BallSquad

About the city. On 9 April 2008, Warsaw was chosen as the European Capital Of Sport, and a memorial plaque was installed in the city in honour of this event (the award was received by the mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Walz, from the hands of the mayor of Stuttgart, Wolfgang Schuster).

Goal

The aim of the project is to help public venues promote their facilities to a wider target group while having a social impact on the local communities.

Implementation period. The app was launched in May 2018.

Fact

One of the founders, Walid Barsali, was a professional basketball player in France, and when he moved to Poland, it was difficult for him to find a suitable place to play and meet other sports enthusiasts.

He realized that the problem was not that there were no sports fields or available places to play, but that there was no place where one could easily access all the information about the facilities and quickly book it online. Even when he managed to find an available place to play after a long search and numerous phone calls, booking was long and difficult due to the complex contract signing process and difficulties caused by the language barrier.

Solutions

The BallSquad company was founded in 2017. Before starting the business, the BallSquad team conducted extensive market research over two years to build a solid foundation and start collecting useful data. It is currently conducting a pilot program in Warsaw, Poland.

BallSquad is not only a technological tool but also a unique point of contact between venues and users to optimize the management and booking of sports facilities.

For citizens, this is an app that makes it easy to search and book public sports venues. It has additional features such as creating games, picking teams and splitting of payments between the players.

For managers of public sports venues, it is a tool for generating more revenue from field renting and a system for effectively managing commercial and non-commercial hours and slots (creating schedules for schools, tracking the transaction history of commercial clients, etc.). BallSquad places objects on the map and helps them get more clients.

For public administration, it is a system that falls into the category of smart city, providing the ability to generate reports on the use of sports facilities on their territory in order to be able to manage them more effectively. The data generated by the system makes it possible to better align public objects with the needs of citizens.

Challenges

While reaching out to potential partners and businesses, the company realized that the biggest challenge is to convince public administration of the value of a centralized online platform and the need of changing old habits and management systems. Once this barrier was overcome, the value of such a system became apparent to partners.

Team

BallSquad company, founders: Walid Barsali, Dorota Caban, Michel Tatarczuk

Timeline

• The app is still in beta testing. For now, only the website is available (in Polish and English).

• While sports facilities were closed during the coronavirus lockdown, Walid Barsali and his team worked on improving BallSquad’s current technology, joined a scale-up programme and signed a new major partnership. Some facilities are reopening now and become available to bookings, following government guidelines and regulations.

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