Boca Raton Soccer Summit – March 2019- videos

WHAT IS THIS?

This is not about one club. This is about US, we are all together. We need to learn with each other’s success and more importantly, by each other’s mistakes. Let’s avoid the mistakes and create a successful model for all of us.

Too often lower league club ownership is tribal. Players, sponsors, contacts, information, and, most importantly, lessons learned are guarded. This Summit is about breaking down that tribalism and opening up lines of communication. Every club needs to learn from each other’s success and opportunities. If clubs are to succeed, sharing knowledge and technique is a must.

While every club is seeking to create a sustainable business model, the reality is that there is no “perfect template” that works in every situation. Every club is different in so many ways – budgets, financing, sponsorship, regions, fan bases, even long-term goals. Thousands of clubs populate the lower division, learning from those thousands of knowledge bases will allow everyone a better chance of success. The only way to sustain growth and achieve long-term success is by learning and sharing between clubs. Every club needs others around it. Games cannot be played by a single club, tournaments cannot be held without multiple clubs, and certainly, leagues would not exist without many clubs coming together for a common goal.

The collective experience of independent club operators all over this country would fill volumes. If this information isn’t collected, discussed, and distributed, lower league clubs are dooming their own futures. Our experience together is worth a hundred years! We cannot ignore this.

Inspired by last year’s Summit for America Soccer, hosted by Chattanooga FC, the Lower Division Soccer Summit is following their example and bringing together the soccer community to “open the conversation” about the challenges, goals, and our collective history of both success and failure. In that way, the Lower Division Soccer Summit is a microcosm of the long term goals of the Summit itself. We’ve taken lessons from Summit for America Soccer and are putting best practices into place to achieve even more success!

While there will be many informative and inspiring speakers, the most important component of this summit is you! The experiences you bring, channeled through open communication, will be a precious commodity that will benefit every club that attends. Together, we can make soccer grow in America. We strongly believe that “the tides raise all boats,” so let’s do this together!

The Boca Raton FC would like to invite the club owners and managers to Boca Raton, FL for the second “Lower Division Soccer Summit” on Saturday, November 16th from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. This summit will touch on topics of financials, supporter engagement, ownership models, and so many more components of successful club ownership and operation. There will be an informal happy hour event on the evening of Friday, November 15th sponsored by the Palm Beach County Sports Commission for those who arrive early.

No doubt this will be a great event for networking and to creating new partnerships.

The Lower Division Soccer Summit is an invitation-only event and space is limited: due to logistical constraints at the venue and in order to achieve an intimate, medium-sized crowd, only 40 organizations will be accepted. We will invite organizations looking to achieve a diversity of leagues, team sizes, regions, etc.. Our primary goal is to have representatives from all types of lower division organizations – the more voices, the more productive the conversation. Promoters, agents and other organizations that can add to the conversation in productive ways are welcome.