What to Charge Per Team for a Tournament (2026)
There is no national benchmark worth trusting for youth tournament entry fees. Here is the full cost model to build your own number from instead.
Blog
Running a program is the hard part.
Registration, dues, sponsorship, recruiting — and the software underneath it.
Rainout Plan: How Directors Reschedule Fast
A rainout is a policy problem you solve in January, not a weather problem you solve at 6am. The decision tree, compression options and comms sequence.
Sponsorship
Selling Tournament Merch and Sponsor Space
What actually sells at a youth event, which merch model carries which risk, and why "ad space" is the wrong phrase if your event is a nonprofit.
Softball Tournament Checklist: Two Weeks Out
A dated countdown for a softball weekend — two weeks out to Sunday's final, including the softball-specific rules most checklists leave out.
Pool Play to Bracket: A Weekend Schedule
How many games a field holds, how to size pools to your team count, and a full worked 24-team, 4-field, two-day grid with all the arithmetic shown.
Running a Tournament Network Across States
Going from one event to five changes what has to be central and what has to be local. Where the line sits, and how the money works across directors.
How to Run a 60-Team Baseball Tournament
A 60-team weekend is seven jobs running at once. Here is what each one is, where it usually lives, and the exact point at which each one breaks down.
Sponsorship
How to Get Sponsors for a Youth Tournament
Tournament sponsors buy access to families in a ten-mile radius, not impressions. Here is your inventory, how to price it, and the IRS line to respect.
Stop Chasing Venmo: Entry Fees Before First Pitch
Collecting tournament entry fees over Venmo works until it doesn't. Here is exactly where it breaks, and what a real entry-fee flow looks like.
Best Tournament Registration Software (2026)
What tournament registration software actually needs to do, what the main options charge, and the questions to ask before you sign anything.
Collecting dues without chasing parents in April
Most dues problems aren't payment problems. They're record problems — nobody can see who owes what, so nobody asks until it's awkward.
Sponsorship
Your website is sponsor inventory. Most programs give it away.
You already sell the outfield fence. The same logic applies to your home page, your schedule and your team pages — if you can prove a sponsor got something.