Industry Served: Games & Sports
OurClub, A Skill-based Competition Platform That Raises Funds for Sports Clubs
From a Single Annual Fundraiser to a Year-round Platform Pick'em, Last Man Standing, Fantasy Cheltenham and Multisport Competitions, All Running at No Upfront Cost to Clubs
A Club Fundraiser That Outgrew Its Original Format
Discuss your projectFantasy Cheltenham began as a novel club fundraiser out of Erins Own GAA in Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny a competition where participants pick one horse per race across the four days of the Cheltenham Festival, with a portion of each ticket going directly back to the club that sold it. The format was simple, engaging and genuinely social: supporters used their racing knowledge, tracked their progress on leaderboards alongside clubmates, and competed for cash prizes while raising money for their club at the same time
The concept spread quickly. Clubs across GAA, soccer, rugby and other sports ran Fantasy Cheltenham each March, and the sums returned to participating clubs grew steadily. Over the life of the competition, more than €950,000 has been handed back to clubs.
The potential was clear: the same model skill-based competition, club-run fundraising, no upfront cost could work year-round and across many sports, not just one race meeting per year. We were brought in to build the platform that would make that expansion possible: OurClub, a full competition management system that runs multiple competition formats across any sport, at any time of year.
Project Challenges & Needs
One Competition Per Year Was a Ceiling
Fantasy Cheltenham ran once annually in March. Clubs had no way to run similar fundraising competitions at other times of year, leaving months of potential income and supporter engagement untapped between festivals
Manual Competition Management
Running the competition at scale selling tickets, collecting selections, scoring picks, publishing leaderboards and distributing prizes required significant manual effort that did not scale as the number of participating clubs and entries grew.
Clubs Needed a Turnkey Solution
Club committees run fundraisers in their spare time. Any new platform had to be simple enough for a volunteer with no technical background to set up and promote a competition without requiring support from the Our Club team for every step.
Multiple Competition Formats Under One Roof
Different competitions horse racing picks, football survivor pools, general sports prediction events have different rules, timings and scoring logic. The platform had to support all of them from a single infrastructure rather than requiring a separate build per format.
No Risk to Clubs or Participants
Clubs could not be asked to invest in advance. The model required guaranteed prize pools and zero upfront costs for participating organisations, with the platform generating revenue from the competition structure itself rather than charging clubs before results were in.
Supporter Participation at Volume
The more supporters who enter, the more a club raises and the more compelling the competition becomes. The platform needed to make entry, selection submission and leaderboard tracking frictionless for participants who might engage for just four days a year.
Our Solution
We built OurClub a web platform that manages the full lifecycle
of multiple skill-based competition formats, delivering:
The platform is built to run year-round across any sport. A GAA club can run a Fantasy Cheltenham competition in March, a Last Man Standing during the Premier League season, and a Pick'em event around the Six Nations all from the same club account, with no incremental setup cost.
Interfaces We Developed
Participant-facing Web Platform
Used by club committees to register, configure and manage their fundraising competitions:
- Live competition listings with entry details, prize information and closing dates
- Registration and account creation, with ticket purchase and PIN-protected access
- Daily selection submission interface, tailored to each competition format
- Real-time personal scoreboard showing accumulated points and current overall position
- Overall leaderboard and club-specific leaderboard for head-to-head competition within the same organisation
- Competition history and past results accessible from the participant's account
- How-to-play guides and FAQs per competition format
Club Portal
Used by club committees to register, configure and manage their fundraising competitions:
- Club registration and account setup with branding and contact details
- Competition selection from the available formats, with entry fee and date configuration
- Participant roster showing all ticket holders associated with the club
- Real-time revenue tracker showing income generated from ticket sales to date
- Club-specific leaderboard for the committee to share with members and promote competition
- Promotional tools including shareable links & competition entry URLs for social media & messaging
Admin Dashboard
The operational layer for the OurClub team:
- Competition creation and management across all formats, with event schedule & scoring configuration
- Club account oversight, including registration status, ticket volumes and revenue per organisation
- Entry management with manual correction tools for scoring errors and late submissions
- Automated scoring review and override capability for edge cases
- Prize fund management and distribution tracking per competition
- Platform-wide analytics covering active competitions, total entries, revenue generated and club participation rates
Competition Formats on the Platform
Fantasy Cheltenham
The original format. Participants pick one horse per race from the first five races across four days of the Cheltenham Festival. Points are awarded by finishing position, with double points on the first race each day. Daily and overall leaderboards run throughout the festival.
Pick'em
Participants predict match outcomes across a round of fixtures in any sport. Points accumulate over the competition window, with leaderboards updated after each round of results.
Last Man Standing
Each week participants pick one team to win. A correct pick keeps them in the competition; an incorrect one eliminates them. Each team can only be picked once across the season, forcing increasingly difficult choices as the weeks progress.
Multisport Event
A flexible format designed for multi-discipline events, allowing clubs to run prediction competitions around occasions that span more than one sport or competition across a single event window.
Key Platform Features
Real-time Leaderboards
Scores update automatically as race and match results come in. Participants track their overall position and their standing among fellow club members simultaneously, driving engagement throughout the competition window.
No Upfront Cost for Clubs
OurClub guarantees the prize fund and runs the competition infrastructure. Clubs start generating income from their first ticket sale with no prior investment required the model is built so clubs only benefit, never risk.
Club-specific Leaderboards
Every competition runs a table that shows only the entries from a given club, so members can compete against each other locally while also sitting in the overall competition. This creates two layers of engagement in a single competition.
Self-serve Club Setup
Clubs register, configure and launch competitions independently from the club portal. No technical knowledge is required, and no support call is needed to get a new competition live.
Year-round Fundraising
Multiple competition formats across different sports mean clubs can run fundraising events in March, August and December from the same platform account, replacing a once-a-year opportunity with a continuous fundraising programme.
Automated Scoring Engine
Results feed into the scoring engine automatically. Points calculations, leaderboard updates and elimination logic (for Last Man Standing) run without manual intervention, scaling to thousands of simultaneous entries across multiple competitions.
Outcomes and Impact
€950,000 Returned to Clubs
Platform Impact
Over €950,000 has been handed back to participating clubs since the competition began funds generated from ticket sales with no upfront investment required from any club in the programme.
One Platform, Four Formats
Scale
What started as a single annual competition now runs four distinct formats year-round, allowing clubs to fundraise across different sports calendars from a single account without any incremental setup.
Clubs Run It Themselves
Operations
The self-serve club portal allows any club committee to register, configure and launch a competition without technical support. Volunteer-run clubs with no dedicated digital resource can be fully operational within a single session.
Technologies Used to Develop the Solution
Frontend
Laravel / Blade
Cross-platform iOS and Android app, giving participants & coaches a consistent experience on either device.
Backend
PHP / Laravel
Application logic covering competition management, scoring, user accounts, club portals and prize administration.
Database
MySQL
Clubs, participants, entries, selections, results, scoring records and competition configurations.
Payments
Stripe
Secure online ticket purchase and entry fee processing, with automated revenue attribution to the selling club.
Real-time Updates
WebSockets / Broadcasting
Live leaderboard updates pushed to participants as results are processed, without requiring a page refresh.
Scoring Engine
Custom Results Processing
Automated scoring logic per competition format points allocation, double-points rules, elimination logic and leaderboard calculation running without manual input.
Notifications
Email (SMTP)
Entry confirmations, daily result summaries, selection reminders and prize notifications delivered by email.
Hosting
Cloud Infrastructure
Scalable hosting to handle traffic spikes during high-participation competition windows such as the four days of the Cheltenham Festival.
Security
Encryption & Secure Auth
Data encrypted at rest and in transit, with PIN-protected participant access and role-based permissions for club and admin accounts.
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