The basics: Who we are and our aim
We at Pitchbooking – Chris, Fearghal and Shea – are passionate about local sport, whether that means evening knockabouts or competitive matches.
As keen footballers – certainly more keen than skilled, few things give us more pleasure during the week than meeting up with friends for kickabouts and matches.
Years of touring the facilities in our hometown – Lurgan, Northern Ireland – have given us our fair share of insight into pitch access on a local level, and we know the situation is far from ideal. For sports participation to be high, two things need to come together: high quality and ease of access. A few small obstacles are often all that is needed to keep us indoors; the reality is that most people don’t have an hour to spend trying to organise a game of 5-a-side, and no-one enjoys hacking away in a space that just isn’t suitable.
Unfortunately, from a player’s point of view, convenient, high-quality facilities are all too often hard to find. Whether it’s a drive across town or a painful booking procedure, something tends to stand in the way of an easy game.
For managers, on the other hand, pitch management strains resources. Organisations may well have booking systems in place, but they often can’t afford to optimise and integrate these systems in the way needed to open their pitches to the widest public possible. For smaller organisations such as local sports clubs, whose administration may well be volunteer-driven, managing facilities efficiently is a huge challenge. Booking systems, if they exist at all, are likely to be inefficient and unreliable, frustrating managers and users alike.
The administrative problems that come with pitch management mean that good facilities across the country are falling far short of their use potential. It’s not unusual,for an excellent pitch in a highly populated area to stand relatively unused.
The health of clubs and their facilities and the level of local sports participation are organically linked. The more convenient facilities we have available to us, the more we play. In turn, the revenue from renting out facilities allows clubs to develop and offer more opportunities to people in their local area. This same organic link can lead to growth or decline in the frequency and quality of sports participation in a given community.
Having experienced the problems of pitchbooking from both sides, we at Pitchbooking finally decided to get together and do something about it.
Our aim is straightforward: we want it to be as easy as possible for people to get out and play sport in their local area.
To achieve this aim, we’ve created a user-friendly on-line platform, allowing sportspeople to locate and book convenient, suitable facilities, all with a few clicks and in a matter of minutes.
Below, we look in a little more detail at the challenges facing potential players and managers of sports facilities and the solutions we offer.
The specifics: problems and the solutions we offer
For players
The problem
If you enjoy sports in your local community, it’s likely you’ll have been frustrated by obscure and unreliable booking procedures.
Most venues, provided you can uncover their booking procedures in the first place, require their own combination of phone calls, on-line accounts, visits and/or payment methods.
It’s a familiar story. After repeated phone calls, you reach a volunteer who regrets to inform you that you’ll need to send in an application form by post before you can be given access. A different attempt leads you to kind receptionist who lets you know that all bookings are taken by card over the phone a month in advance. In any case, you’re not going to be dusting off your kit any time soon. You finally do get something arranged, only to show up and find the pitch has been double booked.
This world of confusing, time-consuming booking systems limits sports participation. We need room for spontaneity if we are to fit sports in around our busy lives. When we arrive at a facility, we need to be absolutely sure we’ll actually be able to get on and play at the right time. Instead, pitches create anxiety; we put in time making contacts and ticking boxes so that we can play and then cross out fingers that it all works out on the day.
Our solution
Pitchbooking offers a simple platform on which you can locate a wide range of sports facilities in your area, filtering results to meet your specific needs. Each facility is listed under a clear profile which includes pictures, availability and any useful information regarding parking, access and so forth.
Click on a facility to make sure it’s suitable and see all available timeslots. All that is left to do is select the best timeslot(s) for you, confirm your booking using a secure, up-to-date method of payment, turn up and play. This end-to-end process takes no more than a couple of minutes and is available 24/7.
The Pitchbooking platform allows you to make a booking whenever you feel like it, wherever there is availability. Using our simple, integrated service, a few clicks are all you need to turn the impulse to play into something real.
For managers
The problems
a) Administration:
Even for large organisations, managing and advertising sports facilities is an awkward administrative challenge which limits their profitability. For small organisations, this challenge can be insurmountable, leading to the loss of a potentially precious revenue stream. Many facilities lie virtually unused which could be aiding organisations and enriching local communities.
It is still common for facilities to register bookings over the telephone or in person. This system has two obvious drawbacks: firstly, it requires the attention of a member of staff or volunteer who could be working more constructively; secondly it limits the window for potential bookings to standard working hours.
When overseeing a network of facilities, each with its own configuration and booking procedure, traditional methods can make for complex and inefficient administration. Spreadsheets or sign-out books need to be carefully, regularly updated and can quickly become cumbersome. Under strain, administration often becomes idiosyncratic; procedures gradually fall into place which limit complexity from a management perspective but create frustrating obstacles for consumers.
Similarly, processing and recording payment creates its own set of administrative roadblocks. Organisations are frequently forced to limit accepted payment methods to make the situation manageable. In an age of instant electronic payment, however, potential users will be increasingly deterred by the need to pay by cash, in person, or give out card details over the telephone. Ease of payment is essential for facilities to be widely used.
b) Advertising:
Effectively advertising facilities is simply beyond the reach of many organisations; as such, their customer base is limited to a small pool of regular users. Opening facilities to the wider public is a fantastic way to fulfil their use potential and generate valuable additional revenue.
Our solutions
a) Adminstration:
Pitchbooking offers a cost-effective on-line service, saving time for staff or volunteers to work more constructively and bringing under-used facilities into wider circulation. Managers have access to an intuitive, automated platform from which a multitude of bookings across a large network of facilities can be easily administered.
Each facility is hosted under a user-friendly profile offering pictures, a description, availability details and extra information. Subject to availability, the facilities will be bookable almost instantly via secure online payment 24/7.
We understand that facilities can require complex, variable configurations, and we are committed to offering the most flexible hosting service possible. We’ll address an organisation’s needs on a case-by-case basis; we can, for example, link calendars in cases where facilities overlap, allow a wide range of different booking durations and include variable rates for different time-slots and days of the week.
b) Advertising:
Hosting facilities on our on-line platform puts them within clicking distance of a wider public of local sports enthusiasts. Working with Oxford City Council, we have a proven record of boosting usage.
Our firm commitment is to make sports facilities as easy as possible to access and to manage.