Brisbane Ultimate Strategic Plan (BUSP) - Doing Better at Establishing New Leagues

So as discussed last week, thinking progresss on the Brisbane Ultimate Strategic Plan 2011-2013, and we here at stately Brisbane Ultimate Blog mansion once again have the desire to share a concept and invite some comments. Note that everyone in Brisbane will get a say in the eventual Plan - think of this post as a chat at the pub.

Strategic Direction - Doing Better at Establishing New Leagues

So one of the blobs that regularly floats to the surface when discussing Brisbane Ultimate over the years that we've been paying attention is the establishment of new Leagues. Typically this involves thinking along the lines of at least one of the following:

1. it seems our current Leagues have run out of field space, so new field space should be found and a new thing set up.
2. there are lots of pesky beginners (bless them) running around - maybe we should hive them all off into a separate thing (the same thing could be said of elite players too).
3. we want to grow Ultimate, so setting up a new thing in a place and time different to what we have at present will attract new people, as well as give existing players another opportunity to play.

Each of these lines of thought seem to be articles of faith, and while essentially right are of course challengeable - an existing League can operate across multiple venues, many beginners want to play with and learn from their experienced rather than play in a baby League, new geographic areas aren't that important it seems, etc etc.

Sadly, in the recent past when we've tried to set up new Leagues, the model seems to have been Ultimate sending a few individuals off into the wilderness to find a field and make it happen. There is no willingness to change what exists to support the new.

This suggests to me that our efforts to do this in the past have been ‘opportunistic’ rather than ‘strategic’. I say sadly because these efforts seem to be somewhat doomed to failure. Jangles has been struggling manfully to get some regular northside play going for some time now. In the middle of 2009 JdR tried to get some play happening on Wednesday nights at Nathan, with little success.

Part of strategic thinking is about what sacrifices will you make for what benefits. In the past we haven’t been willing to even consider the balance, let alone actually change anything that exists (ie no sacrifice) to do more to ensure the success of any new ventures.

Strategic decision making is about weighing up what are the best short term pains for long term gains.

So here's a couple of guidelines that might go in a Brisbane Ultimate Strategy, with regards new Leagues.

Have a Solid Core
First, we need to do better than just sending a couple of keen people off into the wilderness. Perhaps the Brisbane Ultimate Strategic Plan needs to say that BUDA will support efforts to set up new Leagues, if:
- the proposed new League is being proposed by an established Ultimate club or group; or
- the proposed new League is the natural extension of an existing weekly Ultimate event (eg training, pickup); or
- at least three teams from an existing League are committed to the proposed new League.

Stating this clearly helps to manage the expectations of the membership, and remind keen volunteers that successfully setting up a new League in Brisbane is probably going to need more than a couple of people. You need a solid base. Even if you think you can recruit a lot of new people into the sport, you need to have enough experienced people to bring them along into a new sport that doesn’t have officials to tell you when to start, what to do, what not to do, etc etc.

So, if you want to set up a new League, you need to have a sizable number of people willing to make the sacrifice of leaving their present comfort zone of League play, for the longer term benefit

Then Look for Fields
If one of the above conditions can be met, then the next step is to secure fields at the desired weekday and time. This is purely mechanical, and everyone has ideas about where and when would be nice, as this is the easy bit (this is also why discussions previously have always jumped straight to this, ie people at the pub saying “what we really need is a league on this night in that suburb”. The hard part of this has usually been in a willingness to spend a long time looking and building potential relationships. Its very rare for a field provider to have a field just sitting there empty at a time and price we’d be interested in (of course, when this happens it’s a good thing if we’re ready to jump!).

Financial Subsidy
I haven’t talked much about obvious sacrifice yet, but we’re getting to the harder end now. In supporting new Leagues, we will need to make a clear decision about whether existing Leagues financially subsidise new Leagues or not.

In the past we haven’t really and clearly (we sort of have, and its been ad hoc). The ‘new leagues’ element of our strategic plan needs to explain this clearly one way or the other.

I think they should, because new Leagues need to be able to make a loss so as to attract players, and because players in existing Leagues benefit from having new Leagues. They benefit in terms of great legitimacy for our sport, for making it easier for new people to come into the sport, for reducing the load on existing Leagues, and for increasing their own long term choices.

It is also necessary to make the new Leagues attractive. Say for example the new League gets enough field space for 90 players, but to start it only attracts 45. If those 45 have to pay close double to support the fixed costs of the League, then this won’t be very attractive.

Hence, perhaps the form and amount of subsidy provided should be based on the budget of what the new League would charge as a player or team fee if the new League were relatively full – ie if the new League would cost $40 if it was full and had around 90 players, then you charge something close to $40 (rather than $70) even while it has 45 players for its first season and is getting established. Brisbane Ultimate as a whole adds in what it has too, taking that money from other Leagues. (Figures above are just rough for example).

Calendaring ‘Subsidy’
A second thing we haven’t done too well in the past and could do a lot more about is ensuring the best possible launch of a new League by adjusting the calendaring of other Leagues.

As discussed earlier, to succeed, new Leagues need to have a number of current players join it from the start. Current players at the moment are getting all the Ultimate they want (this is a topic for another post – are we seeing a decline in growth and the level of volunteering because the old motivation of wanting to grow Ultimate so you could play more yourself is now gone?), so there are few reasons to join a new League.

In planning new Leagues then, we need to launch them at times when there isn’t a lot of other Ultimate on, and going a step further, actively reduce the amount of other Ultimate available.

Again, obviously this involves some sort of sacrifice for current players – eg having your League season start moved and length possibly shortened for reasons outside your immediate League.

A lot of the above will annoy people. These are hard decisions to make. But this is what real strategic planning is about. This is what we have been missing in Brisbane, with our general disorganised ad hoc approach, and we’re getting left behind by the other capitals around Australia.

Of course, I’ll caveat again that a strategic plan is intended to be a guide. Stuff can change and you need to be able to go with it – eg Oakman Park just offers us Wednesday nights out of the blue. Equally, a strategic plan is ideally representative about a series of decisions a group has made, about the sacrifices its willing to make for the goals it is most eager to attain. To make Oakman Park work, where Northside and Nathan Wednesday’s didn’t, we need to think outside our present box.

As usual, comment lines are open.