For most Americans, Memorial Day Weekend means the start of summer. For families that have children who play club sports, it’s also the beginning of the summer tournaments for their respective sports. With two of my children playing, I know that I will be attending a lacrosse tournament every weekend from June 1st until the end of July. Not that I’m complaining because it is a lot of fun to be able to watch that many high level lax games and to hang out w/ a great group of parents (except for that one overly intense dad). Now my golf game will suffer and my weekend foursome will need to find a replacement but that’s OK. As I go to these tournaments, I’m not only watching the games, I’m doing a little research. I’m checking out all of the ways these tourneys make money… and do they make money!! And I’m kicking myself!!

Five years ago I was trying to organize a little 8 team round-robin tourney. However I got flustered w/ coaches not confirming dates and playing telephone tag. Unfortunately the only date that worked was the same day as the local municipal golf tournament… so nothing happened. That little 1-day 8 team tourney might now be over 100 teams and 3 days. If only???? Let’s see how expensive that decision to play golf really was.

I could charge teams upwards of $1500, or charge $75-200 per player… either way that’s $150 grand just from the players. I’d need to find hotels and work deals w/ them… that means kickbacks of $5-10 per room… maybe another $10-15 G’s. Every tourney needs food vendors and if it’s a girl’s lacrosse tourney…need clothing vendors. Probably $200-1000 per vendor…another $10-15,000 into the kiddie.

So at this point, we have a conservative figure of $175,000 coming in. So what are the expenses? Fields? Probably not as most counties/cities would love to have the influx of all of these people staying at the hotels and eating at the restaurants. They will gladly waive the field rental fee for large tourneys as it boosts the local businesses. How about all of those workers? Most are volunteers who might get a big pizza party afterwards to helping out…OK maybe $250 in food. Insurance? Most players have to provide their own proof of insurance and sign waivers… so we’re talking just overall event insurance…$5,000. Marketing? Getting all of those teams? $5,000 in print ads and advertising on Laxpower and Insidelacrosse. How about referees? That’s it!!! Figure $80-100/game with 250-300 games. Max is $30,000.

Big picture… profit is ballpark $140-150K’s. Yes it takes a lot of organization and time to put together. Just think, this could be your full-time job. Imagine putting on 2-3 of these tourneys each year? Probably streamline the organization and structure to make it more efficient.

Man that was one expensive golf tournament!