Transcript:
Matt Hawkins: [00:00:00] If you have an idea that you think you could probably tackle, then just go for it. And then if your board or your director is on board with it, or even if they're not, give them the reasons why you think it will be successful. And why do you think you should tackle it and then go for it.
Adam Stoker: [00:00:15] You guys, I have been working on something for the last six months that has been such a giant project, but I'm so proud of it. I'm excited to announce that I've just released my book. It's called Touchpoints and it's the Destination Marketers Guide to Brand Evaluation and Enhancement. And it is a comprehensive guide for destinations to look at their brand, evaluate what you've done and make a very clear and detailed plan of action of how to fix it.
Look, I'm biased, right? Because I wrote it, but I think it's so good. I think it's a great guide, and I'm really, really happy with how it turned out. And I wanted to tell you guys about it's available on Amazon search Touchpoints by Adam Stoker and you'll be able to get that book for your destination, and I think it's going to be especially for anyone that is trying to look at their brand holistically, this is the book for you, So check it out.
[00:01:16] Hello everyone and welcome to the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. I'm excited to be with you today. We've got a great guest for you. His name is Matt Hawkins, and he is the Director of Sports and Market Development for the Bloomington-Normal Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt Hawkins: [00:01:34] Great. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:36] Oh, we're excited to have you. And we're all kind of navigating and trying to figure out what our new normal is. And I know you've got a lot going on. So I appreciate you joining us.
Matt Hawkins: [00:01:46] Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. I'm excited to talk to you. As we've said before the show, I've listened to several of the episodes and you guys got some great content on here, so hopefully, I can add a little bit to that lineup.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:57] Well hey, now you're on both sides of the equation, a listener and a guest. So, yeah, we're excited to do this today. Thanks for listening.
Matt Hawkins: [00:02:05] Absolutely.
Adam Stoker: [00:02:06] Well, you know the drill then, if you're a listener, we start out with… it's a travel podcast. So tell us a little bit about your dream destination. If you could go anywhere in the world, Matt, where would it be?
Matt Hawkins: [00:02:19] Well, since we're in a new normal here, I might break the rules on this. Just a tad. If that's okay with you?
Adam Stoker: [00:02:25] That's okay. There's very few rules.
Matt Hawkins: [00:02:28] Okay, that's good to know. I'll give it to you in two parts. When I was growing up, my dad was a huge national parks guy. So we always used to travel around every summer. We took two weeks, went to a different destination or multiple destinations every summer. The old lampoon's vacation kind of scene where you pack up the car and go someplace for a couple of weeks.
Adam Stoker: [00:02:51] Nice.
Matt Hawkins: [00:02:53] Yeah, with that. I've been fortunate to have gone to about 45 states, I think so far in in my days. So the five I have not been to are Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:08] Oh, you're missing some of the best ones.
Matt Hawkins: [00:03:10] I know. I want to get over to the Seattle area, Portland area here. That's probably my next vacation trip whenever that can take place here. But I want to go over to the Northwest. Of course, Alaska, Hawaii will be someday hopefully. But that's kind of my domestic dream destination, if you will.
And then internationally, I've had the fortune to go to Europe back when I was in high school and visited England, France and Italy and Switzerland. So I got to see a good chunk of Europe. So having been there, I think my next spot internationally, would have to be Australia. I want to head over that way and check that place out.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:56] Australia. Australia is a popular answer. Tell me a little bit about the allure of Australia for you.
Matt Hawkins: [00:04:02] Well, I'm kind of an animal lover. So just seeing the wildlife over there, I've heard great things about Sydney and Melbourne as well. We're just seeing the terrain if ever I take my kids along there. They’re big reptile fans. So we’re get to see some snakes and all that kind of stuff. So just always been for some reason, just in allure I was a big Steve Irwin fan growing up too, the Crocodile Hunter, so that might have added to the allure.
Adam Stoker: [00:04:32] Well, I wouldn't dare do half the things that that he did. I'd prefer watching it on TV. So especially in Australia, because isn't that where the most poisonous snakes in the world are?
Matt Hawkins: [00:04:43] I think most poisonous everything. It seems like to me. Yeah.
Adam Stoker: [00:04:46] Yep, that sounds like a great National Geographic episode for me.
Matt Hawkins: [00:04:54] There's probably time for that on Netflix or something. Right? You have time to watch some of that stuff.
Adam Stoker: [00:05:00] Totally. Okay. All right. I like it. Tell me, how about of all the places you've ever been, what's your favorite?
Matt Hawkins: [00:05:07] Well, again, I guess maybe breaking it down, having been to Europe, that was obviously a great experience. I think I was about 17 at the time. So being an idiot kid, I didn't really appreciate it as much as I should have or could have at the time. I wish I could go back now and really take in some of that history and architecture and a lot of the great stuff that Europe has to offer.
But coming back domestically again, having taken those trips around the country, if I had to pick one place, as I get older, I really appreciate the kind of outdoor mountain scene. Growing up you always did the beach stuff. You want to go to the beach and do the tropical stuff. But as I get older, mountains in the woods and that kind of stuff kind of interest me more now. So with that said, a trip up to Glacier National Park in Montana when I was in high school was pretty amazing. Just the geography and the sites and the nature and everything that went into that was amazing. And I'd go back there in a heartbeat if I could.
Adam Stoker: [00:06:14] Yeah, I've heard amazing things about Glacier National Park up there in in Montana, and I've never actually had the chance to go. But it's definitely on my bucket list. It seems like a great place.
Matt Hawkins: [00:06:25] I'll add this too, not that I'm kissing up to the host here, but I have technically been in Utah at the Four Corners, but I haven't really seen much of Utah, so I'd like to get over there as well on go to Bryce Canyon and some of those other nice attractions.
Adam Stoker: [00:06:41] Yeah, I would say the Four Corners is a very small representation of what you could expect in Utah.
Matt Hawkins: [00:06:48] Yes, I hesitated in counting Utah, but I guess I've stepped foot in the state, so I guess I can count it.
Adam Stoker: [00:06:55] Yeah, well, we got to get you out here for a better trip. Let me know we'll hook you up with the whole itinerary to have you really experience the state.
Matt Hawkins: [00:07:03] That sounds like a deal.
Adam Stoker: [00:07:05] Awesome. Okay, well, that's good information. You're a well-traveled man, and it's fun to hear where you've been and also where you want to go. How about just give me a little bit about your background. Who is Matt Hawkins?
Matt Hawkins: [00:07:19] Sure. Well, I guess, getting personal here. Married with two boys they are 6 and 3.5.
Adam Stoker: [00:07:29] Hence the love for snakes.
Matt Hawkins: [00:07:30] Yeah, the snakes and Pokemon and all kinds of crazy stuff we're dealing with, but they're great kids and they're active and keeps me going. Keeps us busy. So love every part of that. As far as me personally, I've always been a sports guy, played three sports growing up. In High school ended up playing college baseball and I knew I wanted to Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois Division three School.
Adam Stoker: [00:08:01] Great.
Matt Hawkins: [00:08:02] Yeah, pitched there for four years and knew I always wanted to work in sports. I think I'm pretty much like every other guest you've had that didn't plan on working in tourism, but here we are. My path through to tourism came through the sports side of things in getting my degree at Augustana College in Business Administration with a concentration on marketing. And at the time, interestingly enough, I was planning on minoring in what they called Sport and Fitness Management. But of course come my sophomore year, they dropped that entire program from the school. I wanted that sports degree. So what turned out to be the best decision I could have made at the time and looking back the great, even greater decision was going to get my Masters straight after my undergrad. And I came back close to home to Illinois State University to get my Masters in Sports Management and at the time was fortunate enough to get a graduate assistantship in year one in the athletics ticket office. And then year two in the athletics marketing department.
Just the experience gained through those two positions. And in addition to the actual course work was invaluable and making some of the connections through that position. turns out my boss then knew my boss now and one thing led to another. And here we are, working in tourism, sports, tourism, sports travel for about 15 years now. So that's kind of the brief two minutes into how I got into this role and a little bit about my background.
Adam Stoker: [00:09:48] Yeah, how well do you know Nick Povalitis over at Rockford, Illinois?
Matt Hawkins: [00:09:52] I know Nick pretty well, he's a great guy. We see each other probably, I don't know, a hand handful of times a year it shows, and we have our own little group here in Illinois called Sports Illinois, it's a niche Committee of the Illinois Council of Convention and Visitors Bureau. So we see each other at state meetings in the different trade shows around the country quite a bit. So yeah. Nick’s a great guy. I know he was on the show a few weeks ago.
Adam Stoker: [00:10:15] Yep. Yep. He was a past guest and really did a great job. And I've actually had a good time seeing some of the leadership he's been providing as different destinations have figured out how to navigate this Coronavirus crisis. I think he's done a great job of providing leadership there.
Matt Hawkins: [00:10:32] Yeah, Rockford is usually the forefront of some great ideas. I know they just hosted a virtual FAM tour last week as well. So I think that went over pretty well from all accounts.
Adam Stoker: [00:10:43] Absolutely. Okay. All right, well let's back up a little bit. You talked about your current role. You've been in the tourism industry now for 15 years. Tell me what your current role is and the responsibilities that come along with that.
Matt Hawkins: [00:10:58] Sure, the bulk of my role is in the sports marketing area. My title, as you mentioned, is Director of Sports and Market Development. So along with that and this is probably this past November, so about six months I've taken on some of the responsibilities in and around marketing the destination, mainly including working with a local ad agency to do some of our digital marketing and social media advertising. But, the far majority of my day-to-day work is in and around sports management, sports marketing, of course calling out to rights holders, and event planners to convince them to hold their events here in Bloomington-Normal. And along with that which I know, we'll get into here more shortly is overseeing our sports commission and everything that goes into that, including its own separate board of directors, its own membership base budgets and our own events that we don't operate. So between the selling of Bloomington-Normal to event planners and coordinating our own stuff internally, that’s really the bulk of my position, I guess in a nutshell,
Adam Stoker: [00:12:05] Yeah, I think that was one of the most attractive things for me about having you on the show is that you guys own and operate four major events within your destination. I think this is a pretty innovative thing for destinations because you have all this infrastructure built and you have times in the season that are just packed with outside events. And then you have times where, man, how do you fill the hotels and how do you fill the sports complex, if you have one or whatever it is, depending on the destination? And the idea of creating and owning your own event to me is really innovative and a great way to make sure that on any given weekend or any given time of the year, you can fill the infrastructure that's available by creating those events. So tell me a little bit about what led to the creation of those events and then tell me about those events I'd love to hear about.
Matt Hawkins: [00:13:03] Sure, Yeah, I think you said the word innovative, and I think those ideas probably were innovative are oldest event that we own and operate is 19 years old, so I think back then, it certainly was innovative idea that was before my time in this role in this industry. But I think back then there were very few destinations that were creating their own events in owning and operating themselves. I think that's become much more common today. However, the amount of events that you own and operate, I think, varies across the board.
But as you mentioned we way have four of them. Three of them are, let's see one’s 19 years old, once’s 17 years and one's about 11 or 12 years old. You mentioned part of it as far as why they've created is to fill, maybe empty weekends or more so for us it was utilizing some of our strengths in terms of our facilities and expertise locally. Our oldest event is the State Farm Youth Classic Golf Tournament, which is as I said, going on 20 years old. We have a committee of about 20, 25 people that helped me oversee it and plan it.
The reason that got started was really, when you own an operating event, you don't have to worry about selling to someone. It's your event, you don't have to worry about that event, moving and going off to some other destination. You have complete control over it. You know it's going to be in your destination. You can plan for it accordingly. Put your own touches on the event and try to make it into what is most beneficial for your community. And of course, a lot of times for us and for many other destinations, it's bringing those visitors into the area to stay overnight in hotels and eat in our restaurants and that kind of stuff, which it does play into that.
We also want to offer a first class opportunity and kind of give back if you will to the kids and offer them an outstanding first class opportunity to play in a world class event. And when I say world class, I don't mean to brag, but we've had golfers from across the world come and play over the years. I think we've had representation from 29 states and 14 different countries over the years come in play. Yeah, it's really cool when you see kids come in. I think last year we had maybe a handful of kids from South Africa and I think a couple kids from China through plane. Like I said, before. It's really the reason we started is to offer a great opportunity for kids to play as well as bring folks into our area and spend a little bit of time here in Bloomington-Normal.
Adam Stoker: [00:15:49] Great. Well, I love the sound of that golf event. What about some of the other events? You have four total, right? There's three more.
Matt Hawkins: [00:15:57] Yeah. I'm sorry I got sucked into the golf topic.
Adam Stoker: [00:16:00] But you know what? I'm like you, Matt. You start getting me talking about golf, I'm going to forget about everything else.
Matt Hawkins: [00:16:06] Yeah, I'm getting used to play here. Being stuck at home is hurting me. But anyway, yeah. We have three other events. I guess I'll go in order of age of the event. We had the Youth Classic Golf Tournament, which I said was about 20 years old. The next one is called the Midwest Nationals Wrestling Tournament, and it's going I think about 17 years where we have about the last several years we've had about 1000 to 1100 kids come in for a day to our local division three. School has an outstanding recreation facility. We put out about 22 mats, wrestling mats in that facility and you run about 1000 kids through in a day, which I'm not a big wrestling person. I don't know much about the sport honestly, so we actually have somebody locally that that runs out event for us. We kind of handle the business side of things, if you will.
But again, it really stemmed out of filling a need on a on a calendar for that venue. We had a local person who is really nationally known for his knowledge and expertise in wrestling. He's a longtime wrestling coach, but now he's in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. So he had a lot of connections for bringing in celebrity guest speakers or celebrity conditions. And a lot that goes into that one as well is just knowing people that have the expertise to come in and run your mat tables and your head table doing all this scoring and all that kind of stuff. So having those connections and utilizing the network that he had was huge, so that's our second event.
The third event is called the State Farm Student-Athlete Recognition Banquet. And it's about 11, 12 years old now. And that is not a tournament, obviously, and it really doesn't bring any visitor spending to the area. But it's an event that recognizes high school athletes, coaches, teams. We recognize special Olympics athletes and a few other awards for those folks’ accomplishments on and off the field of play in the classroom.
Adam Stoker: [00:18:17] And is that a statewide event like you're inviting from all parts of Illinois? Or is that expanded farther than just Illinois?
Matt Hawkins: [00:18:25] Well, actually, no. It's just more of a local thing. We just do all the high schools that are located within our county.
Adam Stoker: [00:18:30] Very cool.
Matt Hawkins: [00:18:32] So it's about I think I want to say, there are about 15 high schools in our county. In those schools, we asked the athletic director's from each school to submit nominations for the various different award categories, and we have 11 different awards. That event, really again it’s not for bringing in visitor spending. It's more of a kind of a PR tool for us if you will, and a little bit of a fundraiser or again kind of get to give back, put out some messaging on behalf of the Sports Commission and the CVB and kind of get our name out there a little bit.
Adam Stoker: [00:19:04] Great stakeholder engagement. Great way to build your brand in your local community. I love it.
Matt Hawkins: [00:19:09] Absolutely. And then the fourth event is kind of our new baby if you will. This past January was our second time hosting this event. It's called the Sixty Six Games e-Sports Tournament presented by State Farm and just from year one to year two it's really grown into quite the beast. Year one and I guess I'll keep this brief and you can ask me to expand, I guess if you like. But in year one we started out with 16 college/open teams in the division and then eight high school teams in the division playing League of Legends. And that's really what it was in year one was just strictly a League of Legends tournament for those two divisions. We brought them in to our local arena downtown. A big component to this event is the fact that we have partnered with one of our local school districts in basically borrowing about 160 computers for the weekend.
Adam Stoker: [00:20:15] Okay.
Matt Hawkins: [00:20:16] Without that, obviously, we wouldn't be able to do it. Even renting, if not even buying 160 computers is kind of out of the question for our budget. So being able to borrow those for a few days from them is huge, and without that, it wouldn't have happened. But from year one to year two, we were able to expand not only just the tournament itself, we've gone from 24 teams up to I think it was 32 teams in year two total. In addition to the tournament, we expanded into having a Video Game Convention where we had about 50 vendor booths selling anything from vintage games to video game artwork, that I think there was one table selling Pokemon memorabilia and gift items and things like that. So 50 vendors selling various kinds of video game-related items. Then the third component was an e-Sports Clinic where we had actually experts on a national level come in and speak on various topics throughout the day.
So we're pretty excited about it. I know e-sports is really growing by leaps and bounds here. I know a lot of people are trying to figure out or have already started their own event or tournament, but we're pretty proud of what we've got started here. And I think it's shown on a national level having gotten teams coming from of course, a lot of Illinois teams, but a lot of the Midwest States and I remember we had a team from Arizona State University's team came up this past January to play.
Adam Stoker: [00:21:58] Awesome, e-sports was something that I really wanted to ask you about because I think there's still this like old school mentality that e-sports is just a fad or it's something that isn't going to continue to grow. What would you say to people that are a little bit skeptical about e-sports as a plausible event?
Matt Hawkins: [00:22:19] Yes, I would probably just tell them to go some Google search how much money is being spent in the e-sports in the industry. I think that right there, I'll tell you that it's not going to go away anytime soon. There's too many people making a lot of money from e-sports for it to go away. And the fact now that there's colleges and universities that are offering full ride scholarships for e-sports players to come play on their team and compete on a national level. Those are just two reasons out of many that -- it's not going away anytime soon. If you look at three Asian market or even in Europe. E-sports is selling out 60,000 seat arenas in Asia. People watching League of Legends or other games take place. So yeah, it’s only going to get bigger here in the States, I think. And we're just trying to capture our little piece of that pie here locally.
Adam Stoker: [00:23:10] So tell me, then with visitors that come for this e-sports event, what does their spending look like? What kind of volume are you getting? Just for other destinations considering this type of event. Yes, there's a lot of money in the sport. But what are you actually seeing from a destination standpoint?
Matt Hawkins: [00:23:33] Well, we knew it was going to take somewhat of an incubation period, if you want to use that term. We've started off fairly small in terms of number of teams. In that first year, we had as I said 24 teams. And really, that was all there is to it. There's a lot of planning that goes into it. A lot of logistics and the computers and setting up your own network inside the building and running all of the technical side of things. From a destination standpoint in year one, it was It was a fairly small compared a lot of the other events that we operate. We're trying to keep a big picture mindset and kind of looking at the long game here, knowing that e-sports is going to continue to grow. As long as we keep making new contacts and kind of incrementally expanding what we could do locally in terms of that event, I think slowly but surely you might see folks -- I guess I'll back up. The folks that came to our tournament in year one and kind of in this past year too really the teams themselves came and play. There wasn't a whole lot of people that came with them to watch if you will, or to take it in. There were quite a few people that came in for the convention piece, but in terms of the tournament itself, just spectators coming in to watch the game action. We don't have a lot of that right now.
So that's something to keep in mind. You hear all these stories of other arenas overseas selling out. So I think some of us on the committee had some grand visions of selling out our arena, which maybe one day might happen. We're 6000, 7000 seat arena here in town. But we're not even close to that now.
Adam Stoker: [00:25:14] But I love that you're willing to share that with us because it sets expectations correctly for our listeners that may be considering an event like this that, “Hey, this is something that it's growing. It's going to build year over year, and you're not going to sell out your entire arena in year one, but it's something that you got to build a foundation for and kind of continue to be consistent.” So even though it didn't perform necessarily the way some of your board members or whatever expected, I think that's great information for our listeners.
Matt Hawkins: [00:25:48] Yeah, the board I think is pretty understanding about that incubation period. And I think we've done a pretty good job of informing them about again what the long game could be on this type of event. Not to mention our State High School Association is getting ready to create a state series for e-sports at the high school level. So,, that's another reason that you see it not going away anytime soon. But having established our event, we think we might have a pretty good chance to possibly locking down the High School Association event as well. So it kind of plays into not only the event itself but might open up opportunity to bring even more e-sports events into your community in the future.
But going back to your point about having realistic expectations, we decided that our local arena was the best venue for us, and that might not be the same for everybody. It might be best in a hotel ballroom or some type of convention center space. But for us again not to bore you with all the variables and the factors, we thought that the arena would be the best fit for us. One of the big factors with that is just having the Internet capability to pull. If you're going to have that many computers, having the bandwidth to handle that. And a lot of other the technical stuff that I'm happy to talk to folks about if they had questions. But there's various factors that go into the ideal venue and just keeping a realistic expectation that, yeah, we have 7000 seats to fill. But it might be 10 years before that half of those are even sold for an event like this.
So we're trying to figure out other ways like the convention piece was added in to try to get more people in the door that just have an interest in gaming itself, not necessarily wanted to come watch the League of Legends tournament. So It's kind of trying to be creative in terms of just getting people to come to your destination for different reasons, I suppose.
Adam Stoker: [00:27:49] Totally makes sense and I appreciate you being a little vulnerable and sharing some of that with us. I think I want to take a step back and just talk about owning and operating these events on your own as somebody's getting started or evaluating, “Hey, do we want to try to create an event from scratch in our destination?” Any kind of do's and don’ts that you can throw out there to make sure that that we're not making the same mistakes twice in multiple destinations?
Matt Hawkins: [00:28:20] Yeah, I think I kind of touched on it earlier. I think it should be an event that obviously fits your destination if you don't have a baseball complex, don't try to create a big baseball tournament, and that I think, is obviously some of that's common sense. But for us, we got a pretty good set of golf courses. Our golf tournament actually runs on six different courses. So making sure that we had the appropriate facilities with that. For us in both cases, with the golf tournament and with e-sports event, I technically oversee both of those and do quite a bit of the work. But if not for a committee of about 20 people on each one, a lot of the stuff wouldn't be happening.
So don't be afraid to ask for help. Get out in your community, make contacts. And you're obviously selling your community to event planners across the country. But you also kind of do you sell yourself locally to perspective stakeholders and event partners as well to bring them on board. There was a few people that are on our community now that I didn't know, but through local contacts and doing some networking, this person knows this person. All of a sudden, we have a pretty strong committee of 20 people that each have their own kind of specific strengths to bring the table. So just not being afraid to ask for help, and surrounding yourself with the so called experts in their areas was a huge part of us especially in the e-sport side of things.
Adam Stoker: [00:29:57] Great advice, great advice. Okay, I want a pivot a little bit now to you guys, I'm not going to call it an unfair advantage. But you guys have a really good thing in your destination, and that's that you’ve got State Farms Corporate Headquarters within your destination. Tell me about the benefits of having a major corporation like that within your destination.
Matt Hawkins: [00:30:20] Yeah. I mean, they've been a great partner of ours over the years. I think not to speak for them, but I think they like, kind of as they're what they're called their motto has been for years, “Be a good neighbor,” basically. I think they've really enjoyed kind of giving back and supporting local events whether it would be the events that we do with the CVB in Sports Commission or their support of a lot of things that happened in our arena downtown and in other places.
So I think just again being that good neighbor. I think part of it, too, is just helping create and maintain and build a community that's attractive for their potential employees is part of it as well. They certainly have hubs and other markets. But Bloomington-Normal is their main headquarter community. And I think they want to do everything they can to keep it as vibrant and attractive as they can in tourism. Some of our events just kind of add to that piece of the puzzle.
Adam Stoker: [00:31:22] Yeah, that's interesting. Having an organization like that to support and especially with the mantra of be a good neighbor or like a good neighbor State Farm is there. I think that provides a little bit of leverage even for the community to make sure that the State Farm is living up to that promise. I love that they're sponsoring one of your major events and that you guys were able to work together with them. Are there any drawbacks? And obviously you don't want to call them out or anything like that. But is there any challenges the that come with that as you have to approach some of these events? Or maybe it's how many hotel rooms they take up sometimes when during peak season? Or are there any difficulties that come along with having someone like a State Farm in your destination?
Matt Hawkins: [00:32:10] I'll say the benefits far outweigh the challenges, it's not even close. I would say the one negative, and this isn't really even negative. Everybody, myself included, just kind of falls back and says, “We're holding an event. We're going to go at State Farm as sponsor,” thinking that they're going to do it. They have the money to do it, whereas a lot of times it doesn't make sense for you or them to enter into that partnership. So just kind of them being a typical fall back or the first ask for everybody that's doing anything in town is kind of the major drawback, and I'm kind of guilty of that sometimes as well. But no, they've been a great partner and I would have nothing bad to say about them. My State Farm contact actually works in their sponsorship area and sits on our Sports Commission board. And he's been nothing but supportive. And he was actually a Sports Commission board chair for three years a couple years ago, and his expertise in that industry and his experience in the sports sponsorship area was very insightful and helpful. A lot of stuff we do couldn't have happened without their support. So we're very lucky to have them.
Adam Stoker: [00:33:25] Yeah, yeah. Great to have them so involved. Well, Matt, you and I, we talked about a lot of different things we could talk about here on the show. We've talked about a lot today. I always like to boil it down to a take away, And I think we're kind of at the time in the show where I'd really like to give our listeners, man, if there's one thing you take away from this show one thing you want to learn, what is it? What would your one major piece of advice be for anyone listening today?
Matt Hawkins: [00:33:56] Well, again, I guess I'll go back to the e-sports example. I'm not a gamer. I don't know. I'm still learning a lot about the industry in the gaming world, if you will. But I guess it's cliche in a lot of ways, but it's don't be afraid to take a chance on something. As I said, didn't have a clue as to what went into e-sports tournaments or events of any kind. It just took a lot of legwork, making contacts, doing the research, identifying what goes into those types of events. And it's a great feeling coming out of that after having done a couple successful events knowing that you put the work in to create a successful event. Again, no, they're not world beaters in terms of visitors spending and those kind of things. But It’s something that you kind of created from scratch. And it's again kind of your baby that you've seen grow from nothing into something. We think it's pretty significant and will continue to grow.
So again cliché, but if you have an idea that you think you could probably tackle, then just go for it. And then if you're board or your director is on board with it, or even if they're not, give them the reasons why you think it will be successful and why do you think you should tackle it and go for it. So again, that's my two cents, I guess.
Adam Stoker: [00:35:23] That's great. And I kind of want to add just a little bit, too, that that two of the major takeaways for me is, one, when you're going to own an event and operate an event on your own, you got to realize you're playing the long game here. You're building for the future, and it's not an overnight sensation. In 99% of the cases, it takes a ton of work, and it takes years to get there. So that's one is you're playing the long game. But two, the take away for me is imagine the stability if you have multiple events every year and don't have to worry about that event eventually going elsewhere because you own it. The long term stability that can come from owning and operating your own events, in my opinion, has an incredible amount of value, and I think you kind of giving us a little bit of a road map of how to do that today.
Matt Hawkins: [00:36:13] Yeah, I appreciate that. Hopefully, I have. And I'll say to that with that there are some drawbacks in terms of owning and operating your own events is great, you have that control but it also takes a lot of time as well. So the e-sports event was in mid-January, and for the month or two leading up to that, that's almost all I was doing was getting ready for that event. So if you're planning and owning, operating your own events, you're not spending the time selling your community to other event planners that could have the events here, at least not as much as you would normally be in the off-season.
So just keep that in mind, too, is tackling those big ideas is great, but there's going to be some tradeoff there.
Adam Stoker: [00:36:57] Yeah, it’s not you plan it one week and a week later, you're having the event. It's a major time investment. Yeah, great point. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on today. I feel like this has been a great episode with a little different twist than what we normally do especially focused on those events. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge with us today.
Matt Hawkins: [00:37:18] Happy to help. And as I said earlier, if folks out there have any questions about e-sports or otherwise, I'm happy to help them however I can.
Adam Stoker: [00:37:27] Great. Great. Well, thanks so much for your time and we'll talk to you soon, Matt.
Matt Hawkins: [00:37:33] Great. Thanks, Adam.
Adam Stoker: [00:37:34] Well, everyone, this has been another wonderful episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure you go leave a rating or a review on the podcast. We want to make sure that we continue to climb up those charts and become more findable for everybody that's looking. So thanks everybody for tuning in and we'll talk to you next week.
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