Page 62 - AVN Januray 2017

GAYVN
SINFUL SPORTS
Vegas gamble pays off with the world’s largest LGBT sporting event
PLAY BALL! | By Brady Jansen
WHEN IS BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE A GOOD THING? When it results in
one of the most successful LGBT events the community has ever
seen. It all began more than a decade ago when Eric Ryan—born
and raised in Southern California and now a firefighter for 26
years—had a less-than-ideal encounter at a softball tournament.
“They had a lot of challenges that translated into bad customer
service. I left that event thinking, ‘Wow, I could do better than
this.’ The following week, I was traveling to Las Vegas to play in
W
a poker tournament. Driving into town at night, I saw the glow of
stadium lights coming from a sports complex in Las Vegas near the
freeway. A lightbulb went off, and I jumped off the freeway, drove
over to the fields and started looking around.”
Instead of playing in the poker tournament, he spent the next
three days scouting out softball fields, making contacts with all the
different city parks and recreation departments involved—as well
as the Las Vegas tourist office. “After coming home and putting the
pieces of information together, I thought, ‘This could work.’”
“This” turned into the Sin City Shootout, a yearly sports festival
that began in January of 2007 and has become the largest annual
LGBT sporting event in the world.
MY DESIRE IS TO MAKE IT THE BEST
“I took the idea to my local LGBT softball association I was a
part of and said, ‘Hey, let’s do this as a fundraiser for our league.’
EVENT I CAN FOR THE
And they said no way, it’s in another city—let alone another state—
and it would take too much to do.”
ATHLETE, WITH WHAT THEY WANT FOR A FUN WEEKEND FOREFRONT
The thing about Ryan that you need to understand? He never
takes “no” as an answer to a problem in front of him.
“I kept moving forward and said I would do it myself. After
IN MY MIND.
about four months, I had the ball rolling and things in place to
— ERIC RYAN
make it happen: fields, equipment, host hotel and promoting it
to LGBT softball leagues was all in place. My local league then
asked if they can still be a part of the event,” says the tournament
director. “So now I run the event each year as a fundraiser for the
Los Angeles LGBT softball association.”
The 10-year anniversary event will take place January 12-15, and
counts GAYVN, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toyota Financial
Services among its sponsors. The event initially started as just an
LGBT softball tournament.
“The first year, there was about 35 teams and almost double
annually after that,” Ryan says. “Due to field availability, we had to
cap the number of softball teams at 234, which makes it the largest
LGBT softball event in the world. About year three of the softball
tournament, I had friends who played in other LGBT sporting
associations—wrestling, bodybuilding and tennis—tell me, ‘Wow,
we wish our sport had the camaraderie that softball does.’”
That spurred another lightbulb in Ryan’s head.
“Why don’t we do a tournament of their sports alongside
softball? That got the ball rolling, where each year we grew
organically with the demand for other sports wanting to be a part
of the event. With all of our combined buying power and number
of attendees, we were able to get better hotel rates, better deals on
venues and overall make it a better event.”
The 2017 event will showcase 25 different sports with an
estimated 8,500 participants—from basketball, soccer, swimming
and volleyball to arm wrestling, darts, diving and power lifting.
Ryan says that the athletes, fans, family and friends come from
across North America. The Shootout has more than 43 major
metropolitan cities represented, along with many smaller-market
cities. Canada is also represented, with hundreds of athletes from
Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Calgary.
“We truly have very little sponsorship. My desire is to make it
the best event I can for the athlete, with what they want for a fun
weekend forefront in my mind. We are lucky that the city itself
offers hundreds of fun and exciting things to do within steps of any
venue we host events at. This, along with our buying power, affords 62 | AVN.com | 1.17
us the ability to offer official parties and events
that are no cost to the athletes, and luckily we
don’t have to depend on big sponsorships to do
this,” Ryan says. “Of course I would love to have
large sponsors and their support not only for the
monetary benefit to the event, but our attendees
are also a huge market that spends money
and has the disposable income to turn into a
customer for those sponsors.”
Ryan says that the city itself is what has
helped make the event a success: “The glitz and
glamour, an abundance of hotel rooms, lots of
venues to host our nightly parties in and the
space to have all of our sports within just 15 to
20 minutes from each other.”
Ryan has a core group of about six to eight
people that meet year-round to plan the overall
event. Each sport also has a coordinator in charge
of all the aspects their sport encompasses—not
to mention all the help each sport then has under
its individual umbrella (“as we spread out and
add more sports, the volunteer base grows”).
“One of the ways I put this together is I
mentally walk through the event in my head
starting from home. ‘Where do I stay? Event host
hotel, check! How do I get there and get around?
Group rates for cars/travel, check! When packing
my suitcase, what do I need for each night?
Nightly parties, check! How do I get there? Event
shuttles, check! I just run down each day and
what our athletes will be doing or want to do.
That includes building relationships with the
shows in Las Vegas and offering great prices to
our attendees.”
Events this year include the Official Saturday
Night Party at Piranha Nightclub, and the
Official Closing Party on Sunday at Rain
Nightclub.
“Every year from year one, I have a moment
where all the stress and planning of an event
of this scale is an emotional release. Once the
Friday night opening registration party starts, I
kind of find an area where I can stand back and
see the entire venue and have a little emotional
release of tears—that ‘Phew! It’s started and
we are off to the races!’ feeling,” Ryan says. “I
really take it to heart that these thousands upon
thousands of athletes have paid lots of money
to travel here to take place and participate in
something that I—little ol’ me, Eric Ryan—said
was going to happen. So if any part of their
weekend isn’t a good experience for them, it
really hits me hard.”
Like it did the very first year, when Ryan
forgot a key ingredient.
“I had never planned a softball tournament,
so year one I had everything I needed—fields,
umpires, balls and a hotel for everyone to stay
in. Well, oops … I didn’t think about water,
food or Gatorade at the fields. I didn’t have any
type of concessions! This was a big learning
experience, and actually each year I think we
have everything covered and there is always
something that comes up that we didn’t think
about or changed from previous years.”
With the bases now covered, Ryan looks to
hit another grand slam.
In between games at the Sin City Shootout.