Logging on to help sports lift their game for fun and profit

Phil Connolly (left) and Graeme Perigo's clients include NZ Soccer, the NZ Rugby League, the Rugby Union and the Irish Women's Rugby Football Union. Picture / Richard Robinson

Anyone who's tried to get the kids into the car on a Saturday morning knows how hard it is to organise a small group of people.

Imagine then how difficult it is for sports teams to coordinate their players and volunteers, or how hard it is to keep track of every player and their history of triumphs and failures as they mature from the grass roots into professionals.

Five years ago, RealSports International started offering a range of website and database solutions to enable clubs to keep records, not only of all the players involved, but also details of upcoming games, information such as who's going to referee an event, and more.

RealSports provides analysis and implementation of their products to sporting codes at all levels, whether professional or amateur.

Chief executive Graeme Perigo says the internet provides a real opportunity to change the way clubs and their members are communicating.

"I was involved at board level when NZ Soccer restructured into the federation system. The board and I recognised the amount of money and the huge inefficiencies surrounding the sport."

The internet provides a perfect channel, he says, to identify the different community groups within a sport and to connect them as well.

"A website is just one aspect with a central repository of knowledge but we also can implement an electronic membership database which the clubs can maintain."

That information can feed up to various other levels within a sporting body's infrastructure for a range of requirements. Competition management can be automated to make organising volunteers more efficient.

Revenue possibilities for the sport are also created through a website that can host display advertising for a sponsor and by providing a direct medium of communication to all involved in the sport.

Some sports that seem small now may start to grow by having a web presence that serves to market the sport as well as earn revenue to fund growth. New Zealand Table Tennis, he says, is one to watch.

In addition to clients like NZ Soccer, NZ Rugby League and the Rugby Union, RealSports' clients include the Vodafone Warriors, who use their web-based electronic newsletter application and competition management package. The Warriors' website contains player profiles, up-to-date statistics and game results.

RealSports also work overseas. International clients include the Irish Women's Rugby Football Union, which needed to keep in touch with its volunteer-based membership and increase exposure for the game nationally, all on a tight budget.

Using a template-based web front end and a content management system, communication within the organisation was vastly improved and the website attracted more than 10 times the number of players involved.

In Australia, RealSports began working with Cricket Victoria in 2004, supplying solutions for competition and participation management, and revamping their existing websites.

With over 1100 cricket clubs and more than 112,000 registered players, this was no small task. "Our target was 90,000 page views per month," says Perigo, "they're now getting 3.5 million page views."

Another solution offered by the company addresses a need for effective database management in terms of talent identification and development of elite athletes. Sports codes or clubs can look back and take the guesswork out, he says, by following patterns of training and development that have resulted in success.

"Previously it's been an individual development within a specific area - a coach or a discipline like medicine, fitness, nutrition or video analysis," says Perigo. "Bringing all that together in a knowledge database for the sport has created huge value."

Realsportsinternational

* Who: Founders Phil Connolly and Graeme Perigo.

* What: Website www.gorealsports.com and data management for sporting bodies.

* Where: Auckland.

* Why: "To improve the way sporting bodies communicate with stakeholders."