John Ballard - Getting Sponsors-Soliciting Table Tennis Fans

John Ballard - Getting Sponsors - Soliciting Table Tennis Fans - Drawing Talent

Building a Community

John tells us the tournament is going fantastic. He likes to hear how smooth their tournaments run.

Matt Winkler approaches the desk with his U1600 Semifinal winning match slip.

John gives us some Tournament information -- they have about 105 entrants, they've got all of Southern California, all of Arizona and Nevada. They have 8 Co-Sponsors for the event this time. John says they sponsor the tournament at $100 per co-sponsor. To obtain sponsors, he explains they go out and have a real nice conversation with them and ask if they can really help us because we need the help. He approaches people by saying we are trying to build Table Tennis in the Lake Havasu area and in order to do that we need to put on this tournament and bring all these people in and of course if they come in to our area they are going to stay in Hotels, they're going to eat at the restaurants, you're going to get a whole lot of advertisement out of the whole thing. John shows us on the walls there are big ads for Nationwide Homes, McCullock Realty -- the largest realty company in town, also they hung a Ramada Inn, tournament host hotel's banner. They also have the Holiday Inn and Windsor Inn as host hotels. The sponsors supply the signs. John goes to each one of the sponsors to see if they'd like to provide a banner so it can be exhibited at the tournament. John likes to get the most exposure he can get his hands on. He hasn't approached places like the Phoenix Club where he doesn't feel it would be fair to ask -- even though he'd be glad to accept any sponsorship from them. John is willing to take maybes from any co-sponsor right off the bat.

He tells there are supposed to be 8 people coming in from Africa though he isn't sure which part -- perhaps the South. The African team called Paul Campbell and did all the talking with their Tournament Chairman. John admits Paul is pretty excited about them coming. Mr. Ballard doesn't want to hear stories of the African team not showing up at other Table Tennis events they entered.

He says everything is going good so far. He thinks they could do better in future tournaments if they can raise more funds and give more prize money out. He says the prize money draws more people in. He says the tournament turn out for this year's event went up 25%. He agrees there are quite a few spectators at the event and notes there was an announcement in the local White Page.

Alan Newman asks John if he's ready to play the Over 60 Doubles event. He say's he's ready.

One strategy to draw players John used was putting $50 prize money on the U1400, U1500, U1600, U1900, in the Open, in the Women's Open and they put $300 in the Open for everybody and $100 for 2nd place. That gives everybody an opportunity to come and try to win something.

As John is handed his Over 60 event clipboard he mentions its time for him to go to work.


Lake Havasu, Arizona
19 September 1998

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• John
• Ballard
• Getting
• Sponsors
• Soliciting
• Table
• Tennis
• Fans
• Building
• Community
• Drawing
• Talent