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Pick Up, Drop In, or Open Play: Which is it?
104 Plays1 year ago
Dive deep into the nuances of pick-up sports leagues and open-play initiatives, exploring the strategies that turn casual sports events into thriving community hubs. We hear from Mitch and Greg of KC Crew to share the good and the bad from their experiences facilitating open-play sporting spaces. From the first dribble to the final buzzer, we dissect the elements that contribute to the success of these events, offering valuable insights for facility managers, sports enthusiasts, and anyone seeking to create a community-based sports culture
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Transcript
Introduction to Facility Playbook Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
This week on the Facility Playbook, I sat down with Greg and Mitch again from KC Crew, and they really helped me dive deep into how to run the best pickup program there is. You want to figure out how to bring people back every single week for an open play pickup or drop-in? Check out this week on the Facility Playbook.
Facility Management Software Challenges and Solutions
00:00:22
Speaker
Do you own or manage a facility? Well, you are in the right place. Welcome to The Facility Playbook. I'm Luke Wade, founder and CEO of Facility Ally, and this podcast is about helping facility managers and owners learn from pioneers and veterans in the industry who have built and managed successful sports facilities, entertainment venues, and clubs.
00:00:39
Speaker
Did you know that most of the facilities I just mentioned use between four and six different softwares to manage their reservations, lessons, memberships, leagues, camps, clinics, and more? Revolutionize your facility with Facility Ally's all-in-one system. Learn more at facilityallyi.com.
Introducing Greg and Mitch from KC Crew
00:00:54
Speaker
And today, we're in an amazing facility, but we're talking to an amazing club, Casey Crew. I'm back with Greg and Mitch. Thanks again, guys, for joining. As usual, you didn't have a choice, but I really appreciate it. And today, we're talking about something really cool
00:01:07
Speaker
We're talking about pickup, which in my opinion is a great way to essentially fill open gaps and help facilities fill open time. But before we get into that, to somebody who has not seen one of our previous episodes, give me an introduction. Tell me a little about what you do for Casey Crooks. Yeah, so I'm the general
00:01:22
Speaker
manager. I oversee all day-to-day operations here, so leagues, events, sales, sponsorships, marketing, anything you can think of, that all runs through me. I grew up in Omaha, moved to KC in 2012, same year the KC crew started. I was going to school at Rockhurst. I started two years in, I started working part-time, so running softball, running sand volleyball, helping with events.
00:01:43
Speaker
When I graduated, I moved full-time here for two years, and then I followed Mitch, who, I'll let you talk about him in a second, he went to Enterprise. I followed him there, I came back, I got him to come back, thank God. And yeah, now we're off and running, looking at the best year we've ever had, so.
Importance of Pickup Games in Sports Leagues
00:02:00
Speaker
Yep, and I'm our league director, so I run all of our leagues. So Greg oversees everything, but I mainly focus on leagues and help where I can in other ways, but all the softball, kickball, sand volleyball, cornhole, karaoke, all leagues we do, I oversee all those with staffing, scheduling, customer service, just basically everything that involves in running a league. I started with Casey Crew, I think 22 years after Greg, part-time when we were at Rockrish University, he kind of brought me in to umpire some softball.
00:02:26
Speaker
And then after I graduated, when I worked at Enterprise, I ran a car. And then Greg brought me back three years later to be his lead director. And we're off the races after that.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. You guys are rockstars. Really happy to have you here. And yeah, so so leagues is kind of the core of our business. Casey Cruz started running leagues for adults. So that's typically who we'd cater to and then slowly added events, pub crawls, corporate events and sponsorship along the way. But leagues is definitely the big piece of it. One of the things that we added additionally to leagues to try and create more revenue was pickup.
00:02:57
Speaker
And so that's essentially what we're talking today. So why do you guys think that pickup is needed outside of leagues? And actually, first question, do you think, if we were starting over today, would you start with leagues or pickup? What's more important?
00:03:10
Speaker
I threw a wrench in there. They had no idea I was going to ask this. Personally, I think I think leagues is still the number one thing to start with. But pickup is, you know, there's so many benefits of starting at the same time. There's just you get the people out there who, you know, can't really commit to a league up front. They have a chance to come out on a one off basis, play the game, meet some people, see how it's run. Because ideally, if the people organizing the pickup are doing it well, they do that well. They say, oh, these guys are also doing leagues.
00:03:37
Speaker
I'm sure they organized the league as well. So it's a nice way to get people in the door, get exposure, get different people in.
00:03:47
Speaker
Running in concurrent, I think, is the best. You get people that want to play, are committed to playing every week, but then the people that just want to dip their toes in and try it once or twice, or maybe it's a brand new sport. So,
Organizing and Managing Pickup Games
00:03:58
Speaker
like for pick-a-ball instance, some places have never tried it, so some people are afraid to go sign up for a seven-week league, maybe offering a pickup that's every week or every other week. People can try it and they start loving it, and then when they start asking about leagues, that's when you can start building the league.
00:04:12
Speaker
I think it depends on the sport. If it's a sport that everybody knows how to play and wants to play, offering at the same time, something new, trying to pick up first to gauge interest without having to do that commitment of every week. I think that's a great point and I never really thought about it either until I just asked the question of what I would start with.
00:04:27
Speaker
I've always told people before you start a league, start with a tournament. A one-day tournament is a great way of low barrier to entry. They commit for a day. Whereas a league, they typically have to commit for six to eight to nine weeks at a time. I think that's a good idea to start with, possibly with pickup first, show them we know what we're doing, give them the opportunity to not barely commit, and then segue into a league. I like that idea. It also could benefit to run them at the same time, too. I think that's a good idea.
00:04:50
Speaker
What do you think the need is from a pickup side of things, from a facility basis? Obviously, we don't own a facility, but we're in a very big one where we do a lot of programming. What do you think the pickup does for that facility?
00:05:04
Speaker
I mean, like you touched on the beginning, it fills gaps. Like it's not, you know, for a league, you're looking at a four to five hour time slot, depending on how long your leagues are. So that's a big commitment for a facility to give up. But if you have a gap, whether it's a Hy-Vee arena, we do a basketball pick up at six, 30 in the morning. So you have your early risers, you have your people who are up before five o'clock who want to get their activity in.
00:05:25
Speaker
You know, if you have stuff in the morning, that's a good time to to offer pickup. You can offer it throughout the day, people on lunch breaks. So pickup is a lot more flexible, fits into a lot more gaps than a league or tournament would. So. So what are the different ways that you've seen or that we've tried to organize pickup?
00:05:44
Speaker
So I think timeframe is a big one, different times of the day. So morning or early risers is a place called soccer lot, where we all started playing pickup at lunchtime. So if you're in a business business district, where you have, if you have showers in your facility, locker rooms, you can offer a pickup for people to come get their workout in at lunchtime. But then every pickup is run differently, whether people just drop in, show up,
00:06:07
Speaker
and they just kind of play when they, on whatever field's available or if it's organized. So one way we do it is king of the court type or king of the- Get into that debate right here right now and start it off.
00:06:21
Speaker
That's probably the best way we've seen. So we've seen some facilities or played in somewhere, you kind of show up for the two hours and you just play whoever wants to play. And there's no organization who's going off the court, who's coming on the court. Whereas king of the court, it's if you win, you move up. If you lose, you move down. So you're always playing and it helps facilitate skill level.
00:06:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think the
Enhancing Social Interactions in Pickup Games
00:06:44
Speaker
organization is the biggest piece of it. So if you come in, and this goes for all the events we do, whether it's large events, small events, if people know what to expect coming in, and they're communicated with and the moment they get there, it's hey, here's how it's going to run, they feel comfortable, they know what's going on, they know what to expect, as opposed to like Mitch said, you show up, you have to, you know,
00:07:01
Speaker
If there's no structure, how do you get onto the court? How do you get in the game if you're off while they're playing? Do you have to squeeze your way in? Are you going to cause issues? Having that organization is crucial to putting on a pickup that people want to come back to because we've seen pickleball. They also have a paddle stacking.
00:07:19
Speaker
So it's completely random. There's no distribution of skill level one way or the other. You could play the same teams three, four or five times in a row. I know that's happened to you a couple of times before happened to me as well. And you know that it.
00:07:33
Speaker
It just isn't as efficient. It's not as good of an experience. King of the court, in my opinion, is the king of the pickup styles. Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think that's the biggest mistake that facilities make when they do open play is they think, we'll just offer open play. And it takes care of itself. And everybody is going to pay us money and just go play on their own. But it offers a horrible experience when, like you said, you're not communicated. There's nobody running it. There's nobody structuring it.
00:07:57
Speaker
Somebody ends up taking control and most times it's not the person you want to take control of running the pickup So if that's the case, you might as well put somebody in charge of it to make it the best the best experience possible to your point Yeah, I've been I've done paddle stacking I've gone and played in paddle stacking and it I played against the team that you don't want to play against beat me I played against the team that I beat very badly and it's just not a great experience The other thing to your point of like even the soccer experience that we had is
00:08:23
Speaker
my you know you'd show up and there'd be somebody it was supposed to be pick a jersey as you got there so it randomizes teams well then you got somebody who showed up early and picked all the yellow jerseys so that when their team got there they'd be on the same team well that's team stacking and next thing you know that team's killing everybody and it's not a good experience for anyone and so some facilities just let that happen well then it ends up killing your pickup and your open play the people who like it the most that are going to keep coming back
00:08:45
Speaker
aren't going to tell you, they're just going to stop coming. So anyway, my opinion is the way you run it is manage it, whether it's the king of the court style, which I truly believe is the best as well. Check out, we have a video on that explaining king of the court versus paddle stacking. But I think the bottom line is you've got to manage it and otherwise the experience is not going to be great and people aren't going to keep coming back.
Strategies for Pickup Game Consistency and Growth
00:09:05
Speaker
So yeah, thoughts? Something I thought is well maybe someone say we'll have to hire someone to run it or if you're at a facility and you're open already for open play there should be someone there running the facility so why can't they run open play at the same time of checking people in they check people in and go check on open play every 20 minutes and things like that and make sure it's moving so you can kind of
00:09:25
Speaker
get away with that of, hey, you're somewhere right there, have them run up and play and get that structure. Yep, I agree. I think another thing, we've actually done this with golf and basketball. So we have golf pickup as well. That was weekly every Wednesday at 8 a.m. Fun, nine holes worth of networking, nine hours, that'd be a long Wednesday.
00:09:42
Speaker
Nine hole worth of networking golf, but you know, sometimes we can't make it. And so we found a champion that shows up every week that we like, knows us, that we trust, and we've kind of educated them on how we want it ran. And now we've got somebody that that person gets, they're going to be there anyway. They now don't have to pay for it. And they're essentially helping run it. And so you don't necessarily have to have a staff member to do it all the time. You could find a champion that loves to pick up and wants to run it. That basically saves you a little bit of money in staffing as well. So yeah, I like that idea.
00:10:11
Speaker
that's finding the person, the right person versus the wrong person that's just going to take it over if it's not monitored is finding the person that loves it's already playing and using them to your advantage. Agree. Yeah. It's going to take a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so to find out who that person is. So you're going to have to run at the beginning, but yeah, once you identify it, it definitely makes it a little bit easier. So open play, you know, costs, thoughts on pricing, you know, we've all played, we've all paid, we've all run our own. So what do we think on pricing and how we kind of structure that and price it out?
00:10:40
Speaker
I think it depends on what the core rental cost is. What's the cost to get the pickup up and running? If it's your own facility, obviously you own the courts, so you're in a pretty good shape. I think between $5 to $15, depending on the sport, the quality of the equipment, how many people are expecting, that's your range there.
00:11:03
Speaker
We charge $7 for basketball, Hy-Vee Arena. It's 6.30 in the morning, so people are, you know, covering the extra $5 just by waking up at 6 o'clock and making it here on time. But then pick up, we run it at serve, we charge $15. So that kind of, that's two examples that, I guess, real life examples that we currently use, but it's, you know,
00:11:22
Speaker
comparing it to leagues. So if you're paying $70 for a league for seven weeks, it's about 10 bucks. Organized play for the staffing, the core rental, the equipment. So you just break it down to essentially one day of leagues is kind of how we ballpark it. Yeah, it makes sense. And typically they're getting like basketballs an hour, right? So you get an hour for seven bucks.
00:11:41
Speaker
And I know one of the things we've been able to work out, if you own your own facility, like Greg said, you're already ahead of the game. We don't. So we have to work out rental rates and discounts. And we're at a place that has a lot of courts. So we've actually worked out a deal where we have more people show up. We don't have to pay for the courts until afterwards. So we're able to actually grow and say, all right, we need another court. Let's add that court. And then we're billed later. So that's a really big benefit for us.
00:12:02
Speaker
But if you own the court, you don't have to worry about the court costs. So that's a good thing. But the other way, we kind of look at things, we try and do a 30% to 40% profit margin. So if you do have a cost, like we have a cost per person for golf, we try and mark that up accordingly. Again, trying to build in your costs of whether you're advertising it or having to pay a staff to be there, I think are all important things. But I think, thoughts on like, is it expandable? Would you charge seven bucks if it
00:12:28
Speaker
14, if it was two hours, you just keep going seven bucks the longer that it goes. Just curious what you think about that. I think that's getting feedback from your players. Maybe talking to them, hey guys, if we were to do two hours, would you pay double for it? Or maybe it's only a one and a half. So I think it's getting feedback and listening to your players. We talked a lot of feedback about our leagues and getting feedback on pickup is no different. If people are gonna tell you what they want, what they don't want, so. Sure.
00:12:56
Speaker
So I know we try and keep things really social and fun and more around networking because we all we know that nobody's going pro sports off the pick up. But what are some of the things we do to make it social and more around networking?
00:13:10
Speaker
I think, I mean, it's a small thing, but from the moment people get there, it's whoever's running the show is engaging with a person, as opposed to just them walking up, kind of wandering around, having to just kind of figure out their way. It's the communication beforehand. If I'm running Pickup on Friday morning, I'm welcoming every single person, ask them how their day is going, even though it's 6.15 in the morning, making sure they get their jersey and making sure they know what's going on.
00:13:34
Speaker
I think it's the champion or the person running
Efficiency and Safety in Pickup Game Operations
00:13:36
Speaker
the show, is the one facilitating it, is the one providing that energy to start off that pickup session. And then again, I think between that and the structure of the organization that we talked about, that kind of proper structure and organization will provide for a great experience. I would say it's small, but having everybody introduce themselves, give them their names, maybe have a fun, if it's early in the morning, a fun question like, I don't know, who's your favorite basketball player?
00:14:03
Speaker
favorite team, get people active and involved, but once you know everybody's name, they start calling each other by name out there, especially if it's week after week, they make friends, but if you're out there and no one knows anybody's name, then it's...
00:14:15
Speaker
You don't know who it is, who cares if I beat them or not, but if you know the name, maybe they go out after, get coffee, and then it builds that social aspect, so sure. And on that note too, so how we do basketball is, again, on the king of the court style, but if you're on a team of five, you win, you move up a court, you're not gonna be playing with those same five people. So you're playing with a different crop of people every time. So socialization is built into the structure of the event. So we don't have to try to make it social. It's social by its own nature, so.
00:14:42
Speaker
Which is another reason we love King of the Court style. It automatically builds in. You're playing with a new team. It eliminates the group that shows up as a team of five, grabs the jerseys, and we're going to kill everybody out here. It takes that away. And the only person having fun is that team. And so that ruins it for everybody.
00:14:58
Speaker
And those are the kinds of people you don't want out there. Cause those are the people that start fights that aren't there to have fun, that aren't there to be social. I've seen it happen time and time again. Like I almost had to kick someone out of basketball for that very reason. He was throwing elbows, getting into it. I'm like, dude, it's 6 45 in the morning. You didn't wake up to start a fight. Like, come on.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yep, yep. And that's again, another reason to have somebody staff it, right? If that you're not there, nobody's probably telling you that the people that he pissed off, none of those people are probably coming back again, you know, so you're the fact that you stop it makes everybody else feel comfortable and like, hey, they got this under control, and it makes them more comfortable to come back again.
00:15:33
Speaker
And everything you mentioned, 100%, I think one of the other things we do, and it kind of touched on it from the beginning when they walk in, but we have, I don't remember what, the speech, right? We call it for leagues, we call it the first week speech, but basically every week we're giving a speech of like, welcome to KC Crew, here's who I am.
00:15:48
Speaker
Here's what pickup is, right? This is how pickup works. This is why we're here. We even say nobody's going pro, right? Like we say these things to set the standard and the expectation so that if you do throw elbows, we already had the speech, man. Were you not paying attention? Like what are you doing? And so I think all of these things are basically setting expectations from the marketing of it all the way to when they walk in the door to the speech to the managing the execution of it.
00:16:09
Speaker
are really important and again I think that's what most facilities miss out on is they think they just it's a set it and forget it and it's 100% not and as long as you can execute it the right way it's going to be beneficial for you but you got to set the expectation to start for sure. So are there any other ways that we like eliminate kind of the competition that elbow throwing any of that other stuff that you guys can think of?
00:16:33
Speaker
Uh, no, I think something that helps us and I don't like, I don't know how you, how you get to this point, but we have a core 20 to 25 players who are out there every single time who know each other, who kind of, they are the leaders of that group. So if there's, you know, five additional new people who are coming there, if someone's even thinking about, you know, being that person, no one else on the court is being that person. Everyone else is shaking hands, getting to know each other, playing the game to have fun. So it, it almost polices itself that way of,
00:17:01
Speaker
Someone's coming in like they don't want to be that guy to ruin the fun, ruin the experience. So trying to build a core group of people who come back, who kind of believe in the mission of pickup where it's, again, they're here to have fun and get some exercise.
00:17:18
Speaker
And yeah, you never want that guy, but we also have that girl as well. We have a lot of girls that play in these basketball pickups and some of our golf open play as well. So thoughts on how do we manage that? I mean, we let them all play together, right? Guy, girl, it doesn't really matter, right? Yeah. Because of the social side of it, we don't have to really worry about it. Yeah. And at the end of the day, if there's someone who
00:17:41
Speaker
If there's a guy who is playing basketball and is like, I'm going to go after, you know, go after a girl or someone less skilled than me, and they're just attacking and making it a negative experience. Again, we kick them out. Like that's, that's not what they're here for. So it doesn't matter who you are, how tall you are, how good you are. You can be on the king court. You can fit right in and have a good time. So, and we've set it up that way. Yeah.
00:18:02
Speaker
Awesome. So do we still require liability waivers when people sign up for these sort of things? Every time. Done through our sign up process. So we don't even have to look at it. There's no pen and paper. It's all electronic. By the time they get there, they've already signed up. They've signed the waiver. We're clear. So with pickup, it's a little bit different from leagues. Sometimes people show up and haven't signed up or paid. So do we take cash or check or how do we manage that?
00:18:26
Speaker
Before I got here, I think we did sometimes, but yeah, no cash on our end. It's another extra step because then they have to scan the QR code, sign the waiver, and data-wise, as far as marketing to that person in the future, if we're having to take cash and then get the waiver, then there's an additional thing of, hey, you need to fill this out so we know we have you on file. It cuts out all the steps. So if you can't scan the QR code and get registered that way,
00:18:55
Speaker
will need to, you know, most people can at this point. So that's kind of a requirement to be able to play, which we don't feel is out of the, you know, unnecessary to ask. So long, short, short, you can have someone scan QR code and pay with their card right there or Apple pay on their phone. Everybody can do that. We're all used to scanning QR codes these days. Make one free online and have a laminate sheet with you.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yup, yup. And to your point, yeah, I think in the beginning someone else that was running it, you know, I think facilities, even myself has fallen victim to the customer's always right. Like if they're here right now and they want to pay me cash, like I should take cash, right? But what that's happening is now they're trained to think they can do that every single time, which is causing more work down the road. And so we, you know, from now it's, Hey, you got to fill up and sign out online, whether it's scan the QR code, fill it out, sign the waiver and pay. And then they're like, Hey, yeah, next time just do this ahead and you won't have to do it when you're here. So we've now,
00:19:47
Speaker
We've got all everything we need. It's all accounted for. They've signed the waiver. They've signed up. We have their marketing information. And then now, next time, they're going to know, hey, if you show up to try and pay me, I'm going to do this. So they're just going to sign up in advance next time. I would say it almost goes down to everything you do. So our leagues, we don't accept cash. If someone tries to show up, hey, I'm here to pay and play. No, you have to sign up online. Sign the waiver. Pay that way. So it's from pickup to our leagues to our events. It's all the same. With KC Crew, you're going to have the same experience no matter what you do.
00:20:13
Speaker
And I think, again, there's a lot of people that fall victim to that. And luckily, 11 years, I never took cash or a check just because, again, I didn't want to track
Community Building through Pickup Games
00:20:21
Speaker
it. I didn't want to make our officials at the fields have to deal with that. And since everybody knows how to use a phone, all you got to do is pull your phone up and sign up right there. And so that's definitely made things a lot easier. But I think as a facility, you really have to keep in mind that although the customer may always be right, there's ways that you can educate the customer to make everyone's lives easier and to make the process better.
00:20:39
Speaker
and to make that so they know that that's how the process is supposed to work. So they continue to do it and they do it next time as well. So any cool stories or connections that you guys have had through like our pickup? I know we all have done golf and we all used to do soccer. Any cool stories or people you've met that through pickup?
00:20:58
Speaker
got anything I'm trying to think I mean at our golf Ronnie is one of our golf guys he actually is one of our champions that we take we asked to run it if none of us can go play because we all love to play golf and why not go play and one of our jobs but he's been playing with us for years so if I say hey Ronnie can you run it this week he does the speeches everything
00:21:17
Speaker
Just playing with him, I figured out his parents in Arkansas lived probably 10 minutes from where I grew up. So we're both Arkansas guys. So just finding those small connections in a big city of Kansas City, you never know who knows who. And if you just start talking with people, that's a social aspect of our pickup. So you start talking about, where do you live? Where'd you grow up? What do you do? And you find a connection you never know you might not have had.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, and Rodney and I actually became friends through golf, pickup, never met him before and started playing with him every week. And then we played in a... Whoa! Crazy hands. Rodney and I became friends meeting through pickup and we played together week after week and got to know each other. And then we actually played in a tournament together and won a tournament together. So I thought that was really cool. Rodney's a great dude and you know, just came from showing up and playing golf one time and then getting to know each other. So I think that's
00:22:05
Speaker
just such a cool way to meet people. In my opinion, what we do is the best networking on the planet. It goes from, and another golf story is golf with a woman for probably three or four months before she really ever asked what we did. And the next thing you know, she needed a website that we helped with from our media agency. And so it turned into business, but it was because we got to know each other through playing a sport that we both liked, that she got to trust me and like me and know me and then basically felt comfortable hiring us.
00:22:33
Speaker
She lives in my apartment complex, too. There you go. Yeah, so, cool. And yeah, I think there's tons of stories for me as far as, you know, I actually did see somebody get their finger dislocated at a basketball game. And then they still came in the next couple of weeks, which is kind of crazy. But I think the best connections I've ever made have been through KC crew, whether it's leagues or pickups or open play, because, you know, networking events, everybody goes in thinking about networking and what can I get from this person? What can I get from this person?
00:23:02
Speaker
Whereas sports pickup leagues or whatever they go and thinking I'm gonna have some fun Maybe I meet some cool people along the way and then could turn out to be business as well Cool. So I think our yeah what there's so many different things that we call it. I know we call it open play but What I've seen heard open play drop-in pickup These are all the same
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah? We call it pick up, not open play. Oh, alright. Open play. Oh no, I like pick up because pick up sounds more structured. Open play, drop in, kind of sounds like anybody can just come and show up anytime. In my mind, pick up, you show up when it starts, you kind of leave when it ends, whereas drop in, you can drop in anytime during that hour in play. It's like, oh, I'm going to drop in and play for 20 minutes and then leave. So that's why I like that we call it pick up. I've never really voiced that before, but just sitting here, that was how I would go.
00:23:53
Speaker
in the sand, you're planting the flag, this is it. Oh yeah, I'm saying pick up. And we have pick up KC, so it's ingrained in my brain at this point, because we have basketball, golf, pickleball, now all falls under pick up KC. But even growing up in Omaha, just like Mitch said, open play, drop in, it feels like you can just come in, bounce out whenever of a pick up, you're here for pick up.
00:24:16
Speaker
And I feel pickup has that networking aspect. You're going to pick up, you're going to, we're going to pick the team. It's not your team coming to play. We're going to pick the team and you're going to be with different people like pickup basketball.
00:24:25
Speaker
playground or play yard. You all got together and say, my team, your team, my team, your team. So you're picking that team versus open play. You could bring a whole team into play during open plays. I like those analogies. That's cool. And because I've actually had several facilities who have talked about offering like they call open gym, right? And open gym to me is the drop in drop in whenever you want, but they're trying to do it for pickleball. And so the idea was like, I'm going to open gym from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. at night. And so I'm thinking, well, if it's open gym, how do you how does that work? If I show up at 10, 10 o'clock,
00:24:54
Speaker
and nobody's there that's a horrible experience for me and how do I know I'm going to get to play other people I'm most likely not coming back and so I think that opened up this facility's eyes but then he was like well for basketball it should work because they could just shoot around by themselves for open so I was like that's actually a great scenario I think that it could work for both right like you could have open gym for basketball that could
Expansion and Challenges of Pickup Game Offerings
00:25:15
Speaker
be all day just coming and shoot around if anybody's there you can get a game going
00:25:18
Speaker
Whereas pickup in my opinion should be set times for especially for pickleball like it's either an hour or two hours So everybody knows like I'm coming at this time and I'm staying they could come an hour later an hour early But if nobody shows up at the same time, how are you gonna get a game going and organized? So I think I was definitely something that kind of opened my eyes and that conversation just happened this week where I was like Oh, yeah, you could do open gym all day for basketball But you couldn't really do it for pickup, you know or for pickleball or even volleyball. So they're not the same
00:25:45
Speaker
They're not the same thing. There we go. Now I got it. Solved it. I'm now going to have to define them and write it on our blog or our website. What are some of the ways we engage people that aren't having fun?
00:25:58
Speaker
It's been that social aspect, that person that's running it. Yeah, and I think, again, I feel like everything goes back to the organization of it. Because more often than not, if you're not having fun, it's because you're getting killed or you're killing someone in whatever sport you're playing. So if you're there, if you go to an event and you're there to play a sport,
00:26:17
Speaker
your goal is to, you know, have a competitive match where you're playing against people who are at the same skill level. Ideally, that's what we want out there. So with our structure, it filters that out into its own thing. So they might get killed the first game, like, oh man, this sucks. Then they go down to the next court. Cool. These are my guys or my, you know, these are my players.
00:26:35
Speaker
and now I'm having fun again. So, yeah, like Mitch said, you know, it doesn't happen very often when people don't enjoy our leagues or our pickup, at least from my perspective, but I think it's because of the structure naturally, you know, filters all that, I guess, negative energy out of the pickup session, so.
00:26:53
Speaker
And then I think it'd also be the fact that meeting everybody by name and calling people by name, like, hey, Greg, let's, hey, come on, let's hustle down the court, or great shot, Greg. Using people's names, I don't know, just a psychology thing, it picks them up. Everybody's like, oh, nice shot, dude. We're not friends at that point if we're not calling each other by names, but when you're calling each other by names and things like that, then everybody's friends out there and everybody knows each other. I think it's hard not to enjoy it when you have people out there.
00:27:18
Speaker
Sure. So what do we currently run pick up and what sports or activities or where we run and pick up? Yep. So we do Friday basketball at 6 30 to 7 30 for an hour at Hy-Vee Arena, pick up golf. Like you touched on, we do it Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. a heart of America. And then we do pick up a pickle ball 7 a.m. to 8 30 at serve down over in the park and looking at adding some more pickup pickle ball here and there. So be on the lookout if you're in the Kansas City area and love pickle ball. So
00:27:49
Speaker
So far, we've only done it for three weeks. We had four people show up the first week and one person return each week. Luckily, everybody in our office loves to play, so Matt, Ryan, and myself all play, so we don't just need one person to be able to run it, but it's that consistency of running it week after week. Even if you only have one person, two people show up.
00:28:07
Speaker
Word will start spreading. It's been still relatively warm in Kansas City, so I think people are still playing outdoors. Once it becomes 20 degrees, 30 degrees, and people are looking for a place to play, they're going to show up. But the fact that we keep it consistent every week and showing up, people can rely on it. I think that's one of the biggest things is getting off the ground, you might not make a lot of money that first, but you have to keep doing it two, three months online. It's going to pay off, and people will talk with their friends and show up and things like that.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's you're right. The consistency is really important is knowing that's the point of pickup is I can just come every week. It's going to be there and know that I can play. Maybe I can't make it this week because I'm traveling or whatever, but it'll be there next week. So knowing that would we have preferred to start it in the winter rather than now, or do you think now is a good time to start it to figure it out?
00:28:50
Speaker
I mean, I like playing, so now for me, but no, probably better winter because it was indoors. We had an opportunity to get in right away and kind of just get that off the ground. So people are already talking about it for winter. We are posting on Facebook every week about it, ads on Instagram and Facebook. So hopefully people are seeing it week after week and they think about it when it becomes cold. Oh yeah, that's a place for me to go play. So constantly getting in front of people and making them aware of it.
00:29:14
Speaker
any other sports that you think you know would that we're considering trying for pickup or that you think are a good idea for pickup.
00:29:21
Speaker
I mean, soccer, pick up soccer is already a big culture, kind of like basketball. We don't offer a lot of soccer for us all, but maybe in the future, if we get court space for us all, we've tried a little football pick up tournaments and things like that. I think anything you have people are interested in, especially if you're at a facility and you like playing it, why not find new friends by offering it and you get to play and run at the same time? So it's a benefit for you, for your facility and for everybody in the community as well.
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah, and it's not another sport option, but just a way to grow it right off the bat expedited is, you know, not everyone can do this, but if you have a certain group of individuals, you know, a friend network or a company that's, you know, looking for an activity to do, you have the space, you are their solution. So you just implant a group of, for example, there's a lot of cornhole groups in Kansas City. There's about 15 different factions. So we've tried a couple of cornhole leaks and kind of getting into the leaks talk, but tried leaks at some locations. It hasn't worked well because our, you know,
00:30:17
Speaker
Our cornhole leagues are leagues. The cornhole factions, that's their hangout group. That's their community. So we tried one venue. It didn't work. The venue then saw this cornhole faction and said, hey, do you guys want to come in? They just implanted a whole group of people right into that spot. So same concept here. So if you know someone, a company, a group of friends, just a group of players that you've seen online,
00:30:39
Speaker
that's looking for a place to play, hey, provide that spot up. And if, you know, if you can start with 15 core players and then add from there as your pickup, you know, you keep it public, that, you know, that's a great way to kind of jumpstart your pickup sessions. Let's say in here in Javi Arena, they have Gultament, which is indoor Ultimate Frisbee. And it's like four teams of people that go play outdoors, but need to play indoors during the winter. So they come play on a basketball court and they're here like every, I think it's Tuesday or Thursday during the winter playing. So that's a group that,
00:31:06
Speaker
Hy-Vee can offer a court to know like the Hy-Vee doesn't have to run it because it's their own group but someone's running that for them and monitoring it so you never know what kind of sports out there that people like enjoying and there's groups of people. Yeah I think I mean definitely if you find a group of people that are looking for a place to play that's probably your biggest thing rather than starting it from scratch like we kind of do and advertise it that way to grow it. It's also that I think the biggest challenge is
00:31:30
Speaker
when to offer it. We've already talked about some of the pricing, but I think that was the biggest challenge. Is it Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, Thursday afternoon, Friday night? The problem is knowing when to offer it. Well, if you're trying to offer it in the evenings every night of the week, well, that's when we could be running leagues. That's when most facilities are full. Why would they even try to do that? Obviously, if you're empty during the week or you have gaps during the week, definitely try your own leagues, try your own pickup.
00:31:54
Speaker
But I think if your nights and your night times are full, which is what our leagues are, then the other challenge is when do you start it? Like 6.30 AM basketball just came from another guy who had started a basketball group for construction, another Mitch friend of ours. He started a pickup group for construction networking and we slowly partnered with him. And that's why we decided 6.30 AM Friday because he was already doing it. But I think that's a big challenge and not sure that we've definitely figured it out. Is it a 6 AM, a 7 AM?
00:32:22
Speaker
to get full circle is if you find a group, they're going to tell you when they want it. They're going to bring their friends in. They all know when they want to play. And so I definitely think that's a great way to get started. The other way is if you do start from scratch, you know, pickle, you know, there's a lot of pickleball groups, but Facebook groups is another positive way to do that. You can get in there and you'll see people asking for open play or coordinating open play. Get one of them to be your champion at your facility to help coordinate it for your facility. I think is a really big win there. Again,
00:32:49
Speaker
I'm talking about getting other people to do your work for you, but at the end of the day, like you said, why not, you like this sport, you wanna play, they're gonna help you get more people to come in and play that sport because that's what they wanna do. So I think that's really like a big win, like you said, if you can find a group, do it, if not, definitely get in those groups and post in those groups. On that too, you kind of touched on it briefly, but honing in on the construction aspect of it. So that was a whole industry. So if you have someone who's part of an association with an industry,
00:33:18
Speaker
get in touch with that person. They're going to speak for everyone. They're going to know, be able to reach out within those contacts. So industry leads or pickup sessions is, you know, that's another opportunity where you don't have to, you know, you don't have to hope to know someone there, you know, have a friend who's a friend.
Innovative League Concepts and Adaptations
00:33:33
Speaker
It's.
00:33:34
Speaker
you have an association you didn't do active outreach to, so just a whole other platform opportunity. Right now our basketball is going outside of just construction and anybody can do what started with that and they're open to other people coming in and just growing to 40-50 people every Friday morning now that will network. So what do you think one of the ways you know offering pickup or open play benefits an organization or facility? Easy-beared entry. I think we touched on that at the beginning where people
00:33:59
Speaker
A lot of people, some people work jobs where they don't work a consistent nine to five or they work nights or mornings and or they work every three days. So something for people to do that they can only sign up once or twice or every other week. It offers that for your community.
00:34:14
Speaker
And it's an easy way to provide a positive experience for people coming to your facility. So again, it all goes back to the organization of it. So if someone comes in, it's only an hour, they only paid five bucks. But if you do your job and provide a great pickup session,
00:34:31
Speaker
That goes so much further than them spending $80 to be in a tournament or spending $90 to be in a league. It's a simple thing to offer, but its impact goes such a long way because then they tell their friends to come out. They're spending more time there if you have food or drink. There's additional revenue on your guys' end.
00:34:49
Speaker
We've talked pickup, we've talked open play, how those things are a little bit differently, and we've talked leagues. I've recently heard, and I'm putting you guys on the spot here, I've heard of someone who's offering open play leagues to where it's essentially every week at the same time like open play, but they're staffing it, jerseys, they're running it like a league.
00:35:11
Speaker
as far as staffing scoring and all that goes, but it's also dropped every week as they pay or they drop in. I've even heard that there could be a membership or you're paying a membership to come X amount of times, but it's every week and then it's staffed on top of it. So our pickup, we didn't really dive into it. We talked to king of the court, but nobody's staffing this. It's all self-staff, basketball is all call your own fouls, you know, that kind of thing. There's not individual refs.
00:35:35
Speaker
Whereas our basketball leagues, we have two refs and a scorekeeper. It's very official, jerseys, all that stuff. So what are your thoughts about like an open play league? I think they work great for a facility that doesn't have to worry about renting a court. So for us, where we don't own our facility, we have to rent the court. We want to make sure we have people coming so we can pay those court rentals. But if you have a facility or you have courts open anyways, offer a league. I like the idea. People don't have to commit. They can come every other week. And maybe it's a two month league.
00:36:02
Speaker
for open play and you record how many times you win over the course of those two weeks so yeah team A or individual A they come every other week they can they come they record one win this week one win this week one win this week and they can't come for two weeks you can record wins that way in software and stuff like that so I like the idea it's kind of how we do our blue scope league for it's a private league where
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's individual teams and they come and play king of the court style. So they come and play. If they win, they move up and they lose, they move down. But for them, a lot of times they have meetings pop up or stuff like that because they're right down the road. So they can't show up. So people were scheduled to play somebody and then there's no one for them to play. So the way we got around that was to offer almost a pickup style league where they came and popped in, played for that week, but the next week they're out of town. So we don't have to worry about their schedule. So it helps with scheduling. You have to build a schedule. You match people up. So we kind of do that already.
00:36:56
Speaker
But it's for an organization that's paying for the courts already. So no matter what, the courts are going to get paid. So it's a private league. That's cool. I didn't actually know we were doing that. So that's cool. But to just blue scope as a company, to your point, we started as like a private league where the company pays us. They have like 300 employees and their employees could come and play like three or four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon to just have fun. It's more like team building, right?
00:37:18
Speaker
And so, to your point, right, they're already paying for it, so we don't care how many people show up. Or, you know, they're already paying for the courts, they're already paying us. That's really cool that you modified it to kind of be more of a king of the court style open play, but I think that's a good point. Like, we don't have to worry about paying for those sort of things. I think the other thing, in my opinion, was the officials. Like, to your point, yeah, if I own the facility, I don't have to worry about the court costs, but if I'm gonna have to staff it and nobody shows up for that pickup open play, I'd be concerned, like, now I have to pay for my officials and nobody's here to play.
00:37:48
Speaker
I think that's all communication up front. Like, hey, this is open play leagues, but they're social fun leagues. We're not gonna have staff advertising at the beginning. People know they're paying for that, and they're probably gonna pay a little less than a staff league, so you don't have to worry about staff costs. So I think it's just managing expectations. I'm hoping to talk to this facility and learn more, but they staff it. Their pitch is come play every week with officials in a real game, but it's drop-in and you don't have to commit long-term. So they're just planning on the long-term longevity of it.
00:38:16
Speaker
I guess, maybe they have enough demand that people wanted to do it right away. But similarly, your concern was like, what if nobody shows up? Now we paid for the court, our concern, right? We have to, Casey Crue would be to rent the court. But I guess that was my thought is even if we don't have to rent the court, I'm an IV arena or I'm a facility, I don't have a court cost. Well, if I'm, I still have to staff it and I still have a cost there. So anyway, that was my concern was like, how do you get around that? But if the demand's there and people are paying, especially if it's a membership and you're getting guaranteed revenue every month,
00:38:46
Speaker
you know, you don't really care who shows up because you're hopefully covering your staff costs. I'd have a lot of questions. Yeah, I know. So do I. I know. I wanted to bring it up to see if you guys had any thoughts, but I'm hoping to talk to the facility and learn more. I do think on that, like, if we tried to start that, our player's expectation is the organized, the staff, you know, everything that we currently do for a league. So if we strip out, you know, a couple of those things, then
00:39:09
Speaker
It's a question mark on if it would be successful for us, but different parts of the country. I know in Toronto, they have clubs where it's all self officiated. So every different part of the country is different. Facilities are going to know their people the best. We know our people the best and it might be tough for us to get it off the ground, but again, it's just a question mark for us.
Essentials for Successful Pickup Sessions
00:39:29
Speaker
I mean, ideas turning for that open play leagues, I mean, if a facility like Hybe Arena has 12 courts, they could easily do that because they could play five courts at 6.30. And then maybe another second open play at 7.30 is that people can play back to back to back to back, whereas our leagues, we went one court for four hours. And if you have open play, you want people showing up a specific time to play.
00:39:50
Speaker
My logistics scheduling side, how do people know when they're playing in those leagues and things like that? Unless you have so many courts, you can just, hey, everybody's playing this hour. Then it makes sense. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:40:01
Speaker
One last thing, if I'm a new facility, I'm looking to start pickup or open play, what's the one thing I should know before I get started? Make sure you have a game plan. It doesn't take a lot of time to facilitate pickup, but it does take some time. It's not just, hey, let's just offer open play and hope it goes well. There is a little bit of marketing behind it. There is a little mix of making sure you have a structure for it, making sure you have communication to your players.
00:40:29
Speaker
I think my general advice is always just do your homework. Make sure you know, you know, the crucial things that you need to do. So have your structure, have your staff, have your game plan, market it for at least a month before kind of get the buzz going and then take signups beforehand as well. So no cash, no check. It's all online. Handles your waivers, your payment, your info. Yeah. Anything I missed? I'll say it's not leave it and forget it. You have to actually actively manage it week to week.
00:40:58
Speaker
Cool, well thanks again guys, really appreciate it. If you're looking for some help with your pickup, leagues, really anything, we do consulting. If you're looking for some software to help you manage your facility pickup, events, open play, check out FacilityAlly.com and we'll see you next time on the Facility Playbook.