How To Host A Pool Tournament At Your Venue

Want to bring some new entertainment to your venue but don’t know where to start? Perhaps you want to boost your sales but don’t know how? Hosting a pool tournament might just be the solution you need! Everyone loves a game of pool, old and young, and once your venue becomes associated with hosting great pool tournaments, the customers will never stop coming for fantastic food, the latest music and a game or two with their friends.

Just keep reading for this handy guide on how simple it is to host your own pool tournament:

Hire a Pool Table

The most important step, and perhaps the most obvious one too, is to make sure you have a pool table at your venue. If you have one already that’s great – one less thing to worry about! If not, at Amusement Leisure, we provide affordable pool tables for hire for venues across the whole of the North-West. We even provide the first contactless pool tables in the UK starting from just £15 a week! Just get in touch with us or check out more details here.

Make Sure You Advertise the Tournament

You can’t rely on word-of-mouth alone to bring enough players in for your tournament, you need to get the word out there so your venue is booming on the night. Create posters and hang them in visible places around your establishment, at least a couple of months before the pool tournament is due to take place. Talk to your customers about the tournament to create buzz and excitement and hand them flyers for them to take home. This will allow time for interested players to put their names forward and gather some of their friends too.

If you have a social media page, make sure to advertise your pool tournament there too! Social media is a great way to connect with thousands of potential customers, many of whom can become loyal customers after this one visit to your venue.

Set Some Rules

Make sure you familiarise yourself with pool rules and ensure every player has read them before starting the tournament. This ensures there won’t be any issues during the games, especially if one player is less knowledgeable than the other. If you need a refresh of the rules yourself, check out the rules of the game here.

While we’re talking about rules, understanding who’s in and who is knocked out also prevents people from trying to sneak back into the tournament. Print out brackets, as seen in the photo above, to keep count of the score so everyone can see where they are. These brackets allow for 8 players to participate in the first round, followed by semi-finals and then finals. If you want more spots for people to play, you can easily create your own poster.

Make Sure You Have an Entry Fee

You need to make sure you aren’t forgetting an incentive to bring the players in. A pot of money for the winner is often enough to get a few people around the pool table, but you don’t have to take this money from your own pocket. Instead, pool together the money collected from entry fees and distribute it to the winners.

Will you offer all the winnings to just the top player or split it across 3 players? Offering prizes to more than just one person will incentivise people more as they will have a higher chance of winning something. It is up to you how you split the money. One idea is to give 50% of the winnings to the first place, 30% to second and 20% to the third.

Consider whether you’d like to offer any other prizes, such as free drink coupons or snacks from your venue. This may encourage people to stay longer at your venue and spend their own money on drinks instead.

Provide Food and Drink

A pool tournament will last many hours and it’s likely that between games, players and spectators will get peckish. Advertise snacks at your venue, such as pork scratchings, crisps, chocolate and peanuts to get more people at the tournament. This will also increase your profits as people spend their own money on the food you have to offer. Perhaps you have your own pub food menu, why not create a special menu for the night?

Just like with snacks, everyone would like to drink something. It’s likely that the players will take it seriously and choose not to drink alcohol whilst playing, so make sure you have other drinks on offer such as energy drinks, juices and fizzy drinks.

You may want to offer one free drink to all the players. They will feel grateful for having the opportunity to play in a pool tournament as well as having a drink, and will likely return their gratitude by staying and buying more drinks – but probably alcoholic this time!.

Play That Funky Music

A great way to set the right atmosphere is through music. If you don’t have a particular system for playing music at your venue or you would like to try something new and exciting, why not hire one of our jukeboxes! Not only does it provide fantastic music from the golden oldies to the latest hits, but patrons being able to choose their own songs will keep them occupied between games.

We offer both digital and vintage jukeboxes at great prices! Check out the wide variety of options here. We can even add local bands to the jukeboxes for something truly personalised to your venue and area! Just get in touch with us today if you want to learn more about hiring one of our digital jukeboxes.

To learn more about our contactless and dual-pay pool tables and our fantastic jukeboxes, then get in contact with us today on 01925 295951. We have some amazing entertainment offers for venues who want to stand out from the crowd and keep customers coming back week after week.

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