Sport Buoy

Players: Want to be too important to be dropped from the squad? Looking to earn a little extra money on the side?

Clubs: Want to maximise the sponsorship and marketing potential of your team? Want to find new routes to your fanbase?

A guide to ways for sports clubs and players alike to maximise the power of the Internet to their advantage. From social media and conventional marketing to sports statistics and financial management, Sport Buoy founder Ross Tucknott will be sharing all the latest tips and secrets in his weekly blog.

Sport Buoy’s Volunteer Recruitment Vacancy Board is intuitive, easy to use and simple to integrate into your existing website. Features include:

• An intuitive, accessible layout for easy reading and browsing by your website users.
• Simple integration with your site – just include a couple of lines of code!
• Visual customisation using our Style Generator, with instructions for your webmaster on how to further customise in your own code.
• Easy to use administration from within the Sport Buoy content management system.
• Link directly to specific vacancies using the ‘#’ operator – if the vacancy is removed there’s no broken links!

The Sport Buoy Volunteer Recruitment Vacancy Board is FREE!

Sport Buoy’s philosophy is simple – we want to support sports clubs of all sizes and all sports. As a result, the vast majority of our services are free right now and forever more. The only services we will ever charge for are ones which sports clubs can earn direct profits from by selling services to fans and sponsors. The core system is there to be enjoyed and exploited by all sports clubs around the world.

Sport Buoy takes a huge amount of effort to develop, however, so we won’t say no to any donations! If Sport Buoy is an asset to your sporting endeavours, please consider visiting our donations page.

Sport Buoy’s Score Text Message Service enables you to send score updates to your subscribers’ mobile phones via SMS via a simple interface which can be used from a computer, laptop or mobile phone with equal ease. Features include:

• User interface designed for quick and easy message sending.
• Customisable message templates – messages can be pre-filled so that only scores need to be entered.
• Subscriber lists easily administered from the Sport Buoy content management system.
• Subscribers can be opted out from certain message sets – half-time, full-time, updates, adverts and marketing.
• Top up message credit at any time.
• Messages can be sent internationally to over 200 countries

Sport Buoy’s Score Text Message Service is charged for on a pay-per-text basis.

Sport Buoy charges a flat rate of 5p per credit (that’s GBP£0.05).

Your club must purchase credits in advance from the Sport Buoy Credit Shop, which are then consumed by each SMS sent by you. For example, if you have 49 subscribers and sent them all 1 text message, that action would deduct 49 credits from your account.

We guarantee that purchased credits will be allocated to your account total within 48 hours, but we recommend to purchase enough credits per subscription upon receipt of the subscription fee in order to avoid cashflow complications. Your credits will last indefinitely.

Generally, each SMS sent use up one credit – a select handful of countries’ mobile operators require more than one credit, therefore it is prudent (and more profitable) to set a base subscription charge for your domestic market and a higher price for international text updates to avoid making a loss on individual subscribers.

Currency values and operator charges are of course outside of the control of Sport Buoy. However, we will endeavour to ensure that our price remains fixed indefinitely: we guarantee not to raise the price of credits unless we absolutely cannot afford to absorb the effects of currency fluctuations ourselves, under which circumstances we would notify all users well in advance of a price change. Despite the recent fall of the pound against the Euro and the dollar, though, our prices have stayed fixed throughout.

The Sport Buoy Business Directory is a feature-rich, easy and accessible business directory system which adds great value to your sports club website for users, businesses and the club itself:

User Features:

• Easy to use and accessible system for searching for local businesses
• Search for businesses alphabetically or by business type
• Download business contact details directly into Outlook, Thunderbird or other email programs in the form of a vCard

Business User Features:

• Dedicated and secure log-in system for controlling the business directory listing
• Listing includes links to website, company logo, contact information and company description
• Company description highly customisable with wide choice of HTML code elements, as allowed by the club in the Sport Buoy Business Directory admin panel.
• Companies can leap-frog their opposition in the business type rankings by paying more for their listing (optional)
• Keep track of the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) of their listing, to compare Return On Investment against other advertising options.
• Control over contact information means businesses can ensure that it is kept up to date and correct without relying on webmasters

Sports Club Features

• Simple installation into the existing sports club website – just a couple of lines of code!
• Easily customisable styles to fit with the rest of the club’s site
• New revenue stream for the sports club
• Great incentive to package with existing sponsorship options
• Keeps local business contact information up to date for use in sponsorship marketing campaigns
• Club controls what HTML businesses can use in their layouts – not just which tags but how many of them!
• Club can set number of links within the description on an individual level

The Sport Buoy Business Directory is priced on a pay-per entry basis, at a flat rate of GBP£5 per business entry payable by the clubs, not the businesses. Sports clubs may use their own discretion as to much much to charge businesses for the service – for effective pricing, clubs should consider:

1. Club website traffic
2. Club website Google Pagerank
3. Directory visibility on club website – how accessible/well-linked is the directory page?
4. Media profile of club

Clubs need to purchase Directory Credits from the Sport Buoy Credit Shop in order to attribute directory listings to business clients – one credit per client per year. Please allow 48 hours for purchased credits to be allocated to your account. Purchased credits will last indefinitely.

Due to UK money laundering regulations, Sport Buoy cannot accept payments on behalf of sports clubs from businesses: clubs must receive the money directly.

Sport Buoy’s Score Text Message Service enables sports clubs to offer a premium subscription service which can be marketed to supporters and sponsors alike. Keep your club’s fans up to date with the latest scores with a lightning-fast text message (SMS) subscription service. Secure more sponsorship money by customising text to include service sponsors or match sponsors, and sell extra advertising via text to local businesses eager to reach your supporters. Users can subscribe to half-time, full-time, latest score, home and/or away results, all at a cost to the sports club of only 5p per message! Clubs can price the service at their own discretion.