Getting started with OpenSports Leagues: Top things to know

The top 13 things you need to know when you create your first league/tournament on OpenSports

First, set up your league/tournament:

Starting on your Group’s homepage, click on the “Leagues” tab and click the “Create league” button. Follow the create league prompts.

We have created a whole series of guides about creating leagues/tournaments which you can access here.

How to find the admin dashboard for your league/tournament:

Once you’ve set up a league/tournament, click on your profile picture, then click on Admin Leagues and from there you can access the admin dashboards of your leagues/tournaments.

Other important things to know:

1 . Set up a waiver

If you set it up at the group level (via Settings > Waiver), it will automatically come up during league check out. Here’s how to add a waiver to your group.

Here’s a screenshot of how the waiver is embedded in the registration flow for players:

2. Covid screening questions (if applicable)

The automated covid questionnaire feature is not built into our leagues system (it is built into the events/pickups system), so players will not get the questionnaire before scheduled league matches.

The workaround that some of our customers have used is they update the match descriptions (all at once) with the covid questions and then tell everyone they need to RSVP and that rsvping equates to being in agreement with the questionnaire

Here’s how you would set it up:

League Settings > Match settings > Default match description.

The third screenshot below shows what the players see when they go to a match page to RSVP for that game.

3. Player Notifications

Once you setup matches and publish the league schedule, players will get notifications (reminded) about upcoming games 24 hours and 1 hour before matches. Players will also be notified about match changes/cancellations.

Note: As of now (March 2022) players and admins cannot change their notifications settings.

4. Do league admins receive notifications about league registrations?

As a group admin or league manager, you should be getting notified when a team registers and when a free agent registers. However, you aren’t notified when a player joins a team. The reason for this was just to minimize the number of notifications.

5. Transaction Fees

In total, the transaction fees for league and tournament payments are 5% + $0.30.

Here’s how this breaks down:

• Stripe processing fee: 2.9% +$0.30
• OpenSports service fee: 2.1%

6. Refunds & Refund Deadlines

You have to manually send refunds for leagues. There is no refund deadline functionality for leagues.

7. Processing fee for league refunds

When a refund is issued, the organizer will lose the Stripe transaction fee (2.9% + $0.30).

For example, on a $5 ticket, organizer pays 5*.029+.30 = $0.45 in fees.

Here’s more info from Stripe about understanding fees for refunded payments.

Note: We have a credit system that will be launched in July 2022.

8. League chat

Players and captains can chat amongst their own team (as you can see in the screenshot below, registered players have a team chat tab).

Admins can send announcements and they can select if they want to send announcements to captains only, or to all players in the league (which includes players and captains).

However, there is no option for a league wide chat/discussion (unless you create a group chat and add all group members to it).

9. Who assigns free agents to a team

When a player registers for a league as a free agent, they are waiting to be assigned to a team, so that they can see their roster, and the schedule.

Other players who have registered for the league cannot view all of the free agents who are waiting to be assigned to teams.

• Left screenshot: When someone has registered but hasn’t been assigned to a team, this is what their screen looks like (there’s no dashboard, chat, etc).
• Right screenshot: Once a player registers for a team, or a free agent is assigned to a team, they have access to the team roster, schedule, league standings, and team chat. (Note: for youth leagues, the Roster and Team Chat are disabled).

10. Players viewing other teams’ rosters

If a player wants to see who’s on another team, they can get there by clicking on the Standings button which shows a list of all the teams in the league, and then they can click on the name of the team they want to check the roster for, and view their roster, and schedule (Note: Rosters cannot be viewed by non-admins in youth leagues).

11. Print or export teams or match schedules

Right now, you can only download a CSV of the league/tournament schedule while you are creating the round robin schedule, from the Preview Schedule section:

We are adding another export button so that you will be able to export the schedules by Aug 2022.

12. League and tournament reports

Allow you to view registration/payment related info for leagues and tournaments! You can access reports on the OpenSports web interface by clicking on the Reports tab:

13. Export players’ responses to registration questions

You can access all the answers to your league registration custom questions from the Reports tab. Here’s our how to guide on how to

This is what the CSV looks like when converted to a spreadsheet:

14. Can you post photos to your league/tournament

You cannot upload photos in the leagues environment. You can only upload photos in the events/pickups environment. A photo that gets uploaded to an event page displays on the group page.

If you’d like to learn about game-day tips, like how to input the score, view the standings, and make quick on-the-fly schedule changes, head over to this guide!

We hope you enjoy using OpenSports to power your leagues/tournaments! Let us know if you have any questions at contact@opensports.net