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For some golf events, there is more demand to play than available slots. This is common for “play days” at associations and member/guest and member/member events at clubs. Historically, these events have been managed in a variety of ways:
First-come, first-served: This first-come, first-served method is easiest to implement but places the greatest “hassle” on the golfer. TM Club Premium (TM) has supported registration and registration with a waitlist for many years. For more details on registration with a waitlist, Click Here.
Simple Lottery: Golfers can register for an event, but everyone who registers goes into a pending pool, and the event manager determines who will be registered for the event. Typically, the admitted golfers are chosen randomly from among the list of registered golfers, like pulling names from a hat. TM has supported pending registration with the ability for managers to randomly select winners for many years. Oftentimes, when a club refers to a “lottery,” they refer to this mode of random selection from a list of entrants. For more details on registration with a pending list, Click Here.
Prioritized Lottery (Based on Prior Participation): Golfers are assigned priority based on what events they have played in previously from a defined list (e.g., last two member/guest events). This usually involves a good deal of manual effort on the part of the event manager. For example, golfers who have not played in the last two member/guests have first priority, followed by golfers who have played in just one of the previous two events, followed by golfers who have played in both of the prior two events.
Lotteries based on prior play are usually considered the fairest of the methods above, and TM provides complete support for this kind of “prior history” lottery. More details and links to supporting article can be found below.
Lottery Management:
To support a lottery for one or more future events, a manager first creates a “multi-event series” to declare which events should be considered when determining golfer priority. This is simply a matter of selecting past and future events from a drop-down list. While multi-event series are created with a straightforward user flow, there are two types of series worth noting:
Several events with similar settings (Member Play Days): Consider member play days at an association or a club. For an association, there might be a dozen days when the association has reserved tee times at local clubs at the beginning of the season. This multi-event series is created at the start of the season. Creating a multi-event series makes it very easy to create a set of events with just one statement of parameters. At this point, all events are in the future, and the goal is to provide fairness as to how many of these 12 events any member can play in, based on how many they have already played in. For event 2, golfers who played in event 1 have a lower priority than players who did not play in event 1. For event 7, players will be grouped based on how many events, 1 through 6, they played in, with golfers who played in the most events having the lowest priority. Think of golfers being grouped into priority classes based on prior activity (like boarding classes for boarding a flight). The manager can then decide who to invite to register for the actual event. TM does not automate the selection (taking judgment away from the manager) but makes it easy for the manager to select golfers or groups of golfers to move to the “Invitation List”.
Individual events with high demand (Member/Guest Events): Now consider a Spring member/guest, where we want to prioritize members who did not play in last year’s spring or fall member/guest. In this case, the multi-event series has three entries, two from the past and one for the future member/guest. The list could also have four entries – two for last year’s events and two for the upcoming spring and fall events. For the spring event, priority is based on how many times a golfer played in last year’s member/guests, but for the fall member/guest, priority is based on play last year and the spring member/guest.
With a multi-event series, the manager specifies how a lottery is to be managed for those events in the future (when registration opens and closes, etc.), and in the past (which events determine priority for future events).
It is very important to understand the stages of a lottery event:
When a lottery event opens for entries, golfers can enter the lottery. This note indicates that a golfer wants to be considered for registration in the event. This is very similar to the pending waitlist already supported by TM. Importantly, a golfer can enter and indicate how many other members or guests would be included in their registration (e.g., three other players for a play day or a guest for a member/guest).
The manager can determine who should be invited when the entry period ends for a lottery event. This could be as simple as including those with the highest priority. Still, the manager ultimately has control over this aspect of the process, as there may be a legitimate reason to invite someone of lower priority. A manager promotes golfers to the Invitation List to indicate who should be invited to register for the event.
Golfers on the Invitation List will receive emails informing them that they are eligible to register for the event, and the email will indicate how many days they have to respond. If a golfer responds positively, they are placed on the event roster and are registered for the event (along with others he included in the lottery registration). If the golfer responds negatively or does not respond in the indicated timeframe, the manager is informed and can promote another golfer to the Invitation List. This process will continue until the player roster is filled.
There are many details in managing a lottery, but the basic steps are straightforward.
The manager creates events for the season, creates a multi-event series, and then adds prior events that determine priority and future events with lotteries.
When entries for a lottery open, golfers can enter the lottery.
When lottery registration entries close, managers assign priority groups and lottery numbers to lottery entries. Then promote golfers from the lottery to the Invitation List based on priorities assigned. Note: Managers have complete control over who is promoted to the Invitation List.
Invited golfers receive invitations via email and can accept or decline the invitation. Since some golfers will decline or not respond, you can continue to promote golfers to the Invitation List until the event is filled.
Related Articles:
Below are a few articles that provide in-depth details about how to manage lotteries:
Below are a few guides that provide step-by-step directions for setting up lotteries for specific types of events:
Club Event (e.g., Member/Guest, Member/Member, etc.): A detailed description of creating a lottery for an event(s) based on participation in past events.
(Coming Soon) Play Days (e.g., association "play days" or weekly club events): A detailed description of creating a “play day” lottery where all events start in the future.