Welcome back to our "5-Day Tournament Transformation" series! We hope Day 1 left you inspired to fine-tune the little details that can make your golf tournaments truly exceptional.
Today, we're diving headfirst into the world of technology because, let's face it, the game is evolving, and so should your tournaments.
Embrace Today’s Technology - Designed for Golf
I will preface this section by providing a quick disclaimer: Live Tourney is a golf tournament management software company that builds incredibly easy to use software for start to finish tournament management and live scoring at a great price. We’re obviously biased and think we have a great product, but there are plenty of great choices out there today. With that said, let’s get into it.
Efficient Registration Process: Streamline your registration process with online registration tools. Make it easy for participants to sign up, pay fees, and provide necessary information. This not only saves time but also reduces the chances of errors.
We’ve seen far too many courses that use cash and checks to mail registration fees. Or paper sign ups in person. Not only does this lead to less interest in signing up (plus a higher barrier to entry), but you’ll also spend more time dealing with the headaches of collecting fees and dealing with cancellations and no shows.
For the easiest and cheapest way to do this, we’ve seen courses have a lot of success with just a simple Google form for signups. For payments, you can also link your course PayPal or Venmo account and have folks pay as a part of the Google form.
For a more integrated feature, Live Tourney has seamless registration flows which help you collect payments and info, and make the event setup process even faster, saving you time down the road.
Live Scoring: Picture this: real-time scores accessible to players and spectators. It's not a dream—it's modern technology. I’m sure you’ve either played in events, use live scoring software, or are thinking about using it. But here are some things to keep an eye on:
Ease of Use
Live scoring software first and foremost needs to be easy to use. People of all ages and technical know-how play tournaments, so look out for software that doesn’t require users to download an app, or type in a bunch of info to get logged in.
Speed
They say speed kills, and it’s definitely true of live scoring software. If it takes time for the server to update the scores, you lose a lot of the value of the product you’re paying for. We don’t know what type of legacy databases and technologies some of our competitors use, but Live Tourney is built on blazing fast Google Cloud and updates instantly in real time, even in events with hundreds players.
Player Affinity
We’ve not only talked to a lot of golf courses, but we’ve talked to a lot of golfers as well. They definitely have preferences and many have strong opinions on some of the software they’re made to use for Live Scoring. Try out a few different softwares and listen to your players to see what they prefer (hint: We think it will be Live Tourney).
Price
Maybe I should have led with this, but a huge consideration is the cost of live scoring. Costs for Live Scoring software range heavily. Golf Genius is the highest pricing with a $3500 per year cost + a $600 setup fee. And if you want to understand how to use their product, that’ll be another $900 in training. Blue Golf is around $2000 per year + $500 setup fee, but you only get 25 tournaments. For unlimited, it’s $3000 per year. Live Tourney is $2000 per year with no setup fee and a free trial.
Definitely look around and see what works best for your course and your budget.
Pin Sheet and Hole Locations:
We teased this a bit in yesterday’s email, but there are a few options we recommend (we don’t have affiliations with any of these products).
For the low end (free!) I found an incredible excel sheet which you can edit in minutes to make a completely custom pin sheet for any round. It’s easy to add your yardages and info per hole and you can easily print this out for all interested players ahead of your event. Reply to this email and I’ll send you the template.
On the high end, we recommend https://www.ezlocator.com. Not only do they do pin sheets, they can also come out to your course and measure slopes on greens, provide your greenskeepers with software to mark where the pins have been and show traffic maps for what areas are ready to be pinned and what may need some time to recover.
Either way (or with any pin sheet software), this is an easy way to use technology to enhance your tournaments without much effort.
Unlocking Your Tournament's Potential
As we conclude Day 2, it's clear that technology is the key to unlocking the full potential of your golf tournaments. Whether it's simplifying registrations, providing real-time scores, or enhancing on-course experiences with advanced tools like pin sheets, embracing modern technology can elevate your events in ways you might not have imagined.
Remember, the choices you make today will shape the tournaments of tomorrow. Explore your options, listen to your players, and find the solutions that best fit your course and budget. And hey, if you're curious about how Live Tourney can seamlessly integrate technology into your tournaments, we're here to chat whenever you're ready.
Stay Engaged, Stay Tuned
Our journey is just getting started. Tomorrow, we'll dive into the world of sponsorships, revealing strategies to make your tournaments not just memorable but also profitable. The excitement is building, and we're thrilled to have you on this transformative ride.
Catch you on Day 3!
