Hosting a marching band competition can be a rewarding experience that brings together musicians, performers, and fans of all ages. Whether you're a school, a community group, or an event coordinator, the key to running a successful competition is meticulous planning and attention to detail. Here's a few tips that will help you pull off an event everyone will remember for the right reasons.
1. Plan Early and Secure Your Venue
Timing is everything when it comes to organizing a marching band competition. Ideally, you should begin planning at least 8-10 months in advance. This gives you time to recruit competing bands, secure a suitable venue, confirm judges, and take care of other logistics like ticketing and concessions.
Some considerations for venue selection:
- Field Condition: Ensure the turf is safe and suitable for marching bands to perform. Artificial turf is ideal for marching band competitions but natural grass is OK as well as long as the field properly drains after a heavy rain.
- Seating Areas: Consider the number of spectators you are estimating will attend your competition and ensure there is enough seating. It's better to have too much seating than not enough! If performers will be allowed into the stadium to watch other performances, don't forget to factor these numbers into your spectator count.
- Parking: Ensure you have ample parking based on your anticipated spectator count. A good rule of thumb is to have one parking space for every 2-3 spectators. Also be sure to provide a dedicated space for buses and equipment trucks to park as bands arrive on-site the day of your competition.
- Warm-up areas: You'll want to make sure there are large enough spaces around the stadium for bands to warm-up before their performances. Make sure these spaces are far enough away from the stadium so as not to disturb performances in the stadium.
2. Start Registration ASAP
The most important part of a marching band competition is the marching bands! The earlier you open registration for your competition the more likely you are to have a larger number of bands attend. Before opening your registration, determine the maximum number of bands you'll be able to accommodate and if possible, include this information somewhere on your registration forms. As the number of bands registered for your competition grows, showing the number of remaining spots on your registration forms can help encourage bands to register for those last few spots.
3. Coordinate Volunteers and Staff
Volunteers are essential to ensuring your competition runs smoothly. Assign roles and responsibilities to your team well in advance, and ensure everyone is trained on their tasks. Consistent and clear communication with your volunteers leading up to the day of your competition is key. You may want to consider creating a "cheat-sheet" for each of your volunteers tasks that you can distribute. These cheat-sheets can include important points that your volunteers can reference on the day of your competition. For example, a cheat-sheet for volunteers working concessions may contain the following items:
- Cashless: No cash is being accepted for our competition.
- Grill: Start cooking hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill 1 hour before the gates open to ensure we have food ready when spectators arrive.
- Candy: We only ordered limited quantities of candy so please limit candy purchases to 2 per guest.
Think through questions your volunteers may have and include information on your cheat-sheets that address these questions.
4. Recruit Experienced Judges
The success of your competition depends heavily on the quality of the judging. Judges should have experience in marching band, including music, marching, choreography, and overall effect. Ideally, you want a panel with diverse expertise - music educators, choreographers, and even former band members with competition experience. Try to find judges that align with your scoring captions. For example, if one of your scoring captions is colorguard, make sure your judge for this caption has relevant experience and expertise.
You may want to schedule a judges meeting early on the day of your event. This can be a forum for judges to ask questions and discuss the scoring sheets to ensure each band is judged in a consistent and fair manner.
5. Ticketing
Ticket sales will most likely be the biggest source of income for your competition so be sure that the ticketing experience for your guests is as easy as possible. Offering both online and in-person ticket sales is the most convenient option for your specators. Online sales have the added benefit of helping guard against rain-outs or other cancellations by selling tickets in advance of your event. Just be sure that it's clear to your online buyers that ticket sales are non-refundable.
6. Promote Your Competition
Get the word out early to attract attendees and create excitement for your competition. The more people you attract, the more vibrant your event will be and the more money you'll raise for your band program. A couple of easy and free ways to promote your competition are:
- Social Media: Promote your competition through your band's social media pages. If you're planning to have outside vendors at your competition, you may want to consider asking them to promote the competition through their social media pages as well.
- Email: Send out email blasts for your competition starting a few weeks in advance of your event date. Most of your spectators will likely be family and friends of the performers so be sure to target these groups by having each attending band send emails to their students and parents.
7. Evaluate and Gather Feedback
Once the competition is over, it’s important to gather feedback from everyone involved. This will help you improve for next year. Send out surveys to bands, judges, volunteers, and attendees to ask what went well and where improvements could be made. Pay attention to comments about logistics, scheduling, and any technical issues that arose as these are often times reasons why bands may not return to your event in subsequent years.
Conclusion
Hosting a marching band competition is a big undertaking, but with careful planning and attention to detail, it can be an incredible experience for both participants and spectators alike. By choosing a great venue, coordinating logistics effectively, and ensuring everything runs smoothly, you’ll help create a memorable event that highlights the skill, dedication, and passion of all the talented marching bands involved.
Planning a marching band competition can be a complex task, but with Marching Maestro, it doesn’t have to be. Our intuitive platform helps you manage everything from scheduling performances to organizing volunteers, ticketing, and even judging. With real-time updates, easy collaboration tools, and seamless communication features, you can ensure every detail is covered, leaving you more time to focus on making your event a success. Let Marching Maestro take the stress out of event planning, so you can focus on what really matters - creating an unforgettable experience for everyone involved.
