of NAF tournaments, we've had steady growth over the last couple of years, but seem to end up with 80%+ local players (which is good as we are bringing in new local coaches), but we seemed to have hit a plateau and can't seem to increase numbers from the wider community.

We try and get out to other events, and had 2 teams at EuroBowl, and are sending out a team to the World Cup, so we are trying to get our name out their, but for some reason WYBBL still seems to be a local thing and we don't seem to have the network that some of the more established leagues and players have.

Our next event is Wibble Bowl on the 19th of May, I have capacity for 48 coaches, 25 declared, but only 12 paid up.

Hornswoggle on the 7th of July is the same, but only 4 paid up (50% being me and my eldest son!)

We really want to continue with events, but it's getting quite disheartening when we see other events sell out in days, and we can't figure out what we are doing wrong. Even more infuriating is UKTC (we love it, so this isn't a dig), it's in Yorkshire (but not run by a Yorkshire league or coach), but attracts hundreds of people from all over Europe, so clearly Yorkshire itself isn't the issue.

Over in South Yorkshire, they have (pretty much) abandoned the NAF, they see it as on old boys club, and feel that they aren't in the click, so why bother. That's their choice, and part of me does see their point, however in West Yorkshire we don't quit, and from the people I've met in the wider community the last four years, I honestly think the community is great, and does try and help everyone, new and old.

As my time is full with work, family, and running the WYBBL league, we've asked Spleggy (who is well known to many in the wider community) to help out with tournaments, so hopefully we'll fly the flag even harder in 2019, but we would like to ask the community for help. What more can we do? How can we entice you to our tournaments in West Yorkshire? We want to make West Yorkshire a strong presence in the BB community, but we need help...

Thanks for taking time to read this, and I hope to see you at future tournaments, both in, and outside of Yorkshire!

Regards,

Christoph (Indiana-Utah)

Hi Chris,

As one of the South Yorkshire TOs it's not true to say we've abandoned the NAF (pretty much or otherwise). Rosebowl and Steelbowl didn't run as NAF tournaments the once each and it was a logistical reason for me - I needed a quick sanctioning and my rules pack meant it wasn't going to happen quickly. Rosebowl ran yesterday as a NAF tournament after an issue with the 'competing nearby tournament rule' the previous year. Steelbowl will be a NAF tournament again in 2020.

There's been one tournament in Rotherham focused on local league players where very few players are NAF members and they don't really like to travel - they all started playing with BB2016. Other than that in Sheffield there are a couple of 7s events with some pretty wacky rules which could never see NAF sanctioning. Rosebowl, Winter Anarchy and Steelbowl are normally NAF events.

I think in regards to the WYBBL tournaments you mention I do agree that location and timing could be part of the reason they don't fill up quickly. As a non-driver Holmfirth is hard to get to on a Sunday with a two hour train journey each way for a location that's only 31 miles away from Sheffield. And there is the Sunday factor too - many people still treat it as a day of rest. You mentioned the Waterbowl but it's only a 15 minute walk from a train station on a regular train route. Also Dan and Leipziger are very well known faces in the Blood Bowl circuit too.

I do wonder whether a central Leeds venue on a Saturday would be better placed to get the numbers in?

Steelbowl has had 40% to 50% non-local league attendance both times it ran and I put that down to location (Sheffield has fairly decent transport links) and social media coverage as well as being involved with other leagues outside of Sheffield, both tabletop and online. Oddly I've not been able tempt coaches from Nottingham and Derbyshire way yet but they have a very strong local league presence and I imagine there's a lot going on down there Blood Bowl wise.

I was wondering as well have you been able to garner much interest north of Yorkshire and whether it would be worth also focusing some attention there?