8 essential tools for sports event planners

Organ­is­ing a sports event is not a walk in the park, and event plan­ners some­times end up more tired than the ath­letes them­selves. Tech and sports being a good mix, how about using some new tools to make your life eas­i­er? We have select­ed 8 — tried and test­ed by thou­sands of our sports event plan­ners.

Con­tents

• Google Dri­ve
• WeezTick­et
• Insta­gram
• Local (by Face­book)
• Weath­er
• Google Maps
• WeezA­c­cess
• Deez­er

Google Drive

The apps on Google Dri­ve allow you to share files with all your col­leagues, busi­ness part­ners, vol­un­teers, etc.:

• Google Docs cre­ates stan­dard doc­u­ments such as meet­ing min­utes or instruc­tions for vol­un­teers.

• Google Sheets man­ages spread­sheets just as well as Excel does, they will help you man­age your inven­to­ry or your account­ing as a team, with­out any risk to lose track.

• Google Slides is a user-friend­ly pre­sen­ta­tion tool help­ing you cre­ate use­ful decks to train your vol­un­teers, dis­play scores on a screen, etc.

Avail­able on desk­tops and mobile devices, these apps are updat­ed in real time for every­one that was grant­ed access to the files. No more going crazy with mul­ti­ple ver­sions, USB sticks and emails.

WeezTicket

Are you organ­is­ing a run­ning race? A trek, a bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment or a ten­nis open? What­ev­er the sport or for­mat of the event, you will undoubt­ed­ly need to reg­is­ter par­tic­i­pants and either sell or dis­trib­ute tick­ets to audi­ence mem­bers. With a com­pre­hen­sive tool like Weezevent, you can cre­ate a min­isite so that par­tic­i­pants can find out more infor­ma­tion about your event and reg­is­ter in a few clicks. At the end of their book­ing, ask them to fill a cus­tomised form — you can require a med­ical cer­tifi­cate for sports, a copy of their ID, etc. Pay­ment from par­tic­i­pants and audi­ence mem­bers is also done through Weezevent, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly sim­pli­fies your book­keep­ing.

Instagram

A few weeks before your event, start pro­mot­ing it by post­ing pic­tures on Insta­gram. In order to expand the cir­cle of inter­est­ed peo­ple, use hash­tags of your city, your region, your sport or even spe­cif­ic clubs or peo­ple who will attend.

Dur­ing your event, post pic­tures and videos. The goal is two-fold: get the peo­ple who are not there — par­tic­i­pants or audi­ence — to want to attend and cre­ate mem­o­ries for those who are attend­ing. You can also do some tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing that might not cost you much but may earn you a lot if your mes­sage attracts par­tic­i­pants.

Local (by Facebook)

Local is Facebook’s mobile app, down­loaded by mil­lions of peo­ple. It lists all the events avail­able on the plat­form. It is there­fore manda­to­ry to cre­ate a Face­book event linked to your Facebook/Instagram page and your web­site or your Weezevent mini-site. This way, you can increase your audi­ence and invite friends to your event — who may in turn invite their friends if you encour­age them to do so. This cre­ates a vir­tu­ous cir­cle and gen­er­ates excite­ment for your event.

Weather

We don’t need to remind you why the weath­er is some­thing that needs to be mon­i­tored when organ­is­ing sports events out­doors. In addi­tion, a mobile weath­er app can prove essen­tial if it alerts you in case of sud­den changes: show­ers, storms, etc. When it hap­pens, with­out these alerts, you may find your­self say­ing, “I looked at the weath­er this morn­ing and it was­n’t fore­cast­ed”. With an alert, you gain valu­able min­utes that can be cru­cial and save your event.

Google Maps

The app is wide­ly known for its fea­ture guid­ing you from A to B. How­ev­er you can also cre­ate and share cus­tom maps includ­ing spe­cif­ic points of inter­est — go to Menu > your Places > Maps. If your sports event takes place over a wide area, it may be use­ful to cre­ate an online map and locate the fol­low­ing places:

• Race: departure/arrival, entrances/exits, bib col­lec­tion, stands, food & drinks, park­ing…
• Tournament/competition: pitch or court, warm-up rooms, food & drinks, chang­ing rooms, enter­tain­ment, entrance, park­ing…

Here is an exam­ple cre­at­ed for the Mon­ster Start­up Golf Cup in Nantes, France:

WeezAccess

Are you sell­ing or dis­trib­ut­ing tick­ets to the audi­ence in addi­tion to the par­tic­i­pants’ reg­is­tra­tion? You can sim­ply add one or more Audi­ence tick­et cat­e­gories to your event. Thanks to these, you can con­trol access to your event and increase your lev­el of safe­ty. You can use our WeezA­c­cess free app, or our pro­fes­sion­al access con­trol equip­ment, to scan tick­ets to know right away if the tick­et is valid or not. No need for end­less guest lists print­ed on paper, leav­ing room for fraud and wast­ing everyone’s time.

Deezer

Music is part of the over­all atmos­phere of a sports event and is appre­ci­at­ed by the audi­ence. Thanks to its infi­nite playlists, stream­ing app Deez­er gives you the pos­si­bil­i­ty to play music all day long at the push of a but­ton. Easy, isn’t it?

Among these 8 tools, which one(s) will you choose when organ­is­ing your sports event? Dis­cov­er our com­pre­hen­sive range of solu­tions by click­ing below:

Organ­ise a sports event