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Earlier this year we partnered with Score FC on the north coast of Northern Ireland to launch their premium indoor 5aside pitches on Pitchbooking. Almost one year later and with just under 1000 bookings processed through the system, we spoke to Russell Kelly, MD of Score, to see how the team have got on and to assess the impact of making the switch to Pitchbooking.
In addition to providing football pitches, Score also has several party rooms, a cafe, a gym, gymnastics club and trampoline park. They had already been using an online booking system to try and manage their facilities when we approached them at the end of 2019 but as Russell describes, to little success.
“We found it very clunky and it wasn’t very user friendly. We found our customers were coming to us and struggling to make bookings online and moving to Pitchbooking has been a seamless transition.”
We often find that a lot of businesses we speak to are using a one size fits all system to cover the different services they provide. For some, they can make this work. For others, it becomes increasingly difficult to satisfy customers who want to block book a football pitch compared to customers who want to sign up for gym membership.
Pitchbooking specialises in sports facility bookings. Our management software enables businesses like Score to have full oversight of their facilities, bookers and calendar through our award-winning digital platform.
“Our previous system wasn't the best. It was outdated, especially the interface, whereas with Pitchbooking, you can tell it’s modern. It's very simple to use, both from an internal and external point of view.
Having Pitchbooking has allowed us to add it to our app, add it to our website, and it's just been fantastic because it gives people access so they can go and quickly see what pitches are available.”
- Dominic Dysart, Digital Marketing Executive, Score FC.
The Pitchbooking Manager Dashboard has a range of features facility owners can use to make and receive bookings, process refunds, reconcile payment and view bookings. One such feature is the Calendar which gives a daily overview of what’s happening on any given day. It will display all bookings & subscriptions, paid & unpaid, enabling Managers to quickly access information of their upcoming day at a glance.
When asked what feature they thought has had the most positive impact on their business so far, Score replied, “The main thing for us is the calendar. We're able to basically block our league fixtures. If a team cancels and a game’s off, we can easily open that fixture slot up to the public to fill the booking.”
Finally, we asked Russell what his experience was like during onboarding and if he would recommend Pitchbooking to other commercial sports centres.
“They were a business that actually cared about us, that asked us the right questions and seemed to take time to understand our business. They took us through every single step, very quickly and very easily. It was a fantastic experience.
Pitchbooking does exactly what it says on the tin but it does it in such a user-friendly way that our customers are feeding back to us about how easy it is to use and how easy it is to book. And if you have got happy customers, that's always a good thing!”
For more information about Score FC, visit scorefc.com or download the app. To make a booking, visit their Partner Page.
To learn more about how Pitchbooking can help your business, visit our solution page or get in touch at info@pitchbooking.com