By John Hooper

Tournament Directors have a difficult job and get pulled in a lot of different directions – attracting teams, securing fields, finding referees, securing rooms at hotels, obtaining insurance and many other important tasks. And of course, every Tournament Director wants to have great Tournament Awards.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Of course everyone wants to have fun and a great experience at your tournament, but coaches and family members always have in mind they want to win the tournament and imagine themselves with medals around their neck and holding up the Championship Trophy or Cup!

I would like to give you 7 Keys to making sure you have great Tournament Awards that your participants will remember for a lifetime. After all this is their World Cup!

1. 1. START EARLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
   

We can’t tell you how many times someone has called us a week before their tournament starts and wants to order custom medals. This simply isn’t near enough lead time to order and produce custom awards. We do offer quick turn-around options for semi custom products that will work, however they do not look quite the same as totally custom awards. At this point you don’t need to know the number of teams in your tournament to start working on the tooling for your awards.

You should start working on your Tournament Awards a minimum of 3 months before the start of your tournament. We can help you create a tournament logo or have your tournament logo modified to look good on awards, decide on the type and style of awards you want to have, look at design concepts, and many other steps. Please follow the link to see the SPI Tournament Awards and Playoff Checklist to see the steps you should take to order awards and the timing for each of the steps.

2. Make Sure Your Tournament Logo Works on Multiple Levels

Your tournament logo should be a reflection of what makes your tournament special, unique and different. It could be location, holiday or time of the year, a community theme, a charitable cause, a college showcase or any number of things.

You should also make sure your logo will look good and work on a number of different marketing mediums such as: awards, printed promotional materials, tournament merchandise (especially embroidery) website, social media, etc.

If you don’t have a tournament logo or would like a new logo you should work with an awards company that will create a logo for you that works on multiple levels. Sport Pins International, Inc. (SPI) and some other awards companies will create for FREE a custom logo for you.

3. Consider All the Types of Awards You Will Need

Think beyond the awards the winning teams will receive. For example, many tournaments give each player participating (and volunteers) a tournament pin or bag tag. Also, referees need to be rewarded whether they are paid or volunteers. Referees love flipping coins as many referees collect the coins.

4. Establish A Budget

Once you have considered what type of awards you need, establish a budget for awards. You don’t need to know how many teams you will have, approximating the number of brackets you will have can give you a pretty good gauge on how many teams will need champion and runner up awards. Also, consider your core audience and don’t spend on unnecessary items.

5. Consider Medals Instead of Trophies

Custom medals look great and the recipients are proud to receive them. Think of the World Cup and the Olympics, the winners receive medals not individual trophies.  Team Medals combined with one team trophy or cup is a great way to go. Medals are also half the cost of a plastic trophy and you can get great custom medals for under $6 per medal. Using medals, you can cut your awards budget or recognize more athletes. Medals are also much easier to transport. Think of all the effort and time that it takes to transport 1,000 trophies to the field.

6. Use Custom Neck Ribbon to Make Your Medals Look Great and Give You Flexibility

Many of the tournaments we work with use colorful custom designed neck ribbons that incorporate their tournament logo, date, placement (Champion or Finalist), title sponsor logo and other design elements. The custom neck ribbons really stand out and can give you added flexibility. Many of our customers don’t put the date on their custom medals but instead put the date on the custom neck ribbons. The medals can be designed in a way that allows you to easily  exchange a custom ribbon and replace it with another. This gives you flexibility - if you want to use extra medals from one year to the next, or from a rained out tournament the following year.

7. Don’t Use a Committee Approach to Order Awards

One person needs to be empowered to work on logo designs and order awards. Yes, stakeholders can be given the opportunity to give suggestions on the tournament logo and awards but one person needs to be empowered to decide on the final tournament logo and awards. That one person should make the final design decision and be responsible for placing the order.