Classic Mode

Play Meter

Issue: 1978 May 15 - Vol 4 Num 9

Coinmen
~
of the Month - ~
LEE PEPPARD
and CAL ROGERS
This month we've taken a slight departure from
our regular format. PLAY METER conducts its
first dual Coinman of the Month. Since this is our
Tournaments and Promotions Issue, we felt it was
high-Ume to interview Tournament Soccer's
"dynamic duo" - Lee Peppard and Cal Rogers. They
seem to be the experts in this field. After all, these
two men are the brains behind the largest purses
and the largest turnouts in foosball competition.
Their $250,000 national championships in St. Louis
this past November drew 4,700 participants.
Lee got interested in foosball when he came into
the ownership of a large tavern. At that time he
saw foosball as a promotional device to help him
pick up his tavern business. But the promotions, he
soon found out, did more than expected, and his
tavern turned into a real winner. So he diversified
and became a distributor for foosball tables in
Montana and Idaho. And when demand finally
exceeded supply, he decided to try markeUng his
own tables. He arranged for the tables to be
manufactured (the1! stiU are, for that matter), and
he focused his efforts on marketing the new
product. The first Tournament Soccer table was
introduced in 1979. And after years of give-and-
take with operators and pro players, the table was
refined to its present form.
Today, Tournament Soccer markets, on the
average, 1,700 tables per month. The bulk of that
figure, about 1,200, is sold in the United States.
About 200 tables are sold each month in Canada,
and another 400 in Europe.
In 1979 the firm employed three people; today
that figure has grown to 97. AU 97 are either
8
involved with the marketing or promotion of the
tables.
Lee, who is the firm's president, is 36. His wife's
name is Lynne. They have two children-a son,
Christopher, and a daughter, Kyle. Lee stopped
just four credits short of a degree in accounting
from the University of Montana. Before getting into
the foosbaU business, he ran a biUiards parts and
supplies shop that covered a seven-state area. He
has also tried his hand at building miniature golf
courses and was even at one time a smokejumper
(that's someone who drops by parachute to fight
wildfires). This may not seem very noteworthy
until one reads Peppard's words about what
Tournament Soccer has done to the foosball
market: "We have started 'a fire that we have a
responsibility to feed." It's quite a change-from
firefighter to fire starter.
Cal is 32 and single. He received his degree from
the University of Texas in Personnel Management.
It's a rather appropriate degree for someone whose
life's work requires that he manage large numbers
of people at the Tournament Soccer extravaganzas.
Before joining Tournament Soccer, he was a dealer
of foosbaU tables in the Dallas area and was
responsible for a series of tournaments on Tornado
tables.
Both men average about five months a year away
from their homes in Seattle, and figure they both
travel about 200,000 miles a year.
Presently the company is weU into its second
straight miUion-dollar tour. That in itself is a feat.
How do they do it? Why do they do it? What do all
these large purses mean?-we decided to find out.
PLAY METER, May, 1978
PLAY METER: What was it like in the beginning
for Tournament Soccer?
PEPPARD: I believe you could describe it with two
words- perpetual disaster. When you talk about
the beginning with this company, what you
remember is the quarter-million-dollar tour. Up
until 1975 it had been individual tournaments. Then
in 1975 we went from putting on single tournaments
to committing ourselves to putting on a quarter-
million-dollar tour for thirty-three consecutive
weekends. But it wasn't a move from $50,000
tournaments to a quarter of a million dollars; there
was also the logistics of going to thirty-three cities
one week apart. It wasn't easy getting the tables
there because we didn't have the distributor
network back then. It's a thing that the people who
were with us from the quarter-million-dollar tour
remember with pride. We did live through that
period of time and, believe me, it was very scary.
ROGERS: There were two battles going on all the
time. There was the battle at the home office in
Seattle to provide the financial support through
their sales; and then there was the battle of going
on the road and actually bringing off these
tournaments- I mean with drives from like Wichita
one weekend t o Reno to Madison, Wisconsin, and
then to Houston. We learned a great deal every
week, though. The game progressed, and we
learned more about promotions.
PLA Y METER: Did you ever have any second
thoughts about all this after you got it started?
PEPPARD: We had one philosophy that started
with the first $1,500 tournament and that has
followed this company all the way through, and that
was that once you put it in print, you don't have the
freedom to have second thoughts about it. Once it
was out there and in the streets, we didn't have the
freedom to change the prize money just because
nobody showed up. So as we progressed through
the quarter-million-doUar tour, no matter what
reservation~ we had at the time, the commitment
was that we did not have the freedom to explore
alternatives. And what we had to do was survive
that course we had already committed ourselves to.
It was a case of running tournaments when we had
no idea. Today there still is a lot of guesswork when
we put on tournaments, but now we have a feel for
what the involvement from the players is going to
be. Back then we had no idea.
ROGERS: What that means is that every step along
the way, no matter what the odds were against
making that tournament happen, we physically had
to make it happen. We had to present what was on
that poster. And if you look at the quarter-million-
tour, the miraculous thing was that we printed the
posters in October, and when it came to the next
September, everyone of them had taken place,
when and where and for the amount of money it
said. Each of them took place exactly as planned. In
fact, when we came to the end, we had scheduled a
$100,000 tournament, but we had grown by that
point to where we could embellish that to $113,000.
PLAY METER: Do you lose money on your
tournaments, or do you look to break even on them?
ROGERS: We look at them realistically, and that is
that they don't make money. We really don't want
them to. We look at the tournaments very simply:
they're a marketing tool. And there's a cost
associated with that marketing tool. When we put
on a tournament, we know that there's prize money
that's not liquidated (quarters and entry fees, that's
our liquidation). But you also have to look at the
cost of running the event, plus the people who are
there, the lead-up to it as far as posters, etc. You
are looking at many expenses associated with that
tournament that you don't see there right that day .
PEPPARD: Our objective for a tournament is 65 to
70 percent liquidation. The nationals in St. Louis
this past year, for example, liquidated $147,000. So
there was a $103,000 deficit in prize money at that
point. Then there was the cost of running that
particular event, as far as movement of manpower,
hotel facilities, convention facilities, convention
decor, promo teams, printing, etc. And that came
to $79,000. So, in effect, that event was basically a
$182,000 net expenditure. Overall on the tour you
could pretty consistently apply a rule of thumb of 65
percent liquidation. That leaves us with about a
$350,000 deficit. Then there's the operational
budget. The pre-budget last year was $530,000. So
the net expenditure that we look at as far as the
operation of the million-dollar-tour is $880,000.
PLAY METER: How are you able to justify this
expense? You recoup the deficit obviously in your
PLAY METER , May, 1978
9

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