Sportmeets: fun and games just a scroll away

The stress of organising recreational sporting activities for enthusiasts of everything from badminton to 5-a-side football is being red carded. Sportmeets, a new online service, aims to help more people play and engage in recreational sports.

It was founded by two Slovak friends and sports enthusiasts who met during their studies at the University of Glasgow. Their experience with running the university volleyball club and participating in a variety of sports on campus made them realize the amount of work and time that club officers and sports group organisers have to devote to arranging games and sporting events. The hassle that comes with inefficient communication, late cancellations and sharing of pitch booking fees will be well familiar to anyone who has been involved in grassroots sport.

The online application therefore provides a number of innovative and practical tools designed to help the group organisers, coaches or captains, such as game invitations and RSVPing via text messages, tracking of debts and receiving of payments online, or attendance lists updated in real time. It will be useful for a group of friends that play football in the park as well as for established clubs and teams playing in amateur or university leagues.

For 1-on-1 sports like tennis, badminton and squash, groups of friends or colleagues as well as official clubs can start and compete in engaging ladder competitions, in which updates of ranking and recording of results are automatic.

Sportmeets also helps individuals discover and get involved in the local recreational sport. Players can explore what is happening nearby and find suitable groups, teams and clubs to join, or sporting partners to play against.

Rather than being purely practical, Sportmeets aims to make sports more fun both on-line and off-line. The users earn achievement badges to motivate themselves, improve their skills and show off their sporting successes. And, of course, all scheduled events, match results, rankings or badges can easily be shared with friends on Facebook and Twitter.


Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com