We do not have a dedicated app, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have an app for your soccer tournament event. Our endorsed solution for a soccer tournament app is to use TeamApp. As with everything TourneyCentral, if you would like us to set up your app, just call or email us and we’d be happy to do it. Once the app is set up, you take ownership of it and become the admin. (we will send you an email and you should take ownership within 10 days. If not, we’ll assume you changed your mind and will delete your tournament from the app.)

Read this for our position on apps for tournaments.

To set up your tournament to work with TeamApp:

• Make sure you have a tournament logo in a SQUARE format, with a transparent background. PNG format works best. Just make sure it is clean and sharp. A logo that is at least 300x300px will work best.
• Set up an account with TeamApp
• When you have verified your email, etc. go to the MyTeams option and create a team app
• Follow the screen shots below and activate only the buttons that are shown. The format for the Scores and Deals are http://xxxxx.tourneycentral.com/m/?deals=1 and http://xxxxx.tourneycentral.com/m/?divscores=1 where the xxxxx is replaced by your TourneyCentral account you can find in your original set up document or by clicking on the mobile icon in your left rail.

• Caveat: You CAN activate the built-in scores, standings, schedules buttons on the TeamApp, but you will have to enter all the data twice, including all updates and scores; once in your website and again in the app. When you link to the scores, deals you only need enter them in your admin area and the app will display them in the app.
• All other features in this app, we’ve found are simply not used by the teams. They appear to be really cool, but you are just asking for more work that users will not appreciate. All of the photos, social media sharing, etc are done in their own private facebook, instagram, twitter and snapchat accounts, shared within their own micro-networks. (There is more about this in our book, The Game Through Glass)

Next steps
Once you have your TemApp all set up, as an admin, you will need to decide how you want your tournament teams to sign up to receive notifications, etc. Keep in mind, all this information is already available through a browser on their phones. The only real features they will be gaining is: 1) Keeping all their tournaments in one place and 2) Notifications.

The default group is Players and Officials. You can set up more if you’d like, but we find it starts to become burdensome administration.

Download the app to your smartphone, iOS or Android.

Search for your event and add yourself. As an admin, you can send out notifications from your phone, approve folks who sign up (or set to automatically accept them without approval… you decide how you want to handle this.) You can even add users in bulk, though they will not get the notifications if they do not have to app on their phone.

Sending out notifications and keeping in synch with your website news
Unfortunately, there is no “enter once, display everywhere” feature for notifications and news. (We’re working on it, though!) Also, assume that most teams will not download an app until they figure out that if they download the TeamApp, they can keep track of multiple events in one place. At that point, they will find it wicked cool and easy to just add and turn off/on events they go to.

So, given that, we recommend that for news you update your front page news in the Website Maintenance Module FIRST, then copy/paste the news into the Notifications/News feature of the app and send it out.

Be sure to also update your other social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter as the teams may be following you there for news. Update everywhere for critical information such as lightning warnings.

Promote the app on your front page
A few years ago, teams were eager to download an event app. Now, not so much as it is an additional step, some won’t have space on their phone… a whole host of reasons. If you want to use an app, you will need to market it aggressively. See this event for an example. If you would like to feature the app on your Suggested Mobile Apps Page (the link below the mobile icons in your left rail) we can install one for you.

You can explore additional features of TeamApp (there are many) but this tutorial will get you up and running with the basics, integrated with your TourneyCentral Scoring/Standings module.