Setting up your grounds and pitches
Your grounds and pitches, for your own matches and training. Every club can do this. Letting them out to other people is a separate, optional add-on.
Adding your grounds and pitches is for your own club first: it’s what lets a match or a training session say where it is, with a map and directions for players and guardians. You don’t need the facility booking add-on for any of this. Letting your pitches to other people is an optional extra, at the end of this guide, and only if you want it.
1. Add your ground
A ground is a place. Here in Facilities, open Venues (in More on a phone) and press Add a ground in the bottom corner. (The + on the overview does the same.) Give it a name and its address, with the postcode, so players know where they’re going and the venue’s page shows it on a map. Club admins add grounds.
2. Add each pitch
Open the ground from Venues and press the Add facility tile at the end of its facilities, once for each pitch. Give it a name and the sports played on it, then tick its Amenities (floodlights, changing rooms and so on). Each pitch then opens on its own page, where you set how it’s booked and can change anything you said about it. Nothing is open to the public unless you choose to let it out.
A “pitch” is each space you use separately. A 3G that two teams train on in halves can be two pitches; one you only ever use whole is one.
Rooms and spaces
Not everything you let is for playing on. A clubhouse bar, a function room or a banqueting suite is added the same way: press Add facility, and under What is it? choose A room or space instead of A playing area. A room isn’t asked about sports, size or surface. Say how many people it holds, and tick what it has: a kitchen, a bar, a projector or screen, a sound system, Wi-Fi, tables and chairs, a stage, toilets, parking and so on.
You choose this when you add it, and can’t change it afterwards. If you picked the wrong one, delete it and add it again.
A room is booked exactly like a pitch: give it booking hours (Flexible usually suits a room best), a price, and open it to the public if you like. To book it whenever the first-team pitch is booked for a home match, set up an automation. A room is never offered for a match, and can’t be a team’s home ground.
Rooms and spaces are on the facility booking plan for three or more facilities (a free trial includes them), and they count towards that plan like a pitch does. On a smaller plan, A room or space is shown but can’t be chosen. If your club moves to a smaller plan, its rooms pause: they stay on Venues marked Paused and take no new bookings, from your club or anyone else, while the bookings they already have stay, and can still be moved, cancelled and paid for. They take bookings again as soon as you’re back on that plan. See Pricing.
Photos and videos
People choosing where to play want to see it. Club admins can add photos and YouTube videos of the ground (the entrance, the car park, the clubhouse) and of each pitch (the surface, the floodlights, the goals).
- The ground’s: open it from Venues. Photos and videos is on its page.
- A pitch’s: open the ground, then the pitch. Photos and videos is at the foot of its page, or choose Add photo or video from the page’s Manage facility menu.
They’re shown as a gallery. Press the Add tile and choose Photos (one or more pictures: JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 10 MB each) or A YouTube video (paste its link). We keep a resized copy of each photo and take out where it was taken, so a phone’s location never reaches your website. Tap a photo or video to add a caption, move it earlier or later, or remove it. The first photo is the cover, the one people see first.
Your booking widget shows a pitch’s photos and videos, then its ground’s, above the calendar, so someone booking can see what they’re getting. A video opens on YouTube rather than playing inside your website.
They also help people find you on match day. Players and guardians see the ground’s photos in the Player Hub, under the map of each game and training session held there. Visiting teams see them in the Team Hub, on the match’s Where we’re playing step. So a photo of the entrance and the car park saves a lot of “which gate?” messages.
3. Give each team its home ground
In Teams, open the team and choose Edit team. Under Home ground, pick the Venue, and the Pitch if the team always uses the same one (or leave Any pitch there).
Where it shows up
- Matches: in the Team Hub, the match’s pre-match step says where you’re playing, and a home match can have one of your pitches chosen for it.
- Training and other sessions: a new session in the Team Hub starts at the team’s home ground, and the manager can pick any of the club’s venues instead, or To be confirmed.
- Players and guardians see the venue on each game and session in the Player Hub, with Open in Maps for directions.
Optional: letting your pitches to other people
If you want to let pitches out — to other clubs, local groups or the public — that’s the facility booking add-on, a paid extra (see Pricing). It isn’t needed for anything above. Clubs can try it free for 30 days with no card. With it, the club sets the hours its pitches can be let, what they cost and how requests are answered, here in Facilities. Only club admins can change these.
Say when it can be booked: booking hours
In Facilities, open Booking hours (in More on a phone). Booking hours are named sets of opening times, cut into slots: for example 7-a-side, hourly and 11-a-side, 90 minutes. Make as many as you need, then give each pitch one. Pitches with the same rules share a set, so you only change it once.
Press + and choose New booking hours:
- Name it, and say how long each slot lasts.
- Gap between slots is the time left free after each booking for changeovers. 60-minute slots with a 30-minute gap, from 09:00, give 09:00–10:00, 10:30–11:30, 12:00–13:00 and so on. The gap is never offered to anyone.
- For each day, add its hours: when they start, and the Number of slots (press − and +, or type it). The end is worked out for you and shown under it, so a slot never runs past the hours or into the next ones. A day can have more than one set (a morning and an evening), and can cut its own slot length, such as Saturdays in 2-hour slots. Copy puts one day’s hours on the others you tick. On the timeline, drag a set of hours to move it, or drag its bottom edge to add or take away slots.
The slots appear under each day as you type. To stop a slot being booked, change the hours themselves: shorten or split the span, or keep it for the club (below).
Then give each pitch its hours. Open the pitch’s page (from its ground in Venues), choose Change booking rules from its Manage facility menu and pick its Booking hours. Edit these hours, under the choice, opens that set (or New booking hours when it has none); save the rules first, or it asks before leaving them. A pitch with none can’t be booked by anyone outside the club.
A set’s own page lists the pitches that use it under Used by, so you can see what a change affects before you save it.
Flexible: book any time in the opening hours
Some facilities, such as a hall, a meeting room or a function suite, don’t suit fixed slots. Choose Flexible under How it’s booked. The hours you add are then an open window, and people choose their own start and length inside it. Every rule under Rules (all optional) can be left blank:
- Shortest booking and Longest booking, in minutes.
- Bookings start on the hour, half hour or quarter hour (the half hour if you don’t say).
- Lengths offered: pick some, such as 30 minutes and 1 hour, to offer only those. Pick none to allow any length between the shortest and the longest.
- Gap between bookings: time kept free after each one for clearing up.
A sentence under the rules says what they add up to, such as “Bookings of 1 hour or 2 hours, starting on the half hour.”
Hours kept for the club
Tick Keep for the club on a day’s hours to keep them for yourselves: for example Saturday mornings, for your own teams. People booking online, or through another website, never see those hours, not even as taken. Your own staff and teams book them as usual, and the calendar marks them Kept for the club.
If nobody at the club needs a kept slot on a particular day, let it go for that day only: on the calendar, press the kept slot and choose Offer it for hire on this date. People booking online can then have it that day. Changed your mind? Press it again and choose Keep it for the club. A booking somebody made in the meantime stands.
To have this happen by itself, open Default pitch settings and, under Hours kept for the club, give the number of days. Any kept slot nobody at the club has booked by then is offered for hire. Leave it blank to keep them until you let a day go yourself.
These are the times you let the ground to other people, not the times you use it yourselves. Your own fixtures and training are booked in regardless of them. Somebody at the club can still book a time that isn’t a slot (they’re asked first). For a date that doesn’t follow the pattern, the Default pitch settings tab has Closures and one-off changes: choose a day to close it, or choose a closed day to remove its closure.
Book facilities together
When one facility should go out with another (booking the first-team pitch for a function might always take the banqueting suite too), set up an automation: in Facilities, open Automations. It can book the other facility for its own hours, or only for some bookings. See Booking facilities together, and telling your staff.
Open only part of the year
A cricket square, a summer-only 3G or a winter floodlit pitch isn’t there all year. On the Facilities overview, each ground says when it’s open (Open all year until you change it). Press Change beside it, choose Only at certain times of year, and pick the day and month it opens and the day and month it closes, such as 1 April to 30 September. The dates repeat every year, so you set them once. The closing date can come before the opening one: 1 October to 31 March is a winter pitch, open over the new year.
A ground open at more than one time of year, such as a school field let in spring and again in the autumn, has a period for each: press Add another period. To open differently for one year only (“we open late this year”), add a period and set Which years to Only in that year. In a year with an “only in” period, those are the only times the ground is open that year; your every-year periods carry on in other years.
Outside those dates nothing at the ground can be booked: no slots are offered, on your website or anywhere else, and the calendar shades those days Out of season. A block booking that runs past the last day is refused, and told which date.
Every pitch at the ground follows its dates. To make one different, open the pitch’s page and press Change booking rules. When is it open? can be the same as the ground, All year (the indoor nets at a summer ground) or Only at certain times of year, with periods of its own.
Setting dates never cancels a booking. Any already made for a day outside them are listed when you save, each linked to its day on the calendar, so you can move or cancel them. For one day outside the dates, such as an August tournament on a winter pitch, add it under Closures and one-off changes with its hours: a one-off opening wins. Your own matches and training are booked in regardless, as with booking hours.
Set what it costs
On the same page, under What your pitches cost, give the club a price per hour. A booking costs that price for as long as it lasts: half of it for 30 minutes, one and a half times it for 90. Under it you’ll see what each of your slot lengths comes to (“A 90-minute slot: £60”), so you can check it matches what you want to charge.
If some hours cost more or less than others, switch on Prices that change by time (under What Facilities shows, at the top of the page). You then give three prices per hour: High demand, Standard and Low demand. Your booking hours say which hours are which: open a set of hours and choose its Demand: Standard, High or Low. Every set starts on Standard. Evenings under lights might be high demand, weekday mornings low. A booking costs the price of the hours it starts in, for all of it: 17:00–19:00, with high demand from 18:00, costs two hours at the standard price. While prices by time are off, every hour costs the standard price, and the demand you chose for each set of hours is kept but not charged.
These prices apply to every pitch, unless a pitch has its own. Open the pitch’s page, choose Change booking rules from its Manage facility menu, and fill in What an hour costs here. A price you leave blank is the club’s. That way your 3G and your grass pitch can share the same booking hours and still charge differently.
Every booking is priced this way. A booking you make for a hirer outside the booking hours, with Book it anyway, costs the standard price. The club’s own bookings outside the booking hours cost their cost centre nothing.
A pitch with no rate isn’t free — it just can’t be paid for online. People can still ask for it and you settle up yourselves.
Decide how requests are answered
Under Approving requests, choose how:
- Someone at the club decides — the default. A request lands in your queue and holds nothing until you say yes.
- Automatically, when they pay. Paying is the approval. The slot is held for ten minutes while they decide, and for half an hour once they start paying, so two people can’t buy the same slot. If a payment still arrives after the slot has gone to somebody else, it is refunded automatically and you are told.
Start with approvals. Switch once you trust the calendar — it’s the safer way round while you’re still learning what people ask for.
Open it to the public
Nothing is public until you say so. In Default pitch settings, Can the public book your pitches? is the club’s default, with How far ahead (days) people can book.
To make one pitch different, open the pitch’s page (from its ground in Venues) and press Change booking rules. Set Can the public book it? to Yes, No or Use the club’s default (it says what the default is), and How far ahead (days), or leave that blank for the club’s. Press Save. Plenty of clubs open the 3G and keep the show pitch private, and that’s exactly what this is for. Club admins set this.
Then put it on your website — two lines to paste in.