OpenSports events: An overview

Opensports' flexible features help streamline event and attendee management. In this article, learn all about the event-related features and workflows on OpenSports.

Run your events through OpenSports

Creating events through OpenSports is ideal for one-off or single, recurring activities, such as pick-up games or open play. If you are interested in running your leagues, tournaments, and programs through OpenSports, read more about our comprehensive platform here.

Before creating events, you will need to register your organization as an OpenSports group.
Add event details, facility information, assign staff schedules, set up event pricing (including refunds and discount codes) all in one place.

There are three types of events you can create through your OpenSports group:

Public event — all local OpenSports users can see and join public events.
Private event —only members of your group, or anyone who you invite to the event, can see private events.
Secret event — only members who you invite can see secret events. Group members who are not invited will not be able to see these events. Group members who are assigned group-level event manager, event admin, and event assistant roles can see and join secret events.

To get started, check out our how-to guide for creating an OpenSports event.

Collect electronic waivers

Setting up electronic waivers is quick and requires minimal maintenance on OpenSports.

Create custom waivers that suit your needs.
Group members are automatically prompted to review and accept your waiver when registering for events for the first time.
Any time a waiver is updated, group members and event attendees will be automatically prompted to review and accept the most recent waiver version.

Add facilities and resources

Regardless of where you host your activities, you can add your facilities and resources to OpenSports events.

Facilities are locations where your activities occur (e.g., community centre, sports club, park).
Bookable resources are specific activity areas within a facility (e.g., individual courts, fields and field sections, rooms).
Each facility can have multiple bookable resources, which can be specified on the event page to clearly identify the event location to attendees.

For example, if you are hosting pickleball games at a community centre with several available courts, you can add the commmunity centre as a facility. The individual available courts (e.g., North and Sourth courts) can be assigned as bookable resources to the community centre facility.

Issue refunds

Set up refund deadlines and automatically refund event, league, and tournament payments through OpenSports. There are two types of refunds available:

Account credit refund: users are refunded the entire payment amount to their OpenSports group account. This credit can be used to register for future events organized by your group.
Credit card refund: users are refunded their payment amount directly to their credit card. When sending this refund, your group incurs the associated processing fees.

You can provide automatic account credit refunds to your attendees by setting up refund deadlines, or choose to send refunds manually to your members.

Assign event staff

Create custom staff positions (e.g., instructor, security guard, coach) for your events based on your needs. Assign your group members to these staff positions for easy scheduling.

Staff positions can be made public or private. Event attendees can see and message users in public staff positions, while private staff positions are only visible to group and event admins.
Users with staff positions can be assigned automatic event discounts.

Create custom registration forms

Collect important information about your attendees and have the flexibility to determine the specific questions on your attendee signup forms.

Save and reuse common questions for future events.
Assign questions to different registration types (e.g., players vs. goalies, parents vs. youth).
Export attendee responses.

OpenSports events can be shared with your group members, local OpenSports users, and through any other platform (e.g., Instagram, Facebook). Attendees will be prompted to create an OpenSports account (if they do not already have one) before registering for your events.

Easily invite all existing group members or filter your event invites based on member availability, skill level, or gender.
Create custom invite lists from your group members.
Share event invites by email through the OpenSports platform or by sharing an event link.
Embed a live-updating event widget on your website.
If your group is public, your events will be shown to local OpenSports users on our app home page.

Automatic waitlists

OpenSports offer an automatic waitlist management system when your events are full.

Allow interested members to join the waitlist when trying to register for a full event.
If a spot opens up, waitlist members are notified automatically via email and the app. After a certain period of time, if the spot remains unclaimed, the next waitlist member is notified and offered the spot.
Enable waitlist blackout periods (e.g., overnight) or cancel the waitlist as needed.
Allow interested members to track their spot on the waitlist.

Attendee check-in

View attendee and waitlists, track no-shows, and easily check-in players on event day. Our flexible admin roles and staff positions allow different members of your team to assist with day-of logistics and attendee management to help your event run smoothly.

Post-event reports

Get a comprehensive analysis of your events through the OpenSports Reports and Insights dashboards.

View revenue breakdown per event or membership.
Track orders created by each user.
Easily identify first-time users, no-show users, and event check-ins.
See your most popular discounts.
Learn more about our Reports feature here.

Ready to get started?

Check out our how-to guides to launch your first event.

Questions? Send them our way: support@opensports.net