As an adult, organizing a sports league for either your fellow busy adults or your children can be a huge undertaking.
Gone are the days of simply walking out into your street after school and rustling up a game with the neighborhood kids — and nowadays, your own kids are likely too busy to do that themselves. If you’re a business owner looking to fill this need, you’re at the added disadvantage of not possessing an existing social network to help you organize an intramural or children’s sports league.
Enter sports league management software. Whether you’re a busy parent trying to wrangle the local 6-year-olds into a soccer league or organizing local singles into a softball league, sports league management software will streamline the process so you can spend more time cheering on your kids or bonding over beers.
Sports league management software contains many features to streamline all the moving parts involved in organizing an amateur sports league. Collecting and maintaining contact information can be a challenge as people join and leave the league, so a main feature of sports league management platforms is keeping that information easily accessible and allowing organizers to send mass emails and/or texts.
Along with maintaining membership lists, collecting payment is always a huge issue and concern. Tracking people down to pay membership dues or registration fees can be uncomfortable all around, but sports league management software often contains a means of collecting payment online. Invariably, that means that people must pay in order to register, eliminating the awkward problem altogether.
It’s not always all fun and games once you have enough registered teams or players; then comes the tricky problem of scheduling games that allow for maximum attendance. The advantage of sports league management software is that players can choose the days they are available and the tool will show the days that work for the majority of players. Even easier, especially for an intramural league, the tool may allow teams to communicate with each other, leading to independently determining the ideal playing time.
The fitness industry is embracing technology, especially with the explosive growth of wearables powered by the internet of things . Members of the fitness industry are beginning to use technology to help grow their businesses; with that comes the creation of software geared toward making the lives of gym owners, personal trainers, studio owners and coaches easier. With the addition of sports league management software, we can include sports league organizers in that list. Charity and intramural tournaments can create a lot of interest and marketing opportunities while also bringing in extra money. Children’s sports leagues can be difficult to manage, so dedicated software eases that burden for both parents and organizers.
Whether you own a gym or just want to introduce your child to sports, a dedicated tool will make your life much easier. Gym management or calendar tools might solve some of the problems associated with starting a sports league, but a sports league management tool will cover all of your bases.
While there are only eight tools in the category at the moment, we’re excited to see growth in this area. If you use a sports league management platform, feel free to leave a review or let us know about any tools we’ve missed.
Listed in alphabetical order, here’s our starting lineup of the most popular sports league management tools:
Image courtesy of Engage Sports
Engage Sports was created by parents who understand the difficulty of organizing team sports; they leveraged their experiences to create a tool to help any sports organizer streamline their processes. With the ability to create a custom website and registration workflow, as well as maintain leaderboards, report scores and schedule games, league organizers can spend less time dealing with the hassles of league organization and more time enjoying their work.
Image courtesy of eSoft Planner
eSoft Planner focuses on membership management and automating tasks such as registration forms and scheduling. With packages dedicated to different sports leagues, including baseball, softball, basketball, swim club, volleyball and more, organizers have a wealth of specific features built for their needs.
Image courtesy of MaxGalaxy
With features specifically built for ice arenas and youth hockey, MaxGalaxy helps organizers manage registrations, scheduling, membership management, locker rental, digital signage and more. The modular setup allows users to build a solution unique to their needs, free of bloated features they find unhelpful or useless.
Image courtesy of Sportlyzer
Sportlyzer focuses on youth sport leagues at both the team level and the individual athlete level. Features such as membership management, calendars, mass communication, training plans, attendance tracking and more enable coaches and organizers to focus on their teams.
Image courtesy of Sports Engine
Sports Engine helps league organizers build custom websites, register members, communicate with teams, schedule games and tournaments, raise funds and more. Flexible features allow the tool to be used by any team from the amateur to professional level.
Image courtesy of SquadFusion
Features such as collecting payments, scheduling events, custom websites and analytics allows league organizers the freedom to focus on their teams. SquadFusion also helps with member communication and is ideal for both sports clubs and leagues.
Image courtesy of Team Sideline
Team Sideline is a customizable tool that provides automated scheduling, text and email communications with members, registration, and custom website features. In addition, Team Sideline offers mobile apps, automatic game scoring, facility reservation and volunteer management.
Image courtesy of TeamSnap
With multiple features built for managing a team or league, TeamSnap allows users to collect registration fees, schedule games and tournaments, communicate with an entire team or league, and use a mobile app to easily do all this on the go. With a variety of features, TeamSnap can be used by clubs, leagues, teams or any other sports organization.
“I like how the app keeps the team organized. It is helpful to see the roster and contact info for teammates. Also, the group chat is a nice alternative to group emails and text messages, which are hard to keep track of. Best of all is the calendar and availability functions which help all users.” — TeamSnap review by a user in eLearning
While this category is currently small, sports league management is part of a growing fitness software industry. Sports are a major pastime for people of all ages, and sometimes the largest barrier is figuring out how to be organized. Luckily, sports league management software can make it easy to organize, schedule and maintain a team or league so you can enjoy playing the sport you love. Help us grow this category by writing a review of the sports league management software that you use and don’t see here or writing a review for a product already in this category!
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