money in his cashbox through things like
tournaments, then the operator can afford to buy
more of the big money-making expensive games
that are coming out now.
PLAY METER: What's one promotion that you've
found to be successful?
FARMER: Well, foosball was doing absolutely
nothing in the state of Ohio. Then the Tournament
Soccer people sent in a traveling promotional team
that we took to taverns and universities and
bowling alleys. That started creating enthusiasm
for the game of foosball. And pretty soon we
started seeing the demand for the game increasing
at the operator level. We went from selling
absolutely no foosballs to selling tremendous
quantities, and now I understand that we're selling
more Tournament Soccer foosball tables than any
distributor in the United States.
PLA Y METER: How do you keep that interest in
foosball alive?
F ARMER: Through tournaments. This coming
weekend, for instance, we're going to have a
$25,000 foosball tournament that should prove to be
quite exciting. Tournament Soccer is sponsoring
the event along with us, and we're expecting kids
from Seattle, New Orleans, New York, and Texas
to come and participate in the competition. The
result is here we have a piece of equipment that
sells for $575 that now can get between fifty and a
hundred dollars a week. So foosball tables in Ohio
are becoming pieces of equipment that can produce
a lot of money for an operator.
PLA Y METER: While we're on the subject of
foosball, why do you suppose some foosball tables
are more popular in some areas than others?
Foosball players tend to favor a particular table
whereas pool players don't.
FARMER: I think that can be explained by the
strong distributorships throughout the United
States. Our salesmen, for instance, are on the road
promoting Tournament Soccer. If it was another
part of the country where it was another brand, it
would simply be a case of one distributor in the area
outworking everybody else. It's really that simple.
The guy that's working the hardest is going to get
the business. We've found that this is true with
other types of games also. It's just a matter of
promoting.
PLAY METER: Now what about pool? We
understand you have been promoting quite a large
eight-ball tournament in Ohio.
FARMER: Well, really, this is an idea we got from
Len Schneller of U.S. Billiards. He came to us with
this tournament philosophy of his, and we saw that
it was a winner. We've had some success with ours,
and evidently it's the biggest in the nation. We have
200 locations involved. I'm kind of proud of that.
But, believe me, it could have been 400.
PLAY METER: How did you get it together? Two
hundred locations seems a bit unwieldy?
FARMER: We went to all the operators in our area
and told them to give us as many pool locations as
they wanted. The only thing we asked was for the
operator to make sure the location owner was a
promoter. We didn't want locations where the
owner does nothing but complain about how bad his
business is. We wanted locations where the owner
was always doing things to promote his business-
things like happy hours and ladies nights. We
wanted only those locations where the owners were
interested in making money. That's what this whole
thing was about, getting more money into the
cashbox. So we secured 200 locations this way.
Some of the operators gave us thirty locations,
some gave us five, and some gave us just one. The
tournament itself runs for eight weeks at each of
the locations. Then on the ninth week, the eight
weekly winners meet for the location championship.
After this, the first, second, and third place
finishers advance to the Class A, B, and C
championships in Columbus, Ohio where we'll hold
the finals October first. The players there will be
competing for prize money and merchandise of
$25,000. In addition, we give a pool cue to the eight
weekly winners at each location. And they also get
a trophy. But it's only at the finals in Columbus that
the players will be competing for money.
PLAY METER: How do you pick what night to hold
the tournaments?
FARMER: We ask each location to give us his
worst night of the week to run the tournament. So
if sixteen people sign up for the first week's
tournament, if the owner is a promoter, he's
guaranteed that sixteen people will come into his
bar who wouldn't be there if it hadn't been for the
tournament. Now probably each one of those
players is going to bring someone along, whether it
be his wife or girlfriend or whatever. So actually
he's got thirty-two people in his bar. And while
they're in there, they'll probably play the jukebox,
Sea Wolf or some other game. So, as a result, both
the location and the operator benefit. By the way,
now I'm beginning to get some feedback from the
operators on this, and they're telling me that on
tournament nights the bar business has picked up in
excess of a hundred dollars. The place is jammed.
The locations are excited more than ever because
the people are in there. And the players are
showing up on other nights during the week to
practice. As a result, locations that were doing $60
a week business before are now doing $120. This is
what promotion can do at the location level.
PLAY METER: Where does the funding for all the
prizes come from? Player entry fees?
F ARMER: No, there's no entry fee at all for the
players. We bill each operator $150 per location.
Half of that comes from the location and half from
the operator. This we found is good because if the
location itself has invested something in making
this tournament a success, then the owner is going
to put a little more into it. As for the $150, over a
nine-week period of competition at the location
level, that comes out to a little over eight dollars
per week from the operator and the same for the
location. And that money comes out quite easily
from the collection at the pool table because the
players will be paying with their quarters to play.
The matches are the best of three games. So the
overall collection of money is going to pick up. If
there's more than one pool table in the location, we
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