No pitch: Edson tournament cancelled again.
In August 2017 right at the last before the Edson Kinsmen Slo-Pitch Tournament, one of Canada’s biggest with 37 years of history behind it, was cancelled. The Edson Kinsmen club was bankrupt and dissolved after initially saying that it couldn’t get a liquor licence. The story made the national news. Questions were asked some of which remain unanswered to this day.
Fast forward to March 2018 with the announcement that The Edson Rotary Club would be organizing the tournament for 2018. On its website the Rotary Club said, “We know last year’s cancellation was a huge disappointment to everyone involved. This year the Rotary Club of Edson has taken over and promises to revitalize this important western Canadian event. Rotary is now running the entire tournament and campground together. One seamless registration will get you into the tournament as well as the campground.”
Although the tournament had been wildly successful in former years latterly team registrations had been falling and let’s just say that what went on over the long weekend was great for some but not so great for others. Some town residents even arranged to spend the weekend away to avoid the ball tourney.
On July 6, 2018 The Edson Rotary Club made the following announcement on its Edson Rotary Campground and Slo-Pitch Tournament Facebook page, “We have had to cancel the August tournament due to extremely low registrations. We did not make this decision lightly, but we could not host even a small tourney with the registrations we had. Registered teams will be refunded their money within the next 2 days. Hopefully we have made this decision in time for teams to make other plans. We thank everyone that has supported our fundraisers over the years.”
While we applaud that the decision was made hopefully, in time for registered teams to make other arrangements, cancelation, again is going to make it that much harder to restore an already shattered reputation.
We have read critical posts decrying the lack of advertising for the event and, in all honesty, we can’t recall seeing any advertising ourselves. Being in the business, so to speak, we know that promotion and advertising is everything in getting people to come to events. One ad is never enough, one website is never enough and posting on social media pages with under 300 likes is certainly never enough.
Perhaps the thinking was that former teams would return, clearly, they didn’t. Going forward if there is a future for this tournament taking a brand-new event approach would be a good idea. Market the heck out of it, get the Town of Edson more involved, go through with the event no matter what or how few teams register and build from the bottom up. Obviously,
there will have to be financial provisions in place for it to make a loss, which it likely will initially. This event is broke and needs fixing, reputations must be built all over again. Time for the Town of Edson to step up to the plate?