MEET OUR SPONSORS - ClubSpot

ClubSpot’s new facility booker, developed following feedback from clubs juggling pitches, halls and gyms, went live to users nationwide in April.

The new piece of software is designed to take one of the messier jobs in club life off volunteers’ hands. It is already being used by clubs in Cavan, Monaghan and beyond.

Facility Booking brings every pitch, hall, gym and meeting room attached to a club into a single shared calendar, visible from the ClubSpot admin portal.

The feature was designed following two years of conversations with club secretaries and facility managers who described the same recurring frustrations: Double bookings between team managers, scattered text threads about who is using the main pitch on Saturday, and the weekly headache of letting every team know that the gym is closed on a Tuesday morning for cleaning.

“The brief came directly from clubs, not from a whiteboard,” Barry Watters, Head of Product at ClubSpot said. “Most booking software forces clubs to fit into a rigid timeslot grid that doesn’t match how a club actually trains. Senior football wants a 90-minute slot, an U10 pitch session might be 60 minutes, and a full match block runs to three hours. Managers told us the system has to bend around the club, not the other way around.”

The new feature lets administrators set custom opening hours, minimum booking durations, and a maximum lead time so a single team cannot claim every Tuesday at 8pm for the entire calendar year before anyone else gets a look in. Pitches and halls can also be split into named halves so two underage teams can train on the same surface at the same time without standing on each other’s toes - a small detail that, ClubSpot says, came up in nearly every interview the team did.

Notifications

When a closure has to happen - frost, resurfacing, heavy rain, etc - administrators can mark the dates in one place and the system automatically notifies every team manager whose booking has been affected, with the reason. That replaces what is, for many secretaries, a dozen phone calls and a lot of crossed wires for a single weekend’s wash-out.

The feature went through a short test phase with a handful of clubs in late March, letting the team iron out any teething problems before opening it up to every ClubSpot user in April.

Each booking carries the name and contact details of whoever made it, so a senior manager who needs the main pitch at short notice for a championship game can see at a glance who to ring rather than starting a club-wide guessing game. Clubs can also upload photos and details of their facilities - surface type, indoor or outdoor, available equipment - for the benefit of new managers who do not yet know every corner of the grounds.

The launch is the latest in a steady run of releases for ClubSpot, which was founded in 2020 and has been quietly building its presence in Cavan. Closer to home, the company’s longest-running partnership with Cavan GAA, has now driven over €1M in cumulative revenue growth for the county across five years on the platform.

ClubSpot is also growing where it lives. The team has roughly doubled in size over the past 18 months and is on track to reach around 50 staff by the end of the year, providing skilled, well-paid technology roles of the kind that, until recently, would have meant a commute to Dublin or further afield. Several of the most recent hires are returners to Cavan, drawn back by the chance to work on a product that volunteers around the country actually use every day. The company says it expects to keep adding to the team through 2026 and is keen to hear from anyone with the right skills who would like to build a career closer to home.

Facility Booking is being rolled out to existing ClubSpot clubs at no extra cost as part of their current plan, a deliberate choice, the team said, to avoid asking volunteers to manage yet another piece of software. The feature is live now across the ClubSpot admin portal, with a short walkthrough video available on the company’s website.

For any clubs around Cavan, Monaghan or further afield who would like a closer look at how the new feature works, the team is happy to show it in person or on a quick video call, details at www.clubspot.app