Project Overview
Charlotte had a ton of beach volleyball players but not a great tournament scene, people tended to gravitate to the coast to play larger tournaments. I decided to start my own, non-profit tournament series at one of the public parks in the center of the city. There were a ton of logistics to work through and my budget was basically $0…I self funded the entire endeavor. I designed all of the apparel and tournament signage, organized the structure of the tournaments, provided the equipment, rented and maintained the courts, and ran a guerrilla social media marketing campaign to drive traffic to our landing page for sign-ups.
Full Case Study: coming soon…
Additional Project Details
I faced a myriad of issues at the onset, first and foremost was court availability. Dealing with the Parks Department was easy enough but I also didn’t want to be rude to the people who counted on the city courts to play pickup on the weekends. I decided the best strategy was to hold tournaments every three to four weeks, only use one of the two weekend days and only rent half of the available courts on that day so pickup play could still take place on the others.
After I had worked out the logistics of court rental, I needed to develop a brand for the organization. Both the name and the logo are meant to reinforce the geographic location of the club as well as our main focus. The inspiration for the logo came from the badges and emblems used by English soccer clubs which I felt had the mix of tradition and modernity that I was looking for.
The venue logistics and branding ended up being the easiest part of the entire endeavor. I began accumulating equipment (you don’t need much for beach volleyball, but things like antennas, scoreboards, balls, proper boundary lines get expensive) and working with a few different vendors to create apparel that would be used along with entry fees as prizes. The first year was a great learning experience and helped me refine my strategy and fill some gaps I had missed. By the end of the year I felt confident I could offer top-tier tournaments that would draw teams into Charlotte from around the region.
The second summer was when I really hit my stride. I had acquired all of the necessary equipment, formed a great relationship with the Park Department and established a fairly regular schedule that didn’t impeded on park guests who simply wanted to play pickup. From my learning in season one, I made two major changes to my strategy in the second year. The first was to recruit a staff of volunteers that could help me prepare the courts, run the tournament and document the play. In exchange they would receive free entry to any of the tournaments throughout the year that they were not scheduled to work at. The second change was to pay out 100% of the entry fees to the top level division to draw a higher level of play. This, in turn, meant an increase in apparel to be handed out as prizes for the lower divisions.
Eventually, the financial cost of the endeavor caused me to suspend tournaments after the 2016 season and scale back the group into a Facebook place where players could organize simple pickup play. That group still exists to this day and I still occasionally get messages from players moving to Charlotte and looking for games. I consider Queen City Beach to be one of my proudest accomplishments and our end-of-season championship tournament, the Queen City Clash, had teams travel in from Raleigh, Winston Salem, Greenville, and Atlanta to play.