Mingle: Elevating your grassroots club

Avatar
Image credit: Mingle

Founded in 2021, Mingle is a Dutch sports start-up aiming to elevate grassroots clubs through its impressive technology portfolio.

Mingle’s core product, the Mingle Sport app, strives to be a one-stop place for club members to easily access every piece of information they need.

The company offers three packages for clubs to use, from a basic free package to an extensive pro tier.

Team Management 

At its core, the Mingle Sport app is an easy to use, extensive and fluid way to organise a team. Users can implement a highly detailed schedule to track games, training sessions and other events.

This schedule can then be synced to a range of digital calendars, including Google, Outlook and iCloud. Through the schedule, players and coaches can RSVP and set up reminders.

To help identify how healthy a club is, Mingle also allows users to track attendance over a season by identifying trends.

Line-ups

One of the most important and enjoyable aspects of coaching is creating the team line-up, knowing this, Mingle provides an incredible degree of creativity within its native line-up builder.

The Mingle Sport app offers a range of formations for teams that are not only 11-a-side but also 7-a-side and lower.

Additionally, if the available formations are not to the liking of the user, Mingle enables users to drag and drop players to a desired location.

During a match, the line-up builder can also be used to track substitutions.

In higher tiered packages, match minutes can be live tracked, enabling users to see how many minutes each player is getting.

Team Communication 

The Mingle Sport app ensures club information is quickly available and accessible through its team chat.

Members can message through individual channels, or sub-groups can be created to deliver information quickly to multiple people at once.

Mingle’s line-up builder allows for team sheets and line-ups to be shared through the app to players, preparing them for games ahead.

Furthermore, notes and comments can be added to media posted on the app, allowing for updates and fun discussion to take place.

Performance Tracking 

The Mingle Sport app caters to a wide range of performance tracking, holding both quantitative and qualitative data.

Users can use the app to score keep, tracking stats such as goals, assists, and cards.

The app can then be used to measure trends, such as win rate, goal scoring, and goal difference. Additionally, members can rate matches from one to five.

Furthermore, Mingle Sport can be linked with Mingle’s Homebase, a desktop app focused on deeper analysis.

Mingle Sport also enables every team member to vote for three players of the match, for three different awards – MVP, Playmaker and Workhorse.

These MVP awards feed into Mingle’s monthly awards, where players can be awarded for receiving the most MVP awards within a month.

In addition, Mingle features leader boards which can track a range of stats, such as goals, assists and even attendance. These awards and leader boards act as a way to further motivate players into training harder and performing.

Content Sharing 

Mingle understands not everyone can access every game, so the app provides a live feed option in its premium tiers.

Users can customise the live feed to include the score, line-up, commentary, videos and blogs.

The live feed can then be enhanced by sharing updates and push notifications to members on key match moments.

Fortunately, the live feed is not exclusive to club members, outside fans can access the live feed through a shared link.

Besides the live feed, Mingle allows for a range of content sharing, users can post videos and photos in the app, which can be commented on. These can then be collated into albums, such as an end of year highlights package.

Conclusion 

Through its doctrine of ease, simplicity and accessibility, Mingle has proven itself as an incredibly and innovative successful start-up.

For any grassroots club looking to streamline and elevate their club communication, the Mingle Sport app is a perfect solution.

Previous ArticleNext Article

How Musco Lighting is Transforming the Game

Avatar
Image Credit: Musco Lighting

Lighting quality, uniformity, and control are three of the most important elements a football venue must master. Done well, they elevate the standard of play, enhance the fan experience, and ensure world-class broadcasts. 

Modern football demands more than just traditional floodlights. From community fields to elite stadiums, facilities need solutions that combine performance, efficiency, and reliability.

Musco Lighting believes their systems, which are engineered LED technologies, modular mini-pitch packages, and advanced control platforms are the key to achieving these goals.

Musco’s “Projects Made Simple” approach offers complete, tailored lighting solutions designed for every level of the game. Central to this is Total Light Control for LED, a system that provides precise light distribution while reducing glare and minimising environmental spill.

Complementing Total Light Control for LED is Musco’s Mini-Pitch System, developed in the U.S. Soccer Foundation. These compact, all-in-one facilities combine fencing, goals, benches, storage, and integrated lighting, transforming underused spaces into safe, vibrant football environments.

Features of Musco’s lighting include; uniform illumination across the pitch, therefore eliminating dark zones; advanced glare reduction, which ensures comfort for players, spectators and surrounding areas of the pitch; and smart monitoring, which allows operators to remotely control and schedule the lighting. The lighting company also uses sustainable practices with the ability to have energy savings of up to 60%. 

Musco’s systems have already been used by some of the biggest names in football.

At Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal FC, the installation of Musco’s SportsCluster Green LED system has been transformative according to Arsenal’s Stadium and Facilities Director, John Beattie.

“It is important for both players and fans alike that we have top-quality lighting for the club’s evening fixtures and Musco’s new floodlights provide just that.” he said. 

AFC Bournemouth faced the challenge of upgrading their facilities following promotion to the Premier League in 2015 but Club General Manager Liz Finney said the company’s product was crucial.

“We needed to install a new pitch lighting system to meet the requirements of both the club and the Premier League in a fairly short space of time. Musco delivered on all counts.” Finney said. 

Elsewhere, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Audi Field in Washington D.C. have reported improved player visibility, enhanced broadcast quality, and major energy savings following their adoption of Musco’s technology.

Australia’s football landscape presents unique challenges. Facilities often serve multiple sports, grassroots participation is rapidly expanding, and professional leagues increasingly demand higher broadcast standards.

Musco’s systems offer important benefits to help with this development, these include mini-pitch installations, which could expand access to safe well lit spaces in urban areas, which would help to support grassroots growth.

Another benefit could be that elite stadiums could meet higher broadcast standards to match international scale games. Finally, using Musco would create energy savings and have a reduced environmental aspect.

Musco’s football lighting solutions are much more than a technical upgrade, they also represent a shift in how football is played, viewed, and experienced. By pairing innovation with reliability, they support the game from grassroots fields to international arenas.

As Australia looks to strengthen its football infrastructure, Musco’s proven effective technology could help bridge the gap between community play and world-class competition.

Overall, the use of Musco Lighting systems could greatly improve football in Australia, whether you are playing or watching the game.

GIS Industry Masterclass Highlights Pathways for Women’s Sport

Avatar
Image Credit: Soccerscene

This month, the Global Institute of Sport (GIS) held an industry masterclass with guest speakers discussing the future of development in women’s sport.

The masterclass panel had two key speakers:

  • Chantella Perera, General Manager of Sport at KOJO.
  • Yael Reed, a sports marketing consultant who has worked with Newcastle Jets, Football Australia and Netball NSW.

These two industry experts, representing different areas of the women’s sporting world, delved into answering the event’s important goal of growth and sponsorship in women’s sport.

The role that media and commercial partners have in elevating women’s sport was a key point. Discussion was centred around the importance of encouraging broadcasters to invest in women’s sport directly and not just through male sport avenues.

Yael Reed spoke about the importance of media revenue being invested into women’s sports.

“Media partners with broadcast and commercial revenue is ultimately what is invested in the sport, and you need to invest to grow,” she said.

“Broadcast and commercial revenue also contributes to paying the players

“Media and coverage revenue is what is invested into the sport and their support is needed to help sports to grow, but also to benefit from, Women’s sport is no longer the steak knives.”

Chantella Perera, a former professional sportsperson and with KOJO a big leader in women’s sports events, outlined the position of women’s sports:

“From grassroots we see more equity with facilities and infrastructure for girls now. From my field in the event world lens, the investment from clubs and leagues is improving year on year. The disparity is still huge,” Perera said.

“There must be money invested to grow it. Yes, it is changing—a lot more females can do it as a job.

“But I feel we are still talking a lot but not doing a lot. People can make action, and it doesn’t have to be huge actions. Making those small steps towards that change is where we move forward.

“The Matildas’ success at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup has sparked a rise in interest towards women’s football in the country.”

Perera, however, commented on the slow impact it has produced:

“It did have an impact with the eyes and traction, but we are still waiting for the influx of cash,”

“I’d challenge the effect and ask: two years on, have we seen enough from it? I just want to see if we can get more from it.”

A key point regarding investing in women’s sport and central to the discussion was how to invest in the differences between men’s and women’s sport.

Reed expressed her key ways in which this step can be tackled:

“It’s important for brands to consider Who they are trying to connect with? The benefit of women’s sport is it’s fresh and new (compared to men’s sport). There’s a lot to be unexpected. There are amazing people playing the sport and their story needs to be told,”

“I think when you can connect with athletes, with clubs, and harness that promotion and opportunity that’s there with women’s sport.

“The opportunity in women’s sport is to expect the unexpected.” Reed highlighted.

The important question of brand alignment became central to the discussion, with the equation for branding being relevance multiplied by emotion equals impact.

To harness the sponsor’s relevance to the team and the sport, harnessing that emotion and being relevant to the fans and showing up for them and having an impact promotes any brand.

An example presented by Reed was the Suzuki partnership with the Swifts:

“By putting players in their content and in the car the swift has been really positive,”

“The business case is there. We now have a greater asset in women’s sport to take your brands to the next level

“To have a women’s demographic is such a good asset for business branding.”

Women’s sport has faced challenges in gaining support and funding to expand and delve into the ever-growing popularity of the women’s game.

Sponsorships and businesses trying to grow their portfolio and market shouldn’t underestimate the power that women’s sport and football have.

It is unique and it is unexpected, as was discussed centrally in this masterclass.

The ways to grow women’s sport are there, and the benefits are evident. Sponsors need to take the necessary step and will undoubtedly reap the rewards if they do so.

Most Popular Topics

Editor Picks

Send this to a friend