How to Make an Announcer Love Your League Part 1

I have already spoken a few times about how you can be a great announcer, but I wan't to talk a bit about how leagues can help to keep your announcing great.

One of the steps in my Announcing 101 guide refers to preparation.  That's right folks, you can't often expect to turn up on the day and wing it.  Doing this can lead to problems or lots of "And that is number 88....errrr...um...Kalamity James!" style comments while you fumble for the programme page or squint to read the name from a shirt as they disappear at 100mph.

So, how can you as a host league prepare announcers for your bouts?  Simple, make up an announcer pack.

Announcer pack you say Sven.  That sounds funky, what is it?

The announcer pack is all the info that an announcer will need to hand on the day.  This includes but is not limited to:

Player rosters - Number, Name and if it is pronounced a certain way the phonetic spelling of it.  This is especially important if there is a clever pun hidden away there. Yes, we know that rosters change but it is easier to make a couple of changes on the morning of the bout then trying to learn an entire team(unless you're Bulldog who can memorise an entire tournament roster it seems...).

Player/Team Facts - Have you played this opponent before?  Is this a players first/last game for this team?  Has a player won an award recently?  The sort of things that announcers use to fill in moments of silence, or to stop the play by play becoming samey. Obviously don't give away big game changing tactical stuff, like "skater x has recently come back from knee surgery and is worried about falling on that side"...

Running order - Timings, Timings, Timings.  When do the bouts start? How long is Half Time?  Who/what is the half time entertainment?  Who is skating out first?  If it is a tournament structure, what is the format?

Sponsor messages - Don't just hand us a programme.  Don't just give us a list of names.  For any sponsor messages you should be providing them as the following example:


Sponsor Name:  Rice Pudding World
Sponsor Level: Whole event
Sponsor Details:  Rice Pudding World is the home of rice pudding and has tirelessly gathered historical samples from all over Wiltshire.
Sponsor Messages:  "Rice Pudding World. Come for the History, Stay for the Rice Pudding", "Rice Pudding World. MMMMM Rice Pudding".

Some leagues/events will prioritise sponsors or assign a frequency to them.  If you're one of these then specify it.  Remember to include any charity messages in the sponsor details.  Remember that the sponsors will help you with this.  It's their message that you're spreading afterall and the last thing you want is an announcer crushing a sponsorship deal you've spent ages building, just because they say the wrong thing at the wrong time*.

Raffle Details - We need to know a few key things here:
Where can people buy the tickets?
How much are they?
What are the prizes?
When will it be drawn/announced?

List of Vendors/Stalls - If you have merch for sale or other vendors present, then give a list to the announcers.  The can give them a shout out as the event progresses.

Other announcements - We also need to know the details of anything else to be announced throughout the event. Is there an afterparty and where is it? When is the next home bout?

When should you be getting the info to the announcers?
I like to see the rosters at least couple of days in advance of a double header.  For a bigger event I prefer the rosters a bit further in advance.  For Track Queens: Battle Royal in Berlin which was a 10 team tournament we had all of the rosters 2 weeks in advance which was a perfect amount of time to be able to get familiar with the teams.

Other information can be the day before or even on the day of the event as long as it is nicely formatted and easily readable.  The amount of times I have found myself at a bout juggling scraps of paper with various bits of info scrawled on them doesn't bear thinking about.

You should also make sure that on the day the announcers know who to go to if they need information.

I will finish off by saying that all of the above does not absolve the announcer the responsibility of doing a bit of homework.  There are tons of websites dedicated to tracking scores, or team rankings(although be sure to state which source you're using if you discuss rankings on the mic as they often differ).  When we arrived in Berlin for Track Queens, we were handed an amazing announcer pack, but because all of the announcers had also done homework we were able to compare some notes on the teams, players and their previous encounters and it gave us more ammo for the commentary.


*While I'm on the subject of Sponsor messages, A word to the announcers.  Have fun with the sponsor messages but don't go overboard.  Working Track Queens we had 3 x 10 hours days of announcing and a list of sponsors to mention. The last thing we wanted was for the messages to start sounding laboured and dull, and so we would try and segue into them in interesting ways. The important part is to make sure that you never make fun of the sponsors themselves as this can lead to unhappy people.