Kathy DeBoer calls it the big-tent strategy. It's the broad principle that has helped her association, the American Volleyball Coaches Association, experience a 56 percent spike in attendance in the past three years, including a jump of nearly 20 percent in 2009.

“Anybody who is even mildly interested in the sport of volleyball, we want to give them a reason to come to our annual convention,” says DeBoer, executive director at AVCA. “We try to offer something for everyone in the marketplace.”

Through a variety of marketing initiatives, a tournament, and partnerships — including one with the National Collegiate Athletic Association that puts AVCA next to the biggest stage in the sport every year — officials at AVCA continue to bring more people into the tent.

Their success provides a lesson in how to turn a convention into a must-attend event.

Meeting on a National Stage

Since the AVCA launched in 1981, the association has held its convention in conjunction with the NCAA Women's Volleyball Championships, which is the Final Four of women's volleyball, the biggest annual event in the volleyball world. It's been a great partnership, one that is beneficial to both the AVCA and the NCAA, DeBoer says.

The semifinal and championship matches, which take place Thursday and Saturday evenings, serve as AVCA's off-site entertainment. Attendees buy their own tickets to the matches, but they receive preferred seating.

For the NCAA, the partnership creates an opportunity to communicate with coaches and bring the volleyball community together, says Sharon Cessna, NCAA Division I director of championships. “Working with the AVCA gives the coaches and the NCAA a platform to collaborate on moving the championship forward, as well as the game itself,” she says.

Booking the Events

The NCAA selects the destinations for both the championship and the AVCA convention, which run simultaneously. The AVCA sends its specs for the convention to the NCAA, says Jason Jones, director of operations at AVCA, and the specs are included in the NCAA's requests for proposals. Once the site is chosen, AVCA signs all the contracts with the convention center, hotels, and vendors and begins the process of planning the event.

In 2009, Tampa Bay was a great fit. The convention was held at the Tampa Bay Convention Center, December 16-20, while the NCAA championships were held at the St. Petersburg Times Forum on December 17 and 19.

“We're fortunate to have our convention center right across the street from our competition venue, the St. Pete Times Forum,” says Robert Higgins, executive director at the Tampa Sports Commission. Attendees could walk from the headquarters hotel to the convention center to the matches.

The 2009 convention set an attendance record for AVCA with more than 2,000 attendees — an 18 percent increase over the 2008 show. Since 2006, attendance has grown 56 percent. That kind of growth is good in any economy, but it's exceptional during a recession.

Weekend Packages Build Attendance

There are many elements in AVCA's attendance-building strategy, but they revolve around a simple premise: “Look at your marketplace and see where there are opportunities to give people a reason to be there,” says DeBoer, a former women's volleyball coach at the University of Kentucky who was inducted into the school's athletics hall of fame last year.

That's exactly what AVCA did when DeBoer came on board as executive director in 2006. Before that, the association had largely been for collegiate volleyball coaches only — and mostly Division I (big-school) coaches.

“Four years ago we said, ‘Let's take the next step.’ For us, that meant attracting high school volleyball coaches,” DeBoer says. By seeking out high school coaches, its pool of potential members and conference attendees increased by 15,000.

Then the question was: What could AVCA offer that would draw the coaches to the conference?

The biggest obstacles were scheduling and cost, DeBoer says. Most high school coaches aren't on holiday break yet when the convention takes place and can't get time off during the week to attend the conference. Plus, most high school coaches have to pay their own way to attend.

So, AVCA put together a weekend package that invites high school coaches to attend Friday night through Sunday at a reduced cost. The package also was designed to appeal to club coaches — people who run community volleyball leagues.

New Markets, New Partners

Another way AVCA broadened its appeal was by courting attendees from a nontraditional corner of its industry: sand volleyball (also known as beach volleyball).

AVCA had always catered to “court volleyball,” which is played in a gym, on a court, with six players to a side. But sand volleyball — which has similar rules and is played on sand with two players per team — is a growing sport that AVCA had no connection to prior to 2009.

AVCA formed a partnership with the Association of Volleyball Professionals — the organization that runs the professional sand volleyball tour (the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour) — to have a sand court installed inside the convention center for instructional purposes. The sand court, along with two hard courts, are set up in the exhibit hall so instruction can take place in close proximity to the booths on the exhibit floor.

AVCA also reached out to USA Volleyball, which is the governing body for the sport, to offer a new accreditation program for coaches who want to take courses and earn credits to become certified to coach sand volleyball.

To market the program to the beach volleyball community, AVCA invited the tournament directors and club coaches from the Amateur Athletic Union Beach Volleyball program, which runs amateur and community leagues, to hold its annual business meeting at AVCA.

Further, the convention received national media exposure in 2009 as the host of a press conference held by the leaders of the Women's National Volleyball Association, which is launching a new women's pro volleyball league this year.

“Having that press conference on site added to the idea of really trying to build the prestige of this event,” says Will Engle, assistant director, events and public relations, at AVCA.

Adding Competitions to the Convention

AVCA has added its own competitions in order to bring more people to the convention and add value for attendees.

At the 2009 convention, AVCA hosted its inaugural Holiday Juniors Tournament, which took place in the convention center in a space next to the exhibit hall.

The tournament brought about 50 high school teams from around the country. A third party ran the tournament, bleachers were brought in for spectators, and 15 volleyball courts were set up. The tournament wasn't a big revenue-generator for the association, DeBoer says, but that wasn't the point — at least for the first year.

The tournament benefits are twofold, Jones says. First, it draws more people to the city. “Plus, it's a recruiting event for our college coaches,” who have a convenient opportunity to evaluate the high school players (the top 24 high school girl players in the country are invited to compete in AVCA's annual All-America game) and determine if they should be awarded scholarships, Jones says.

“We hope to grow the tournament over the next couple of years to where it actually becomes something that people put on their calendars,” he adds.

Logistically, the tournaments create more work, but it's worth the effort. “It's another reason we are giving people to go to the convention,” DeBoer says.

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