Classic Mode

Play Meter

Issue: 1978 May 15 - Vol 4 Num 9

PEPPARD: It wasn't a question ofthe mistakes, it
was a question of the learning process as far as the
rules and the tournaments were concerned. Players
today would not tolerate what happened on the
quarter-million-dollar tour, and we know that. The
development of the match card system, for
example, which seems today to be an obvious way
of running a tournament, was actually a major
breakthrough for us as far as good efficient
management of the tournament is concerned. So
the development of the actual tournament system is
one of continual evolvement rather than of
correcting mistakes because, back then, there were
no guidelines to work from.
ROGERS: I can give you a pretty good idea of our
progress. We ran our first tournament with ten
rules. And those ten rules were things like "Be a
nice guy" and "Serve the ball carefully" and "Don't
jar the table." Today we have, with the WTSA, a
rule book that is comparable to the size of the rules
of baseball. We actually went into that quarter-mil-
lion -dollar tour with ten rules, but it became
apparent to us as we played for more and more and
bigger and bigger dollars that there was no room
for haziness in the rules. This came clear about six
or eight weeks into that first tour. It was at the
Wichita, Kansas tournament. That tournament was
a fiasco; people were really abusing the rules. So on
a plane to Reno for our next tournament, I wrote
the rules which I had to present for acceptance to
the WTSA. So the rules we had at that time grew to
twenty -two.
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PLAY METER: And you're constantly adding to
these rules?
ROGERS: They're constantly being expanded on.
This is in any sport. We've added time limits and
special rules for passing, and that sort of thing. So
when you talk about the mistakes it's more along
the lines that we started off very naive, and we've
gotten very sophisticated. The same thing is true
for the number of events we now present. Our first
tournament had two events-a doubles and mixed
doubles. Today in a $10,000 tournament, we'll
present ten events-four pro events, four novice
events, and two specialty events. So we bring the
sport to every skill level. That way a guy who can't
compete against the pros can still come to the event
and practice and play against his skill level. And
we'll do things like add clinics where, maybe on a
Saturday afternoon, everything at the tournament
stops for one hour and everybody crowds into the
bleachers, and these pros give lessons. This way
the novices and rookies in the area get that much
more excited about learning the techniques, and
they go back to their bar and keep playing until the
tour comes back around the next time .
PLA Y METER: What other types of promotions do
you run?
ROGERS: First, there's our professional promo
teams. They are constantly on the road doing
exhibitions. We have five fulltime traveling promo
teams- four domestically and one foreign. Each is
fully outfitted with a customized van. There are two
people on each team. To date, we have been lucky
PLAY METER , May, 1978
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to have world champions or \Vorld champion
finalists on virtually every team. Now, these teams
travel around doing exhibitions at colleges,
shopping malls , game centers, taverns, wherever
there's a foosball table. So they are constantly
building the player base.
PLAY METER: How can an operator take
advantage of these promo teams?
PEPPARD: We try to get them into a normal
market area every three months . The coordination
takes place between the distributor, the operator,
and ourselves. The distributor goes to his operators
who are operating our tables or who may be
interested in operating them and sees if they want
to use the promo team (It's normally a two- to
three-hour presentation). It seems that every
operator who has ever used a promo team is very
hungry to use them again. They've found that the
promo teams are a very effective tool for creating
interest. Long-range income increases as far as
their tables go up.
PLA Y METER: What other types of promotions do
you employ at Tournament Soccer?
ROGERS: We also have an NFL foos bal I
promotion where the 28 teams in the NFL have
agreed with us to put a Tournament Soccer table in
every training camp and take it along with them
throughout the year. Many broadcasters pick up on
this during the course of the year; so it's good
pUblicity. And at the end of the season each team
holds its championships with the winners advancing
to the NFL championships. By the way, we're
looking to involve other sports celebrities in our
sport. We'll be sponsoring a pro-am that involves
the Indianapolis 500 drivers. It's not going to be like
a tournament, though, but more like challenge
matches. And then we have another big promotion
which we just started this year with the Association
of College Unions International. We divided the
colleges up into six districts and had over 300
member schools hold foosball championships. We
had the cooperation of our distributors who
supplied the tables at the college locations, and
those fifteen winners plus a host team from the host
region played in our national collegiate champion -
ships in conjuntion with our $50,000 Rochester,
New York tournament this past Easter weekend.
We had a pro-am where we paired them off with the
pros, and then we had the championships. On
Saturday evening we had the finals for the national
collegiate championships, then we had an awards
banquet for them. And the next day a lot of them
stuck around to play in other events.
PLAY METER: Is the number of players
increasing? Or is foosball keeping steady with the
same number of players?
PEPPARD: We have 16,000 names on our mailing
list today. Going back to a little over a year ago,
there were 7,000 names on that mailing list. So in a
year we have more than doubled. And when you're
looking at the mailing list figures, you're talking
PLAY METER , May, 1978

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