I have been running a beer pong tournament every weekend for the past two years. How I run the event has significantly evolved over time and I thought I would post my recommendations on how to run an efficient beer pong tournament.
Make sure you collect at least $5 from every team so there is a prize pool. People lose interest in tournaments very easily if there isn’t some type of tangible prize on the line. How you divy up the prize pool is really up to you, although I like to keep it simple and just award 70% of the prize pool to the winner and 30% to the runner up.
Play with water in the cups. People are going to complain, they are going to say things like “uhhhh I thought this was beer pong”. This rule will make your life so much easier because you won’t have to worry about changing out the cups in between each game. When you play with BYOB rules, people bring different kinds of beer, they want to clean the cups out in between each game, it becomes a big hassle. If people want to drink while they play, then by all means let them, they just can’t pour the alcohol into the cups.
Get some professional beer pong tables. Most of the good ones on the internet fold up, so you can bust out a few regulation sized beer pong tables when it is time to play and then simply put them away when you are done. There are a few sites out there where you can buy tables but I have always purchased from www.beer-pong-table.net and I have never had an issue with their tables.
If you are playing an elimination style bracket, make it double elimination instead of single elimination. You want some bad teams to come out and play, but they won’t come out week after week if they just get knocked out in the first game every time they show up. You want the format to allow everyone to have a good time, so giving every team two chances to advance instead of one will really make your tournament more enjoyable for all those involved.
