Should your club host a football tournament?

What you are actually taking on

Start here. Hosting is not the same as entering.

FA safeguarding guidance (opens in a new tab) puts it plainly: affiliated clubs and leagues organising or hosting football activities have a legal duty to take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which are a reasonably foreseeable risk. On the day, visiting children, their parents and their coaches are on your site because you invited them.

In practice that means a safeguarding risk assessment, which the FA publishes guidance and a template for. It is worth downloading before you decide rather than after, because reading it is the fastest way to understand the size of the job. The template asks you to name a club lead for the event, a second adult club official and a designated safeguarding person, and to record emergency procedures including where the nearest defibrillator is, who fetches it, how an ambulance gets in, and the route from pitch to ambulance.

That paperwork is not only good practice. The current Competition Portal requires the safeguarding declaration to be reviewed and adopted, and a risk assessment to be uploaded, before the application is submitted to the County FA for review. The national portal currently marks accounts, AGM minutes and team uploads as optional, but your County FA can still ask for additional information or documents. So the risk assessment is part of getting permission to run the event, not something to do afterwards.

Naming a safeguarding person on a form is the easy half. The harder question is the one visiting families will actually have: if something happens to my child today, who do I find and how? The FA template asks how children and parents are told who to contact and how to raise a concern, so decide early how you will make that visible on the day, whether that is signage, the entry pack, a briefing to managers, or all three.

The same template asks you to think about accessible parking, players with additional needs and emergency contact details for participants. Visiting teams may include children whose medical, accessibility or additional needs you do not know in advance, which is the difference between running your own session and hosting.

None of that is a reason not to host. It is the reason to decide with your eyes open.

For the wider safeguarding picture, see our guide to safeguarding in grassroots football.

What you need in place before you say yes

• Pitches, and enough of them for the age groups and format you have in mind, on a surface that will take a full day.
• Toilets, and a plan for who supervises access to them.
• Parking, a drop-off arrangement and a way of keeping cars away from children walking to pitches. The FA template lists site boundaries, public access and roads as areas to assess.
• Insurance. FA guidance states that clubs must ensure the relevant cover, public liability and personal accident, is in place, and says to contact your County FA with cover queries. Do that before you commit, not after.
• Sanction. Tournament applications run through the FA's Competition Portal (opens in a new tab) and are then submitted to the relevant County FA for review. County FAs can set their own lead times, fees and supporting requirements, so check yours before you settle a date.
• First aid provision and a completed medical emergency action plan.
• Enough volunteers, both on the day and in the weeks beforehand.

The volunteer question, honestly

Pitches are easy to count. Volunteers are not. Put a name beside every important job before the committee commits. A tournament needs bodies on the day and a smaller group doing the work for weeks beforehand: entries, schedule, referees, catering, car parking, pitch marking, and somebody answering emails from managers.

Before you commit, get names against the jobs rather than a show of hands at a committee meeting. If the same three people who run everything else at the club are the only names on the list, that is your answer, and it is better to know before the club commits.

Will it make money?

We do not publish figures for what a tournament costs or raises, because it depends on your pitches, your format, your area and what you already own. What we can do is show you how to work it out.

What it costs you

• Anything you have to hire rather than own: pitches, portable toilets, goals, a marquee, a generator.
• Referees, if you are appointing them.
• Trophies and medals.
• Sanction and any associated fees.
• Stock for catering, if you are running it.
• Printing, signage and pitch marking.

What comes in

• Entry fees.
• Catering and refreshments, if you are running them.
• A raffle, tombola or similar.

If catering or a raffle forms part of the plan, check the separate rules before putting that income into your budget. Food at community or fundraising events (opens in a new tab) must be safe and may require local-authority registration. An incidental raffle or tombola run alongside the event can be licence-free, but only if the Gambling Commission's conditions (opens in a new tab) are met.

• Programme or pitchside advertising, if you have a sponsor.

The number that decides it

Work out how many teams you need to cover your fixed costs, then ask honestly whether you can get that many. If the break-even number is close to the maximum your pitches can hold, the day has no margin for late withdrawals or weather disruption. That is the calculation, and it is worth doing before you set a date.

Run the cancellation calculation too

The sum above works out a successful day. Do the other one as well. If bad weather makes the venue unusable, what have you already committed to and cannot recover, what have you told teams about refunds, and can the club absorb the difference?

That answer should shape your refund terms, and it is much easier to set them before you take an entry fee than to negotiate them the night before. If the club cannot absorb a cancellation, that is a real finding, and it may point towards a smaller first event rather than none at all.

If the shortfall is in equipment rather than running costs, that is a different problem with a different solution, and our funding guide covers how to find and assess a grant.

Photography: settle this before entries open

A tournament brings cameras. FA guidance (opens in a new tab) draws a line between two different things, and the distinction matters for what you have to organise.

General photography of the event

For wide-angle, general photographs and film of the event, the site and any opening or closing ceremony, the FA says it is usually not reasonable, practical or proportionate to get consent for every participating child, or to stop that kind of photography because a small number of parents object. The FA says organisers should make clear to participants and parents in advance that these images will be taken, and explain what they are for. Note what that covers: taking general event images. Whether an identifiable image of a player can then be published is a separate question, dealt with next.

Official photographers, close-ups and anything published

This is where the work is. The FA says clubs should hold written parental consent before using a player's photograph or footage in the public domain. And where a child should not be photographed close-up, it expects organisers to give photographers a workable way of knowing who that is, suggesting a recognisable badge, sticker or wristband, or a system for photographers to check with the organiser or the team manager.

If you commission an official photographer, there is more to settle than consent. The FA says they should be briefed on what is appropriate, wear identification, know where photography is prohibited - including toilets, changing and first-aid areas - and not have unsupervised access to children or run one-to-one photo or filming sessions.

That last point is the one that decides whether this is manageable. On the day, with visiting teams you have never met, nobody can tell by looking. It has to be arranged before anyone arrives.

If you are hiring a venue, check its photography policy before you publish your arrangements. On private land the facility owner can set whether photography and filming are permitted at all.

Build it into your entry process

A practical way to handle it at entry rather than at the gate. Say in your entry information whether official photography or filming is planned and how images may be used. Then ask each entering team to confirm two things.

• A declaration from the team manager: that parents and carers have been told about the tournament's photography and filming arrangements, that any written consent needed for the organiser's intended publication or use of player images has been obtained, and that they will tell the organiser if any player should not be the subject of close-up official photography or filming.
• A simple private yes or no: does your team include any player who should not be the subject of close-up official photography or filming?

A yes does not require the manager to tell you why. It tells you to agree a discreet identification arrangement with them before play starts, of the kind the FA suggests: a badge, a wristband, or a manager-check system. This workflow is our recommendation built on the guidance, not an FA form or rule, and it gives you a practical way to meet the expectation that photographers can identify children who should not be photographed close-up.

If the answer is not this year

Hosting is not all or nothing. A club that is not ready for a large multi-age-group tournament can run something smaller and learn on it.

• One or two age groups rather than the whole club.
• A festival format rather than a competitive tournament, particularly at the younger ages.
• A single morning rather than a full day.
• Co-hosting with a neighbouring club that has pitches you do not.

The requirements above still apply, but the scale of them changes, and you find out what your club can actually deliver before inviting visiting teams.

Before your committee says yes

If you can answer these, you are ready to decide. If you cannot answer several of them, you have your answer for this year.

Elsewhere in the UK

Sanction, insurance and safeguarding requirements are set separately in each nation. Start with the association that covers you.

• England: the Football Association and your County FA.
• Scotland: the Scottish Football Association.
• Wales: the Football Association of Wales.
• Northern Ireland: the Irish Football Association.

Next step

If you are minded to go ahead, settle the sanction route next, because it sets the timetable for the rest of the planning. Our next guide covers the Competition Portal, the County FA review and the local lead times to check before you publish a firm date.

Once the tournament is sanctioned and the date is firm, you can list it free on FindMeFootball so teams can find it by age group, date and location.