6 minute read
TECH with Joymo & Spond
Sporting Carpathians Win A Matchday Filming Experience from Joymo & Filmmymatch
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In 2021, we ran a competition on social media for a grassroots club to win a matchday filming experience, with Sporting Carpathians from Leagrave in Luton being one of our two winners. With Joymo, the livestreaming video platform for every level of the sporting pyramid, and FilmMyMatch, the professional filming, editing and analysis experts, joining forces in a long-term partnership, they were perfectly placed to deliver this fantastic prize.
Days like this are fantastic for grassroots clubs that rarely have the opportunity or resource to watch themselves in action, or share their efforts with friends and family, without them braving the cold of the touchline. Michael Cardoso, Team Manager and designated matchday commentator, spoke to us about the day.
“The players were looking forward to the game and the experience. It had been postponed a few times due to restrictions, so there was a lot of excitement. One or two players may have visited the hairdressers ahead of the match. The decision on making me commentator was taken by the manager. He wanted someone who could keep up with the game, know the players’ names and wouldn't be missed on the sideline!
“With FilmMyMatch on the ground, doing what they do best, the game was livestreamed by Joymo and we were incredibly excited to run live grassroots football on our website for the very first time. And the on-field entertainment didn’t disappoint with Sporting Carpathians bagging five goals. Sadly, their opposition Wootton Cross scored six!
“General feedback was really positive. It was tarred a bit by the result being a negative one, albeit a close one. What was interesting was how many players (including those who weren't in the squad on matchday) watched the game back and shared their analysis of their performance as well as the team’s performance with management. It was great seeing the players embrace it, not just as a fun matchday experience, but also as a tool for their continued development.
“The whole thing was very professional. It gives you a tiny insight into what professional players experience. From being able to replay and scrutinise your performance to feeling like all eyes are on you. The match stats, graphics, basically the whole package is awesome. For an amateur team, we absolutely loved it ... just not the result!
“We had people tuning in locally and abroad. There was a clear uptick in our social media engagement. It was surreal getting real-time encouragement from family and friends who weren't at the game. (Including unsolicited coaching advice!)
“Thanks so much to The Grassroots Post, Joymo and FilmMyMatch for organising this. We'll be keeping an eye out for future competitions!” TGP
To find out more about broadcasting your matches visit Joymo.tv and for filming services go to FilmMyMatch.com.
Balham FC Use GameChanging App Spond
Balham FC are one of the most progressive clubs in London, so it’s no surprise that they use the brilliant management and communications app to run their twenty teams across all ages.
As the song goes, “the best things in life are free”, and that is very true. Think about it: love, happiness, fresh air ... and a time-saving app for organising the matchday availability of a grassroots football club you volunteer for.
Spond is that app, and it is free and it is game changing. At Balham FC we started using Spond in earnest in 2020, and what we didn’t appreciate was quite how much time it would save for our coaches and team admins across the club.
Let’s rewind a bit. Balham is a volunteer-led club with Men’s, Women’s, Boys’, Girls’ and Vets Football making up around twenty squads from Under 7s up to adults. Many of our coaches had been using WhatsApp to organise everything from training sessions to match details. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a place for WhatsApp - it is a fantastic messaging tool and pretty much everyone is on it. However, we all experience group conversations that are relentless and getting player availability for a game is possible, but you have to trawl through the memes, dodgy photos, conversations about a local missing cat or the Wordle achievement of the group.
Spond is different - it isn’t trying to be a WhatsApp replacement, but its focus is on organising sports clubs. Whether it’s a match squad, training venue location or game cancellation due to a waterlogged pitch, it takes just a couple of clicks from the team admin and the message is out.
Jaden, our head of foundation, was bombarded with repeated messages from parents asking, where is the game again? What time are we meeting? Frank can’t play anymore, what time does training finish? All of this was almost stopped pretty much overnight when he registered the teams he looks after with Spond.
“Put simply, without Spond we could not run a club of this size with the number of volunteers we have,” Jaden explains. “It’s not just a question of the time it saves us, which must be several hours per week for each administrative role, it’s also the built-in features that do many basic tasks for you.”
What’s the catch? Well, to be honest we haven’t found one yet. Especially if you fully adopt it as a squad. It seriously is game-changing for everyone.
What about the extras you get for top-tier membership? There are no tiers, it is all free for everyone, and from what we see so far they have no plans to charge.
How do they make their money? Adverts, I presume? Actually, there are no adverts. Spond offers e-payments for “club products” through the app, e.g. paying for match fees or membership and they take a small % in transaction fee for processing the payment, that’s all, which for the convenience and efficiency it brings is incredibly worthwhile.
Why am I registering for another app? The onboarding process is really easy: just send a group link code. You can also ask club-specific questions on sign up if you want to.
Our first team play at semi-pro level (Combined Counties Football League Premier South) and coach Ebrahim Seedat has found the ability to communicate and select the squad or decide what to focus on at training by knowing who will be attending through Spond game-changing.
“Spond has significantly reduced the amount of admin with regards to training and matchdays. We can now prepare better for training sessions and sort out match availability more efficiently, which is so important when you are balancing football and family and work,” says Ebrahim.
The team at Spond HQ (Oslo) and at their new London office are amazing. Their enthusiasm for the product is infectious (probably shouldn’t say infectious in this day and age, still) - they listen to feedback and develop the platform/app to meet the users’ needs. They have a genuine passion for making the very best product to enhance the club admin’s experience. They have added in user polls, repeat event scheduling, event reminders. They are adding in fundraising, match reporting and direct debit payments soon.
Those who volunteer at grassroots level know how much effort is involved in the admin; this wasn’t what we signed up for and it certainly isn’t what we give up our time for. Spond is an app that loves all of that admin, which means we can focus on our love of the game. TGP
Download the Spond app from Google Play or the App Store
