Stay-to-play — book through our housing partner or your team does not compete — reliably captures lodging revenue, and just as reliably generates the angriest thread on every tournament's social pages. Families resent the removed choice and the frequent price premium, and directors spend the season defending a policy instead of running an event.
What the mandate is actually for
Strip away the enforcement and stay-to-play exists to do two things: route lodging demand through a channel the event earns on, and give hotels a reason to offer inventory. Both are legitimate. The mandate is just the bluntest possible instrument for them — it converts a service into a toll.
The consent-based version
- Placement: a bookable housing offer on the registration confirmation — the moment every travelling family starts planning — instead of a required portal behind a threat.
- Coverage: hotels and homes together. Tournament families run the highest occupancy in events and half of them want kitchens; a hotels-only mandate fights its own audience.
- Economics: a revenue share on every booking made through the offer — the event earns around 6–8% of what the guest pays, without marking families up.
- Honesty: publish real prices and let the family that found something cheaper take it. The goodwill outlasts the lost booking.
Does consent capture enough?
Less than a mandate per family, more than a mandate per season — because the offer keeps working on the families a mandate would have radicalized, and the event keeps the retention a housing fight costs. The demand is not the constraint: lodging money in the market we measured moved overwhelmingly in the final 30 days, straight through the window when a confirmation-page offer is the last thing a family saw. Be the easiest option in that window and the mandate becomes unnecessary.
Migrating off a mandate without losing the revenue
For events already running stay-to-play, the fear is the cliff: drop the mandate and the housing revenue drops with it. The migration that works is gradual and honest. Season one: keep the mandate but fix its grievances — publish real price comparisons, add home inventory for the families who want kitchens, and loosen exemptions for local teams and points bookers. Season two: convert the mandate to a strong default — booking through the event's page is the pre-selected, easiest path with the best cancellation terms, but no longer policed. Measure the capture rate; events that fixed the grievances first routinely keep the majority of their housing volume on consent alone, because the offer is genuinely the easiest option.
What returns alongside the bookings is harder to measure but easy to feel: the housing thread on the event's pages goes quiet, registration friction drops, and the director stops spending August defending a policy. The families were never against booking through the event — they were against being forced to.
The consent metrics that matter
- Capture rate: share of travelling families booking through the event's channel, tracked season over season.
- Grievance volume: housing complaints per hundred families — the number the mandate inflated.
- Format split: hotel versus home bookings, which tells you whether coverage matches your families.
- Retention: teams returning year over year — the number stay-to-play quietly erodes and consent rebuilds.