Tourney Direct
The forty people you have to pay before a whistle blows.
Kate Wellner
Founder
- Founder
- Kate Wellner; enterprise product at the Red Cross, Oracle and AT&T
- Based in
- Granger, Indiana
- In 2025
- 275-plus events and $2 million-plus paid to event staff, by the company's count
- Built for
- Tournament and event operators
- Website
- tourneydirect.com
What it is
Staffing and payroll for the whole tournament crew, not just the officials: referees and umpires, scorekeepers, gate and parking staff, trainers and collegiate coaches, in one system. Recruiting, assignments and GPS-verified check-in, W-9s at signup, direct deposit within 48 hours and 1099s generated and filed in January, with an AI operations manager named Teddy handling availability, offers and reminders by text, because a referee's only computer is usually a phone. Kate Wellner spent nearly two decades in enterprise product at the American Red Cross, Oracle and AT&T before taking over her husband's tournament-staffing side business in South Bend and rebuilding it. The company says it paid more than $2 million to event staff across 275-plus events in 2025, with Prime Time Lacrosse and the IMLCA among its customers.
Why it earns the pick
Every tournament director rebuilds the same forty-person workforce every spring and reconciles it every January. If your event still runs on paper checks and a spreadsheet of who worked what, this is the one system that covers the crew end to end, tax forms included.
Links
Event and payment figures are Tourney Direct's own.
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