When we set out to create a marketplace for sports facilities, we'd always envisioned the glitzy search-results page of Deliveroo, AirBnb, or BorrowMyDoggy - but for sports facilities.

But in practice, that wasn't quite the case.

Let's take the example of facility owners who want to showcase their facility through photography.

Chances are they're standing pitch- or court-side looking at a completely indiscernible patch of (hopefully) green grass, perhaps some white-lines in the foreground and a few players kicking about in the distance. There's no real idea of scale, quality, surroundings, or amenities.

What you end up with is a search-results page of nearly identical patches of grass. Prospective bookers cannot quickly differentiate between the facilities on offer. It's also difficult for them to get the sense that they'd want to play there - they cannot picture themselves pinging in that 30 yard screamer.

To solve this problem, and to give our users a richer marketplace experience, we took the advice of the well-versed mantra of "Do things that don't scale", and from an anecdotal turning point for AirBnb, in particular.

Before becoming the behemoth it is today, AirBnb was having to get by through selling branded cereal boxes for the 2008 US-election: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s. Early on, the team was not getting much traction in New York, so they flew out and booked rooms with two-dozen hosts to learn why. Users, they found, had no idea how to present their listings. “The photos were really bad,” says Joe Gebbia, cofounder of AirBnb, “People were using camera phones and taking Craigslist-quality pictures. Surprise! No one was booking because you couldn’t see what you were paying for.”

They rented a $5,000 camera and snapped high-resolution photos of as many New York host apartments as they could. Bookings soared. By month’s end, revenue had doubled in the city, and they had achieved the fabled "hockey-stick".

So a fully-specced, high-end SLR camera was all that was required to spruce up Pitchbooking's marketplace, right?

Not quite. You're still left with that bland, pitch-side vantage point. But it did give us an idea.

We figured that aerial snaps of a facility are much more visually impressive than pitch-side ones. Users can quickly get a high-level (literally) view of the facility: they see the scale, the pitch quality, context of surroundings, and what amenities might be available such as dug-outs, changing rooms, or floodlights. It's also much more alluring for prospective bookers to click on compared to a pitch-side snap.

Whilst up in the air, we also take the chance to record some of those sweeping, panoramic fly-bys currently filing up every drone-pilot enthusiast's hard-drive. Add background music and some explanatory text, and you have visually engaging video content for facility owners to share through their own social media channels.

It's early days, but we've seen click-throughs to these facilities peak above all others on the marketplace. Maybe aerial photos do help players picture themselves pinging in that 30 yard screamer after all.

If you're a facility owner looking to showcase and improve the marketing of your venue, then have a look at what we can offer at Pitchbooking.