Task 1: Organize a little league tournament for 5th graders.
Difficulty: Easy
Task 2: Manage multiple soccer teams for middle school athletes.
Difficulty: Not too hard.
Task 3: Now help coach a sports club with over 200 members and 5 different other coaches, whilst constantly dealing with a gruesome amount of paperwork, excel documents and data spreadsheets.
Difficulty: Disaster
This is where a company called Sportlyzer is looking to help.
Founded by CEO Tõnis Saag in 2009, Sportlyzer is a multi-purpose “software ecosystem” and virtual application designed to improve the development of sports clubs, and other sports related ventures. The app helps clubs “raise their training quality and increase their administrative efficiency” in addition to providing a central database for profiles, attendance data, schedules, and more. All of this information is stored safely in servers and available to share between managers, coaches and athletes.
“Sportlyzer was the next logical step in my life of sports”, said Sportlyzer CEO Tõnis Saag in a recent email interview with SportTechie. “I was an Estonian karate team member for 10 years, worked as a karate coach and club manager for 13 years, and founded and managed functional testing sports medicine labs. Having been deeply involved in sports at all levels, I saw that the quality of grassroots sports – the foundation of the sports pyramid as well as the culture of physical activity – is not quite where it should be”.
The Sportlyzer app itself is not particularly designed for competitors at the highest level, but rather based more on the premise that “enthusiastic” coaches and players that help shape the culture of physical activity deserve the best tools and equipment. Regardless, Sportlyzer saves the need for many wearisome tasks: grunt work, number based calculations, and even running after athletes who haven’t paid their fees yet. But perhaps the biggest gain through using Sportlyzer is the saving of time.
“Coaches, many of them volunteers contributing their free time, spend most of their time in sports venues with athletes”, said Saag.“But besides that, they also need to plan and analyze training, keep membership lists up-to-date, report to government offices and federations, communicate with sports parents, organize competition trips, etc.”
Running a sports club takes a lot more paperwork than physical effort. Through Sportlyzer however, coaches are able to eliminate the need to manage all these tedious and trivial duties, further allowing them to use their time and focus more on what they do best: training their athletes. In the end, this all in one revolutionary program is aimed at helping coaches and executives alike to stay on top of all the unnecessary complications that come with managing sports.
Special Interfaces and Features
The biggest asset Sportlyzer has to offer lies in its flexible and adaptable coaching section. Through Sportlyzer, coaches can expect to receive the following benefits:
Coach Diary: The web and mobile applications document athlete’s profiles, attendance, and payment records, in addition to a training process visualization program, which includes specific details for time, place, description and more.
Video Stopwatch: Sportlyzer will soon be equipped with the latest technology that will allow users to record videos, add notes, record start and finish times, and compare results. It will also archive all videos that may be used for later.
Expert Coaching: Using the analysis from charts and performance, coaches are able to track and test the development of athletes. It also allows the adjusting of volume and intensity to prevent overtraining and injuries.
Calendar: Coaches are able to engage in complete participation management via invitations, participation, confirmations and attendance. The program also syncs all events, workouts, competitions, and group schedules for entire team.
The Manager’s Division part of the App also has everything needed to build a “strong and well-functioning” sports club. Managers can expect to receive the following benefits:
- Members & Groups: One central list of everything. Member profiles, contact information, and other necessary private data. It allows coaches to reach athletes quickly and efficiently.
- Invoicing Function: For keeping the club’s finances under control, whether you’re collecting regular membership fees or collecting money for ordering new jerseys. Find out who’s paid and who to remind.
- Messaging: Updated contacts for sending SMS and email to group members or to their parents if they are kids.
- Club Finder: A function designed to attract new members, and publish the personal club profile for public web search.
- Calendar: Allows the syncing of events and data into the athletes’ training diaries. Also gives the user greater control over the management of events, such as workouts, tournaments, invitations, group schedules, etc.
Last but not least, the Athletes Section. Though somewhat limited in terms of control, athletes can expect to receive the following benefits:
- Online Schedule: Properly organized and updated for workouts, competitions and events.
- Statistics: Analysis, videos, and more to track individual progress
- Logs and Review: Ready available training logs– including feedback from coaches.
Userbase, Growth/Pricing
Sportlyzer currently has sports teams from over 20 countries and over 25 sports ranging from national teams such as Australian Rowing Team to Kickz-like social programs targeting underprivileged youth.
According to CEO Tonis Saag, current users of Sportlyzer can be split into two categories:
- Elite sports (mostly endurance sports like triathlon, rowing, cycling)
“People who engage in these sports use Sportlyzer primarily because of its coach-athlete collaboration possibilities. Coaches create personal training plans, athletes log training and daily health metrics, and longitudinal analysis shows the correlations between training volumes, test results and competition results”.
- Youth sports (soccer, basketball, swimming, karate, tennis, etc) –
“Many who engage in these sports rather need software to simplify their membership and training management. Up-to-date membership lists, attendance reports, invoicing and payments tracking combined with training statistics and progress reports gives them a comprehensive sports club information system experience. As a result they save a lot of time and achieve considerably better clarity in their club management.”
Regardless, Sportlyzer was designed to be a “virtual operating system for all sports”; “overlapping cases exist because in larger clubs, all age groups and preparation levels are represented” said Saag.
Sportlyzer’s pricing model is flexible and accustomed to sports teams. The central membership management is free to use and other apps can be switched on and off according to current needs. All the pricing plans are available on their website.
Going Forward
Sportlyzer is an example of how technology is being used to not only connect coaches and athletes, but also allow for a more complete, and organized experience in the ever-changing world of sports. When sports clubs are more organized, and coaches are able to focus more of their energy on improving their players, it is a win-win situation that can be fundamental to a club team’s success.
“Eventually we will open our app store to other apps and developers to offer the world of sports a seamlessly connected technology experience” Saag remarks. “We know it’s a very ambitious goal and requires a lot of hard work, but our product architecture and design are already developed this way and we are happy to take this challenge.”