We share how Badminton England are making it easier for badminton players to find and book courts.
How committed are you to your favourite sport? Would you ring up a leisure centre at 6:00am to make sure you could book a court to play that day? For many, the answer would be no. But that was the situation facing so many players who Nick Rimmer, Head of Development at Badminton England, spoke to.
It’s a problem Badminton England is determined to solve. Together with Playwaze, they’ve created a Discover Badminton Search, using open data to make it easier for everyone to find and book a badminton session or court near them.
We spoke to Nick about how National Governing Bodies (NGBs) can increase the digital accessibility of their sport and help more people get active.
Describe the problem you’re trying to solve.
In England, we know that 75% of badminton players don’t play as part of a club, and for many of these players, booking a court is a nightmare. We would hear stories from players that if you weren’t on the phone to a leisure centre at 6:01 a.m. on the day you wanted to play, you’d be too late to book a court.
What is your solution?
We’ve developed an activity finder with Playwaze for badminton sessions, courts and coaches.
We want to make it as easy to book a badminton court as it is a hotel, as easy as ordering a pizza. Whatever the comparison, we know that by and large, the sport and physical sector does not match the levels of digital convenience that consumers have come to expect. We want to make the customer journey as frictionless as possible.
With the pandemic, it’s now more important than ever. Activity providers will need to take bookings to comply with test and trace and to manage numbers when the sector reopens.
We started with a handful of providers, and now we have over 150 clubs and other leisure operators featured.
When lockdown restrictions were lifted last year, we saw over 10,500 bookings between June to October, compared to under 600 bookings in the months pre-lockdown.
What do you want to see next in the sector?
We know that the majority of players use public leisure centres, so we’re keen to see more data published openly from them, so we can feature them on our activity finder. School facilities are also of interest, and in particular we’d love to see them offer bookings for single courts, rather than the entire halls.
We know that a lot of providers are wary of aggregators, and worry that they will cut into their profits. While I’m not saying that activity providers should avoid all commercial aggregators, as a National Governing Body, our activity finder is not commercial, and we don’t take a cut of the booking fee. We simply want to promote our sport, and to help more people play it.
What advice would you give to other NGBs?
- Invest time understanding your customer. Don’t sit in your office and launch a product without talking to the people who will use it to really understand what they want and need. When we first launched our activity finder, it looked great, but it didn’t reflect how people searched. So we had to take a step back, and update it to make it work.
- Don’t be afraid of technology! You don’t need to be an expert to unlock the benefits of technology: you need to be clear about what you want to achieve. We’re seeing more and more players enter the sector who can then help you get there. The OpenActive team at The ODI can also help you find the right digital solution if you’re unsure where to start.
- Think long term. Everyone in our sector is facing a difficult time, in particular NGBs. Yet despite this, it’s important to think long-term, and to invest in digital now. The demand for it is only going to grow.
OpenActive is a Sport England-backed initiative that aims to make it easier to find and book activities online, and to support digital innovation in the sport and physical activity sector. If you’re an NGB interested in finding out more about how OpenActive can help you achieve your goals, and what solutions are available to get more people playing your sport, then get in touch.
