National Duals - 3 best and 3 worst aspects

[Dart Shark]

I'm not a marketing person but I am on a lot of wrestling sites and I barely saw much mention of it. I agree that it needs to be advertised on the forums more. The sites I visit, I rarely go to the news parts, except TOM, they've got the best info IMO. All of that information is talked about in the message boards leaving the news pages redundant. I'm probably not the only one that does that.

Herkey,
No disrespect in regards to how people view the forums, but the folks complaining on the forums, yes, are the ones who go to the forums. However, statistically, we have 4-5x more traffic on the main page than we do the boards and we get a bunch of traffic on the forums. We post NEWS on our main page, which we had an entire section dedicated to coverage starting several days out. As I stated above, we also had promos on our Facebook (nearly 200,000 likes) and our TheMat.TV. I feel we went above and beyond coverage and put it on the traditional places websites have news.

People go to the forums to discuss the news, not find it. I said earlier in this thread, a sticky topic might have been helpful on USAW's page, but honestly, why would we NOT put out the most prominent news on the front page of one of the, if not the most visited wrestling website in the country and the world?

It's like people forget about the news because all they want to do is post? How is that OUR fault? We posted the news and information about the event in a highly visible spot on the main page of TheMat.com. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to have missed it. Seriously.

Our news site isn't the boards, it's themat.com -- if you want wrestling information, that, to me, is where to start, or The Open Mat, or InterMat, whichever of the news reporting sites you prefer.

The number of regular visitors to the site vs. the number of registered forum members is quite distinct. If you throw everything on the forum, you're catering to only a small percentage of your visitors. Again, a sticky could have rectified some forum complaints, but really, themat.com's home page .... people don't check, that's not our problem. I can't control the way people browse, but I can control the way the news is presented on the MAIN PAGE of a site with tons of traffic a day.

[Snackem]

My top three

1. The regional format. I can't tell people enough how much I absolutely love the idea of four regionals around the country. I would love to see a regional in Corvallis, Boise, Tacoma, Seattle, Portland, Spokane, etc. I can understand how people that live in the midwest (Iowa, Minnesota) may want it held there every year and all in one day. If it was done that way then it would probably draw over 10,000 fans every year, but it would likely be the same fans every year. Having it in varied regions may do a lot to grow the sport and expose it to more people.

2. Having it over the course of two weeks. It gives us time to talk about the prelims and then another week to devote just to the buildup of the finals. This also allows for the above mentioned regional format--which by the way I a big fan of.

3. Live coverage. Unfortunately I was working nights and I missed ALL of it because I was sleeping, however I'm hoping they do the same thing next year. I wouldn't even object if you had to pay to watch the duals, a simple 1 time $5.00 fee that would then allow you to go back and watch the events later--say for up to a month.

My bottom three:
I really don't have a lot to complain about. Unlike a lot of people I thought that it was promoted fairly well. I got updates all the time from Oregon State's fan club email along with texts and tweets. I also saw it all over facebook (NWCA, Flo, ORST, USAW, and several friends).

1. Lack of archived coverage. I've looked all over and it appears that only one region was covered and archived. I wish that would have been done for all the regions so that people could go back and watch matches. I know that even if I had been awake I would not have been able to watch three or four matches at one time.

2. Exclusion of PSU. I really wish that they had been there. I would have loved to seen PSU vs Oklahoma State. If we are going to turn this into a true dual meet title then the top teams all need to be there.

3. There weren't enough teams in each region. I would have liked to see 8-12 teams in each region, have each region be two days long, and then send the top two from each region on. I also wished they would have wrestled for 3/4 out of the region.

To be completely honest I had to search a bit to find three things to bitch about, and even then it's more of my personal wish list than anything else.

[Herkey#1]

I don't think anyone missed it JB. But why not paste it all over the place? Plus it needs to be on more than just wrestling web sites. I'm not sure I saw anything about it in the Des Moines Register until it was reported on the day after. How about having an annoying internet commercial about it that pops up when I'm trying to follow along on a dual blog. Jamie Lee Curtis gets a lot of play on those, why not Dan Gable? Like I said, I'm not a marketing person, but I can tell when the marketing was bad, it's usually when there was hardly any. Which was the case here.

[Dart Shark]

The coverage page showed feature stories and previews from the DM Register, ESPN, NCAA.com and a slew of other mainstream (newspaper) media outlets. It was also highly prominent on all the host sites, with splash pages for even non-wrestling fans to notice. We can't dictate how the newspapers cover our sport, it's all on them because they're always in "budget" issues, etc.

If you're expecting ESPN.com to feature the entire event, that's just not going to happen, and it's not for lack of trying.

There were what, a dozen or so stories on that coverage page, twittered, facebooked. There are 200,000 USA Wrestling "likes" -- and I can guarantee you all of them aren't on themat.com daily, so our social media presence was good.

As far as the cover it live blogs, again, something wrestling has no control over. Those are free services which pay for their usage by using ads. It's not up to us (as a sport) on how outside outlets cover our sport. We've made the calls, sent the releases, etc. If you want to complain about the DM Register, they have a sounding board right? It's outside of USAW/NWCA/everyone in wrestling's jurisdiction to have any type of pull with newspapers. They're going to cover what they want. If the DM register flopped, that's their problem and you should voice the opinion to them about how poor you think their coverage was. "Coverage" is a broad term, and yes, in many cases I take it personal because we (USAW) coordinated to have writers at each regional. No one else did.

As far as "pasting it all over the place" -- If the main page of TheMat.com, constant Twitter updates and blasting it on the #3 NGB's Facebook page (only behind Hockey, Soccer), that's a lot of places to paste it. I won't spam other sites 'boards with our coverage page. InterMat's going to do their own thing, same is TOM.

From a wrestling site standpoint, there can't be much to really complain about. We provided every possible way to follow the event from the regionals we could find and pay for.

I don't think anyone realizes how much marketing money the NWCA has. I don't even know and I worked there for three years. You want to blame marketing folks if it was substandard, blame the host sites. If they didn't do a good enough job, it's on them, it comes with the territory when you decide to host an event. If I went to the Iowa State or Oklahoma State site, I got all I needed to know about it. If you were following those all-sports college sites the week prior, there was no way you could have missed it. I'm guessing those checking out Iowa State's site were likely Iowa-based college fans -- no reason you can't just drive on a quick notice, right? We do it with movies and concerts all the time.

Blaming the wrestling people for exhaustive promotion to the media is one thing if they didn't do anything, but blaming them when the media (outside of wrestling sites) drop the ball is another. We don't have any pull (as a sport). Iowa is lucky to have several papers covering wrestling with full-time writers.

You're issuing complaints on things wrestling has no control over (a la Jamie Lee Curtis, blame Cover It Live, not the NWCA).

You're also confusing Marketing with Media Coverage. They are not one and the same. Some of it falls on the hosts, some of it falls on people not willing to do anything out of their comfort zone to find out things.

I had no issues with LSV, InterMat's blogs were fine, Twitter updates were fair to midland. Trackwrestling updated results as they happened.

What exactly about the marketing are you honing in on? Again, we can't make the DM Register write full page stories on it, but they covered it and wrote stuff on it beforehand.

Please cite some specific examples, because the JLC ad and bickering about how the DM Register covered it, is again, outside of the control and realm of "marketing" in this respect.

Again, not trying to be standoffish, but there's a huge difference with what you're complaining about via marketing than the actual real relevance of Marketing and the impact a small association like the NWCA (six employees) has.

[Herkey#1]

Your right. Everything was done perfectly and it showed in the attendance and not a single fan of wrestling disagrees with your point of view. I hope they don't let us know where the finals will be held next year until the Saturday before the Sunday finals.

[Herkey#1]

BTW, who's bickering about how the DMR covered it? I just said that I didnt see anything in it and I read it daily. It's possible I missed it. But advertising counts and I'm sure they would accept the NWCA's money to print a half or quarter page ad.

For the record, I was pissed they got rid of McCool. But I love it that Hamilton is now on board. He does a great job.

[Snackem]

Herkey I'm curious, if the NWCA were to appoint you head of marketing for next year's event what would you do differently? I don't get any form of TV, and there is no local colleges that have wrestling that would be covered on the radio. We also don't get a major (regional/state) paper so I'm not sure if it was or wasn't (pretty sure it wasn't since even when Univ of Oregon had their last national finalist the paper took over a week to run a 5th page story in the sports page, and that was after receiving a LOT of letters and phone calls) but what would you have done differently? Just promotion in the forums?

[Herkey#1]

I really don't have specifics. Making it much more fan friendly than it was this year would be a start. I like what, I think it was quinn, was saying. Make it an attractive event for fringe fans. Have other things going on around the event to draw in people that would otherwise not have gone. Maybe marketing is the wrong term. How about having better teams? Is that marketing? I don't know. To go and watch Iowa beat up on a bunch of teams that offered no resistence at all was kind of boring even for me. This is why I think it all needs to be on the same weekend. More people would be willing to sit through the bad matchups to get to the good ones. With no chance of seeing Iowa wrestle anyone good, a lot of Hawk fans chose not to go.

[Herkey#1]

I also think it is a huge swing and a miss to have the finals held somewhere that 3/4's of the teams fans would have to drive eight hours or more to get to. They had the chance to hold it in Minnesota and really rock the house, but they chose to or it was prearranged to be held at OSU if they made it. I have no problems with it being held at OSU, if it was announced beforehand. But Minnesota would have been a much better decision for a majority of the fans.