On Thursday, the Arizona Interscholastic Association renewed its deal with athletic management software company ArbiterSports. The AIA will continue to use ArbiterPay to make payments to game officials.
ArbiterPay allows for mass payment with only one payout upload. In sports like basketball or baseball, a single season will feature many, many games. As a result, the association, which counts 265 member institutions, needs to contract numerous officials. For the AIA, that would mean consistently writing hundreds of manual checks.
“The first year we started using ArbiterSports for electronic payments, it literally removed 6,000 checks off my desk,” said AIA Director of Finance and Operations, Denise Doser, in a statement. “The cost savings of not having to issue manual checks plus the 15-20 percent time savings has been substantial for the Association and our member schools. Our decision to renew our agreement this year was based on benefits we have been receiving for nine years, since we first signed with ArbiterSports.”
ArbiterPay can also easily track payments made. “The reporting function is a tremendous tool for annual audits and budgeting,” continued Doser. “Since each report we generate from ArbiterPay provides all the detail required by our auditors, our reports are audit proof. For every payment, we can track the official’s name, account, game ID and date, sport, and school where the game was played.”
SportTechie Takeaway
High school athletics isn’t necessarily a huge business in comparison to collegiate or professional sports, but organizations still have a lot to gain from the application of technology. In March, New Jersey approved the use of instant replay for regular season high school football games. Initially that implementation will be minimal, but it could eventually be used for postseason games. In April, a startup called PlayVS announced a deal with the National Federation of State High School Associations to bring competitive esports to as many as 19,000 high schools.