There are various costs to divvy up for sports activities including league fees, equipment, uniforms, ref costs and field or gym time. Even those watermelon slices are being paid for by someone! It’s often inefficient to collect payments from a large group and it can leave the team captain or group leader in a bind.

Sportsvite is pleased to announce a partnership with Serve from American Express. Serve is a reloadable prepaid account and digital commerce platform that makes it easier for people to pay each other. Serve allows you to organize your money, send and receive funds instantly by email, txt and Facebook, and manage payment requests – all from a single, unified online account.

Serve callouts and links have been integrated throughout the Sportsvite community especially within the use cases that often involve payments. Serve is also promoted through team management features, the Sportsvite Weekly email, and new member account and invite notifications.

Sportsvite is also partnering with many of the top sport leagues and organizations through the LeagueApps platform and the Sportsvite Recreational Sports Network. Notify your league commissioner if your sports organization and its players can utilize Serve. Your league can complete this survey form to be considered for the marketing partnership.

Sportsvite is pumped for the value that Serve brings to our community of sports participants. Here are some of the top benefits that will make it easier to manage your team outside the lines and allow you to focus on what happens on the playing field.

Send & Receive Payments Through Mobile Devices
Players interact with their teammates on the field, not in front of their computers, so it’s important to have a flexible multi-platform solution to share payments. With the Serve mobile app a player can manage their account and send or receive money on the go.

Make Team Purchases With Your Serve Card
When player set up their Serve account they will also receive a reloadable prepaid card that can be used to make purchases wherever American Express® Cards are accepted. This allows your team to keep funds in a Serve account and make purchases using Serve throughout the season.

Create Subaccounts For Teammates or Group Members
A team captain or manager can create Serve subaccounts and then transfer money into and out of the subaccount seamlessly, view spending activity and control access. It’s perfect for paying different fees throughout the season.

It’s Free!
It’s free to sign up for a Serve account. It’s also free to make person-to-person money transfers as well as making purchases with your Serve card.

The game is typically played two ways:

1. With goals - when water conditions are calm: Lakes, Outdoor/Indoor Pool, Beach
Goals are set up either 25m or 50m apart. 4 players from each team are in the water at a time – 1 goalie and 3 spread out in the “field”. The team that scores the most goals wins. Each pass must bounce on the water, even when scoring.

2. No goals – when surf is too active at the beach.
If conditions are too rough, then players play by open water game rules where no goals are used and players must keep the ball away from defending team in order to successfully pass the ball to each team member in order to score a point. The ball cannot be picked up. It must bounce on the water and be caught.

Gametime: 30 mins
Players: Ages 15-35, Coed, 6 players/team
Fun Fact: Tackling is allowed, but not the player who has the ball.

As a IWF league partner, Waboba will offer discount pricing on products and social/marketing support, which includes: prizes for winning teams, listing games/leagues on waboba.com, and spreading the word via Facebook & Twitter.

If you are a league or sports organization interested in adding Waboba to your list of sports offered, please email Jordan@waboba.com to receive a free sample of the Waboba Pro ball and a PDF of the IWF team packet with complete rules.

Here is why SEO is important for a sports league website.

Discovery – A perspective player interested in a local sports league will often search google by typing in their city/town and the sport. For example, a dude in Kansas City who wants to play flag football might search “Kansas City Flag Football”. They’ll often click on the first result. That should be your league!

Website Promotion and Communication - Even your existing members might not know the URL for your website. So they also will search Google to find the league. For example, a member of Rockville Athletic Sports League might type that into search. It’s important your league website shows up first so there is no confusion and your members can easily find the website.

Add in potential sponsors, marketing partners and local press that may also be trying to connect with local sports leagues and it’s essential to have a highly indexed website.

There is no need to hire consultants or high-priced SEO “gurus” to improve your search ranking. The real key is identifying keywords or phrases and properly implementing them into your website.

Keywords
Keywords are the search terms used by people who you want to find you league. The goal is to identify these keywords and optimize for them so when a potential customer does their search they will find your league. For most sports league websites, keywords will focus around the local town/city, the specific sport, and terms like “league”, “tournament”, “sport and social club”, etc. You can use a tool like Google Keyword Editor to help see popular searches.

Once you identify your top keywords there are a few simple steps to take that will improve your league website ranking.

1) Website URL
It’s great to have a domain, sub-domains and URL’s that include your keywords. Even if you already have a domain, make sure your new pages have search-engine friendly URL’s by using clear keywords. For example, if your website is wrecksports.com and you are creating a new dodgeball section a great url would be http://dodgeball.wrecksports.com or even http://wrecksports.com/newyorkcity-dodgeball

2) Page Titles
Every web page has a page title. It can usually be viewed at the top of your browser. Most people don’t even notice the page title so it’s real importance is how it influences search rankings. It’s essential to have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page. If you want to include your league name, put it at the end.

3) Page Content
The actual content (text) on your web pages is also indexed. Try to incorporate your keywords into the page headers (page title, h1, h2, h3 tags) as well as the body text in a clear, well-written structure. Also, be sure to add meta keywords and meta description into your coded pages. Your website developer or designer might need to help you here. Be sure to ask!

4) Inbound links or Backlinks
Perhaps the most important SEO concept is to get other highly ranked website to link to your website. Google uses links as an indicator of relevancy. Make sure all of your partners are linking to your website and try and find other websites, blog and social media platforms (Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc.) to link directly to your website. Linking to your website from your Sportsvite league profile is a great way to build “link juice”. Quality links are also the best way for your site “spidered” so that your pages are indexed and appear in Google.

With these few simple moves you should see an increase in your search traffic. There are more advanced SEO strategies as well. It will make a difference.

When Sportsvite created our league management platform LeagueApps we made sure to focus on optimizing SEO for our partners. You should be doing the same thing!

If you’re a league organizer, we’re happy to discuss SEO in more detail. Hit us up!

This summer the 2011 Herbalife World Foootball Challenge brings top international teams to the USA as part of the ultimate soccer event.

New Yorkers will have the treat to see Italian Serie A club team Juventus F.C. take on Mexican League team Club America.

Date: Tuesday, July 26, 7:30pm
Place: Citi Field — Flushing, New York

Tickets are available at the Citi Field Box Office or by calling 718-507-8499. They can also be purchased online at www.507tixx.com.

Sportsvite also has a few tickets to give away. So reach out to us if you are interested.

300 New York is not just your traditional bowling center.  In following the newest trend in the industry of boutique bowling centers, 300 ranks right up there among the leaders with nine locations throughout the U.S.  No longer does a bowling alley just have a pro shop, a handful of lanes and a dingy looking bar.  Now the industry is full of hybrid bowling centers like 300, which have plush amenities such as beautiful, comfy couches in the bowling area.  In addition, certain elements standard to most Family Entertainment Centers (FECs) can be found on site.  300 has an arcade area full of games and a redemption counter.

The most integral part of any bowling event is the lanes themselves.  The atmosphere at 300 sets the tone for a fun time with great tunes to go along with large screens that showed sporting events, music videos and more.  Along with neon guide lights, glow in the dark bowling balls helped brighten everyone’s experience.  Maybe the coolest feature of all is the ability to pick from different themes for your electronic scoring machine.

If you are looking for a great place to eat or drink or bowl, 300 New York has it all.  For more information visit them at www.300newyork.com.

It has long been known that Nash is a passionate soccer fan.  He played growing up in his native British Columbia, long before he ever picked up a basketball.  Together with The Steve Nash Foundation, Adidas, and main sponsor Ortsbo, he put on a pickup soccer game called the Showdown in Chinatown NYC for the fourth consecutive year.  Team Nash competed against a team led by former US Men’s national team captain Claudio Reyna.

One of this year’s main draws was the opportunity to see rising soccer stud Giuseppe Rossi; who did not disappoint and took home ‘Man of the Match’ honors.  Rossi is a New Jersey native and Italian national team regular, in addition to starring in La Liga  Villareal CF.  Other participants included Nash’s teammates Raja Bell, Leandro Barbosa, and the laughable Jared Dudley, who should have a few nice turf burns from his post-goal celebration.  Other memorable moments came from guys scoring goals on Gortat, the jolly green giant goalie for Team Reyna, whose performance in goal will certainly not be earning him a call up to any league in any part of the world. Throughout the match, Nash stayed true to his point guard nature and set his teammates up with nice dishes, while coming up with 2 goals of his own.

Overall the event was a success with over 300 fans in attendance at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side.  Team Sportsvite was glad we had a chance to catch some of the action before it started pouring.

Final Score: Team Nash 16 - Team Reyna 10.
For more information on the Steve Nash Foundation click here, https://www.stevenash.org

Xoso founder Nick Berruezo had a mission to bring recreational sports to Sacramento.

“I played in two different kickball leagues in San Diego, and had always wanted to have my own business… always searching for the right idea.  My plan was to move back to northern California and start Xoso in San Francisco, but saw a need in Sacramento since there wasn’t a sport and social league there!”

So Berruezo did just that. In May 2008, he started a kickball league with 50 players. He then added dodgeball, indoor kickball, and volleyball the following year. Then came Xoso’s revolutionary idea- a Recess league that combines all three sports (Indoor Kickball, Dodgeball, and Volleyball) into one “variety pack”, or “sampler” league. In just 3 years, the organization grew to over 3,000 members! Check out the full Xoso timeline here.

Xoso doesn’t shy away from other extracurriculars either, with seasonal pub crawls that have earned them acclaim on both the local and national levels. Berruezo and co. volunteer for community charities and events too. Upcoming events include the MetroEDGE dodgeball tournament benefitting Junior Achievement, the Race for the Ring benefitting the Sacramento Food Bank, and the West Coast Brew Fest. They’ve also created a VIP discount card to help support local businesses and give members quality discounts. Talk about a win-win!

Registration is now open for Xoso’s coed Dodgeball & Recess summer leagues. Sign up here, you won’t regret it!

Girardot started SBA about 8 years ago in his rural hometown of Forney, TX. As a kid, he ball-boyed for the Dallas Mavericks and got to watch Dirk Nowitzki from up close. Girardot naturally took after Dirk’s game, to the point that strangers regularly call him “Dirk” before the end of many pick-up games!

Motivated by the success of his beloved Mavs, Girardot’s vision was to create a state-wide summer league for various ages, high-schoolers & up. What started as a hobby grew into a full-fledged program quicker than a J. Kidd-led fast-break. Last summer SBA hosted 40 teams in 4 different cities, or “divisions” (Tyler, Levitt, Forney, Dallas). This year Girardot and co. have secured 200 teams and 18 divisions, thanks to new partnerships with gym facilities in Austin, Bryan, & San Antonio to name a few.

At the end of the summer, SBA will invite each of its division leaders to the STATE CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT in San Antonio, where a Shamrock champion will be crowned. A dunk contest and three-point shootout will also be part of the festivities.

But that’s not it for Girardot, who truly takes the saying Everything’s Big in Texas to heart. “Our players will actually be looked at by all of our local coordinators and the best players will be invited to try out for our Pro-Am tourney representing the All-SBA team, possibly even getting to play with some current and former NBA players.”

Ryan Girardot is pumped to see how this season goes, and plans to one day take SBA to the national level. At this rate, don’t bet against him!

Sign up here for any of Shamrock’s divisions, powered by Leagueapps.
Tip-offs in the first week of June!

The idea first arose in 2008 when SSSC founder Brad Satterwhite and a co-worker of his wanted to get a group of their employee friends together for some good-natured out-of-office fun. They decided on bowling, but when the crew couldn’t find a local league that fit their needs, Satterwhite stepped up and played the role of league organizer. The office-mates started with 12 teams in what later became known as the Planning, Policy, Urban Development Bowling League (or ‘PUDL for short, named after their career field). 3 years later, PUDL is back for a Spring season and more popular than ever before. Longtime PUDL member Jim Clark says:

“PUDL gives you that chance to have a really great time with really great people. You will not find a bowling league that has as much fun both in the alley and out than we at PUDL do.”

But even this is just the tip of Sacramento’s iceberg.. Last year league members started asking about other sports and activities. Recognizing the potential there, Satterwhite has since set up leagues that appeal to the socially-inclined, co-ed crowd- adding Mini-Golf, Cornhole, and Beer Pong to the mix. There is even a league devoted entirely to team trivia, as well a golf league named “Putt-Putt League of Awesomely Fun People” (all members are guaranteed free putt-putt after the season ends.. nice!). Thus, Sac Sport and Social is creating a niche for itself as THE social league in greater Sacramento. You can almost think of it as a well-organized, neverending carnival for adults.

The commish also emphasizes rewards and prize opportunities for his participants. Sign up on the official SSSC website here and win a pair of movie tickets to Tower Theatre in Sacramento- just enter “Sportsvite” in the ‘Referred by/from’ section of the form.

Once you’ve created an account on the website, register for summer leagues here via SSSC’s LeagueApps-powered online registration, OR in person at MVP’s Sports Grill on Thursday, April 28th from 5:30pm-7pm.

Be sure to “like” Sacramento Sport and Social Club’s Facebook Page, thanks for the support!

Everyone in the gym had high spirits- the bikers pumped their legs with purpose, while all the non-bikers cheered on like it was the final leg of the Tour de France. Even Seth Myers of SNL was there to bike his goofy butt off.

The energy was contagious! Just being in attendance was truly inspiring. We took some photos and videos of the action. It was nice to see Sportsvite on the back of the t-shirts, but we vow to be active participants and bring our own team next year. We hope to see you there. Congrats to everyone!

Here’s a nice, informative recap by Fox News NY.