2017 May - The clubhouse has been digitalised, and parents are loving it

Originally written by: Jannik Brinch

The football season is about to kick off, but the time where team notes and girocards where used, is over. The service ‘SportMember’ has overtaken the majority of the practical activities in Denmark’s club houses.

At 4 pm it begins.

The youngest child is picked up from pre-school, because handball begins shortly after. An hour later the oldest is leaving for football practice, and how is it again that the match the coming weekend is planned? Who is driving, who is responsible for washing the kit, and who will remember the water bottles?

In the coming weeks, the football season begins in the various football clubs. Hundreds of thousands of players in all ages are hitting the football pitches, and the country’s many volunteers in collaboration with the parents, have the challenge of organising the whole thing.

150.000 parents use the service

But what was once done manually with the use of giro cards, team notes, and a river of telephone calls, has now been completely digitalised.

SportMember the electronic service is called, which allows its users to gain an overview of teams and easily communicate with the various members, using only few finger movements on a smartphone screen. This application is used by more than 150.000 parents of sport competing children in Denmark.

48 year old Christian Lundgaard Jensen, is one of the many users that uses SportMembers various opportunities to find a way through the logistical jungle.

”I am the team leader of an ’old boys’ team, and my 11 year old plays football, so in between practices and matches, there is a lot to manage,” Christian Lundgaard Jensen explains.

In the old days, telephone calls and team notes had to be coordinated every week, but this has changed in the Lundgaard Jensen family.
”The time, where we had notes hanging on the refrigerator door, has passed. Everything is now coordinated on our phones. All matches and practice arrangements automatically pop into the calendar, so we miss fewer events and activities, and I feel that we are way better informed. It is easy to get an overview of the two teams, that my son and I are connected to,” he believes.

In SportMember’s headquarters in Aarhus, they are not surprised by the great demand for the application from the parents.

“It was the need for easing the administration of all the activities arranged by a club team, that pushed me into starting the development of SportMember. And we have therefore worked hard on making both our App and our website, the useful tool used every day, that it is today”, The founder and managing director of SportMember Frank Bjergø comments.

10-doubling of users

It is more than 10 years ago, that he himself programmed the first versions of SportMember. Through the years the service has been developed and now offers newer functionality, so that today clubs can invoice for membership payments, as well as managing the penalty fee box, red cards, match programs, and even create homepages for teams and clubs. The development has contributed highly to the number of users. In just the past 5 years, there has been 10 times as many users joining SportMember, so that around 330.000 users distributed on around 1.000 clubs.

“We have built so many functions in SportMember, that the service works as a assistant coach, or as a digital clubhouse, that can manage all functions across a team or a club,” Frank Bjergø says.

It can all be administrated through an app, so there is easy access to the application through the phone.

Can be used across all types of sport

Thereby SportMember has played a serious role in digitalising the sport universe, and even though competitors such as DBU (Danish Ball Union) has worked hard to gain a larger market share with their own application, it doesn’t concern Frank Bjergø.

”Our offer to players and their parents, is that they can use the application across all sports. In unions, the focus is never on combinations, but only in their respective union,” Frank Bjergø explains.

Will happily challenge DBU

And more precisely the established competition system he wishes to challenge, in order to see whether sports can be practised in other ways than what is experienced today.

This is seen, for example, in football where SportMember’s new event and tournament function allows for an simple and easy arrangement of matches.

”DBU has for many years been sitting on the tournament sport. This might include 10 matches in the autumn, and 10 matches in the spring. Very classic. It is a system and a monopoly, which we want to challenge, because we believe that it can run more smoothly, modern, and with greater flexibility,” Frank Bjergø says.

He points out, that matches and tournaments not necessarily must be arranged half a year before by an organiser, who demands payment from every team that has been signed up, regardless of whether they will compete or not. “In our system, you can in principle make a tournament between five teams in your local area, that can compete on a Sunday. This doesn’t require more than a few entries in our system,” he says.

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SportMember.co.uk – Explained in 150 words

SportMember.co.uk is a digital clubhouse, that allows its members across all sports the opportunity to manage their players, calendars, sign-up for matches, creating a homepage, penalty fees, membership fees, and much more.

The company was started in 2004 by the current owner Frank Bjergø. He had the vision that it must be possible to create as system, which could make the administration in sport clubs easier.

This has certainly succeeded, to the extent that since 2010 the number of users has 10-doubled, so that today 330.000 players use the application. On top of that, around 1.000 clubs and 48.000 teams make use of the system.

Today, SportMember offers its services in eight countries. Most recently the company has launched a platform on the enormous American market.

The investors Rasmus Pedersen and Mads Pedersen, has recently purchased 25 percent of SportMember, and the investment is planned on being used to speed up the spreading of the service. The goal is, to have 500.000 users in the system by the end of 2017.