How Played helped Badminton England improve community court access by 220 hours a week

Badminton England are currently using Played’s platform to automate the management of 28 facilities across the country. The platform makes it easier for coaches to find and book a suitable venue for their activities, enables Badminton England to maximise the use of facilities and simplifies the collection of payments by the facilities from the coaches. 

 We caught up with Chris Evans, Relationship Manager @ Badminton England to find out about his experience working with Played. 

 Before working with Played, Badminton England had significant time constraints because 

• They were managing their admin manually across various different systems
• Chasing up coaches through different channels to ensure payments were made on time and we were struggling to meet deadlines ‍

“When managing 2 facilities the admin was feasible, but when we started to scale up our programmes across multiple venues around the country, the admin started to get more complex and difficult to manage efficiently” 

“Played’s platform centralises all our admin into one place and the majority of my previous work is now automated which saves us a lot of time”

By using the platform, Played have helped Badminton England to:

• Reduce their admin by managing it all in one place
• Build block bookings to allow coaches more options when hiring facilities 
• Track payments in one place, to ensure they keep on top of all transactions 
• Make their facilities more accessible online, creating greater opportunities to generate more revenue by booking out all of their venues

“Our venue management process is now more streamlined as we can produce bookings, send online payments requests to coaches, receive payments with ease and we're able to track everything through the dashboard”

“Feedback from our coaches about the platform has been very positive as the digital booking process for venue hire has made paying much easier for them”

As a result of using the Played platform, Badminton England have: 

Opened up 5 schools’ facilities to the public leading to

• 15 additional badminton courts 
• 70+ hours of community access per week to new sports halls 
• 220 additional hours of badminton court access 

The Played platform had a positive impact on school venues as it helped:

• Create a new admin free revenue stream for schools whereby Badminton England manage the bookings.
• Maximise the use of their facilities and allows them to strengthen their relationship with local communities
• Offer their students new opportunities to engage in extracurricular badminton activities

 Played’s impact on the wider badminton community: 

• 10 new coaches delivering badminton sessions
• 9 clubs and 2 county associations have access to new facilities helping them grow their membership 
• 1 new disability badminton programme launched, helping make badminton more inclusive

“Played are always eager to listen to feedback and are constantly developing new updates for the platform which enhance our partners’ experience”

If you would like to learn more about how we can support your organisation in growing participation please schedule a time to touch base here