Plug the hole: why governing bodies must stop losing players

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After partnering with The NEDwork, PlayHQ's Sam Grimley argues that governing bodies already have the tools to reach beyond their core and keep people playing. What's holding many back is fear of change.

By Sam Grimley, Head of Partnerships: International, PlayHQ

In October, I spent 24 hours with The NEDwork at Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium. I came away with plenty to think about, and those ideas have stayed with me since.

The room was full of leaders from across Olympic and Paralympic sport, all focused on getting more people playing. We were proud to be there as a partner, and to hear great ideas surface in session after session.

What struck me most was that the biggest thing holding governing bodies back is a fear of change. 

Most sports know their core audience inside out. From committed members to regular competitors, and the volunteers who have been there for years. However, what they lack is a way to reach everyone else, including lapsed players, parents on the sidelines, and the kids who came to a come-and-try session but never returned.   

That's where the potential growth is, but you can't see it without reliable data.

Most governing bodies have bought registration software, scheduling software and payment gateways. Each solved a problem and created a handoff, but the fragmentation didn't go away. It went digital. The same participant is counted three times across club databases, and the numbers are months old by the time anyone compiles or analyses them.

Having one overarching record for each participant changes that. As our CEO, Tim MacKinnon, put it on the panel, if someone else already holds the data on your potential participants, as Strava does for many runners and cyclists, fish where the fish are. Partner with them and work out how to bring those people into your clubs.

Sport needs to be as sticky as a social feed

The algorithm knows exactly what keeps us scrolling, and sport needs to know what keeps people playing.

On the panel, Tim said most sports are running a bath without putting the plug in. Across the 13-14 million registrations we’ve handled in Australia, average annual churn is 27%. The best sports hold it to 15%. 

If a sport loses 27% of its members each year and wants to grow by 10%, it needs to find 37% new members every year. That's a tough ask.

Stickiness comes from knowing what your participants value. In football, it’s league tables. In cricket, it's individual players’ stats. For the parent of a five-year-old, it might be every photo from their child's first season in one place. 

So, sports that integrate what people value with their systems are more likely to keep participants coming back. People who use their governing body's app every week are retained much more than those who don't. And if you get someone playing twice a year, their churn halves.

Sticky also means spotting who's drifting away. Attendance, game time and results all signal who's at risk of leaving. We already flag to clubs the players we don't expect back next season. That's why we'd put churn on the first page of every board pack.

People drift away without a smooth process

People expect the same experience from joining a club or booking a session as they get everywhere else in their lives. Parents who can seamlessly order food on their phone shouldn't have to call the club secretary to find out where their child’s game is. 

Get it right, and participants naturally follow. In its first year with live scoring on our platform, Basketball England saw a 30% increase in affiliated participants. Players wanted to see their stats. Leagues wanted tools that made the game easier to run.

People join clubs, not sports. Our research shows around 80% of people join a club for a sense of belonging, and 80% of children play because their friends are there.

That makes the club volunteer central to any participation strategy. Volunteers still build fixtures in spreadsheets, type in paper scores on Sunday night and reconcile payments at midnight.

Tools that add to that load drive them away faster. The right ones take work off their plate. Around 30% of administrators on our platform already ask AI to do tasks for them, from processing a transfer to setting up a competition.

Focus on what you're good at

The sports making real progress double down on their strengths and partner for the rest.

Governing bodies are brilliant at running competitions, developing coaches and looking after their communities. Building and maintaining software is rarely their strength. 

Many larger bodies built their own systems, often for good reasons. The question is what those systems will cost over the next five years, with capability frozen at the build date and the roadmap tied to the internal budget. 

Whilst AI can cut some coding effort, it doesn't replace the expertise, compliance and reliability needed to run competitions at scale.

Partnering isn't giving up control. It's choosing where to spend scarce money and attention. It also delivers the collaboration everyone at The NEDwork said they wanted. Sports that share a platform learn from each other, and the volunteer running the under-11s on a Saturday benefits from what worked in another sport on the other side of the world.

Four questions for your next board meeting

Funding cycles come and go. The sports that thrive will invest in systems that keep working when the grant runs out. If we could put four questions on every governing body's board agenda, they'd be:

1. Who's hard to reach, and how do we reach them?
2. What keeps our participants coming back every week?
3. Is joining our sport as easy as everything else in their day?
4. What should we stop building and start partnering on?

The tools to answer all four already exist. Standing still feels safe. It isn't.

Sam Grimley | Head of Partnerships, PlayHQ

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