Looking to boost player engagement and drive more revenue? Hosting local contests, tournaments, and promotions is a surefire way to increase excitement, loyalty, and gameplay at your locations. Whether online or offline, Golden Tee Golf and Silver Strike Bowling are built for friendly competition—giving your players a reason to return and your cashbox a steady boost.
Running promotions doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as a weekly high score prize or as structured as a full-fledged league with multiple teams. The key is creating a fun, competitive atmosphere that keeps players engaged.
Why Run Contests?
If you already manage dart or pool leagues, you know the value of keeping players invested in your location. IT games offer the same benefits with even more flexibility—whether through structured leagues or casual in-house competitions.
Here’s why contests make sense:
✅ Boost player retention – Keep players coming back week after week.
✅ Increase revenue – More competition means more gameplay and higher earnings.
✅ Low effort, high reward – IT provides free software solutions to simplify your promotions and maximize profits.
✅ Customizable formats – Adapt contests to fit your location’s needs with minimal disruption.
How to Get Started
A successful promotion starts with a little planning and the right tools. Use the resources below to explore different formats, find inspiration, and set up contests that work for your location.
Planning a Contest?
Before launching a contest, it’s essential to define your goals, expectations, and budget. These factors will shape your approach and ensure a successful promotion that keeps players engaged and maximizes your revenue.
Determine Your Contest Goals
Ask yourself: What do I want to achieve?
✅ Reward top players – Recognize the best of the best.
✅ Reward a wide range of players – Encourage participation from all skill levels.
✅ Increase gameplay – Drive more players to engage with your machines.
✅ Host a live, one-day event – Create excitement with an in-person competition.
✅ Run an online contest over time – Keep players returning regularly.
✅ Combine both – Run an online qualifier with a major in-person finale.
Decide Your Level of Involvement
How hands-on do you want to be?
🎯 Fully involved – Actively manage and promote the event.
🎯 Hands-off approach – Let the contest run with minimal effort.
What type of prizes and budget are you considering?
💰 Big prizes – Attract serious competitors.
💰 Many smaller prizes – Keep excitement high and reward more players.
💰 Decent budget – Invest in a high-impact promotion.
💰 Low-cost approach – Keep expenses minimal while maximizing engagement.
💰 Player-funded contest – Have participants contribute to the prize pool.
Key Elements for a Successful Promotion
No matter what format you choose, every great contest includes:
📌 Rules & Guidelines – Set clear expectations for players.
🎁 Prizes & Incentives – Offer rewards that excite and motivate participants.
📢 Promotion & Advertising – Spread the word to maximize participation.
Leverage Your Locations for More Success
Your venues can play a major role in helping your contest succeed. Engaging with location owners and managers can:
✔️ Increase awareness – More visibility means more participants.
✔️ Offset costs – Some locations may be willing to sponsor prizes or promotions.
✔️ Boost on-site revenue – More players mean more spending at the location.
Don’t hesitate to collaborate—when your contest thrives, everyone wins!
No matter what type of promotion you run, every contest needs clear rules, exciting prizes, and effective advertising. Take the time to organize these details in advance and spread the word to both your customers and participating locations.
Your venues play a key role in making your contest a success. Engaging with location owners and managers can:
✔️ Help promote the contest and attract more players.
✔️ Assist with prizes or sponsorships to lower costs.
✔️ Increase on-site spending, benefiting both you and the location.
Every promotion, big or small, will require prizes. The most obvious goal is to generate additional game play to cover the cost of prizes, but you must be prepared to commit to and award a prize budget in advance. Prizes can come in many forms, including cash, merchandise, golden tee gift cards, or an entry into a live event.
Complete and comprehensive rules, posted in advance, are the most important thing you can do to keep your contest running smoothly and fairly. A variety of poster templates and art images are available on itsgames.com. Import these images into your word processor program and add your text. Printed 8 ½ x 11 flyers work well at the game and around the bar.
Send your information to IT for additional advertising. Incredible Technologies will be happy to post your information on their websites for extra exposure.
The success of your contest starts with strong advertising. The most important step? Posting clear and complete rules in advance. This keeps everything fair, organized, and hassle-free.
✅ Use available resources – Visit itsgames.com for poster templates and artwork.
✅ Customize flyers – Import images into your word processor, add text, and print 8.5” x 11” flyers to post near games and around the bar.
✅ Get extra exposure – Submit your contest details to Incredible Technologies, and they’ll promote it on their official websites.
Choose the Right Contest for Your Goals
Finding the perfect contest format depends on your goals, player base, and available resources. Whether you’re looking for a simple in-house contest or a larger-scale online tournament, there’s a contest type that fits your needs.
Some contests can be as easy as putting up a poster announcing a small prize for the player who has the highest score on the game each week, or is the first to reach some kind of milestone. Examples are a free sandwich coupon to the player with the highest score of the week, or $300 to the first player to get a 300 game on Silver Strike Bowling. These types of contests do not require a lot of manpower, and run on their own. They generally appeal to the “regulars” in a location, and may not entice new players to participate.
This type of contest is great for attracting play to your machines on slow nights. Sign up a group of 8 to 16 players and host a single-elimination bracketed contest, or a Closest to the Pin contest on Golden Tee. Be sure to have enough prizes for all participants, so everyone is a winner!
Just like pool and darts, the skill-based nature of IT games are perfect for long-term league play. Modify your current league structure to sign up teams that meet on a weekly basis. Set a schedule for travelling leagues to involve your entire route. Ask players to use their Player Cards so you can track final scores with the online Score-IT software if necessary. Be sure your rules and prizes are well defined so there are minimal conflicts. Plan a final event to award trophies and have some fun!
Advertise and organize an open invitational event that spans a weekend. Include an entry fee for participants, that is used to partially fund the prize pool. Players can pay to play to cover expenses, such as bringing in more machines to play on during the event. Use Locked Conditions Cards (supplied by IT) during qualifying rounds on Golden Tee LIVE machines, so everyone plays on the same course with the same conditions. Then set up bracketed head-to-head matches for the players who make the cut, to determine the winners.
Your online IT games allow you to run contests without you having to be present at the location. Use the online Score IT software to track game play from your online machines. Score IT offers dozens of game criteria to base your contest, from best score to most birdies or spare pickups. Make sure you consider your goals when choosing the contest type. Do you want to reward your best players, attract new players, maximize games played, or somewhere in between? Once you decide your objectives you can tailor a contest that will achieve those goals. Post messages and leaderboards right on your games throughout your contest to keep players engaged and informed. Qualify finalists for a live event, or simply have a final party to award prizes and thank your players in person. Host it at the location with the most play, to keep your accounts involved.
Popular Online Score-IT Contest Formats
The online Score-IT software offers a wide variety of criteria to rank players. Below are some of the most common and effective criteria to choose for your contest. Be sure the criteria you choose matches your goals and expectations for your promotion.
Formats that work well for all skill levels:
- Birdies or Better
- Most Great Shot Points
- Most Games Played
Formats that promote skill play:
- Best Score
- Best Average Score
- Most Holes in One
Helpful Tips:
- Choose your start and end dates wisely. Select 5:00 AM as your start and times, to make sure all late night plays are counted. Leave room to get the word out before starting your contest. Don’t make your contest too long. Good or frequent players may discourage others if they get too far ahead too quickly.
- Choose your main criteria, as well as at least two tiebreakers. Great Shot Points, Golden Tee Points and Rounds Played make good tiebreakers.
- Make sure the participating locations are selected, and your players are aware of where to play.
- Select all courses and all online game types. Unless your rules are very specific, limiting your contest may result in player confusion. Note that OFFLINE plays (without using an ID card) are not counted.
- Sort your leaderboard by Best to Worst. Experiment with the other sorting options to see where your players are playing and how many games they played, but don’t use this information as your public results.
- Count completed games only. Partial games can affect your results, especially if using handicaps.
- Consider a minimum number of games to be played before being counted on the leaderboard. This works well with average score contests. If this is chosen be sure to include it in your rules.
- Encourage players to check in with the same ID every time they play. Combining play from multiple IDs is not available.
- Consider running results and sending leaderboards at least 3 times during the event. One early on, one at the halfway point and one close to the end will add excitement to the participants and help drive more play.