QuickJoin Hockey digitalizes the drop-in hockey world
By @StefanKubus –
A longtime recreational hockey player in Michigan, Rob Bartlett is looking to forever change the way you sign up for drop-in hockey.
Bartlett’s QuickJoin Hockey is a mobile website from Portal Sports – iOS and Android apps coming soon – that connects both rinks and players for a more seamless process by allowing players to get information on, and ultimately sign up for, a drop-in hockey event right from the convenience of their phone.
“The product is a drop-in hockey-organizing software,” Bartlett said. “It’s a web-based client, cloud-based, and it provides streamlined opportunities for players to reach out to the community’s facility, jump on and see what times they have available listed, how many players are signed up, how many goalies are signed up, capture payment right there and reserve their spot and go play hockey.”
No longer will players have to guess how many people are going to be at a drop-in session or, even if they do call ahead, need to worry about it filling up on the drive over. They can reserve their spot ahead of time and also ensure the benches won’t be overcrowded.
Bartlett and his crew are in the process of expanding to involve more rinks in the Metro Detroit area.
“We’re just getting it going in Metro Detroit,” Bartlett said. “I’ve been bouncing around to a bunch of hockey rinks letting all the managers know this is what we’ve got going on, this is how we think it can help drive more people into your rinks, this is how we can give a modern touch to the game of hockey in playing sports and that kind of casual pick-up game that we all grew up playing hockey and such.”
Perhaps one of the more unique features that Bartlett has planned for the future is the ability to have players enter a queue. This shows the rinks the times at which there may be a spike in interest to play. Then, if possible, the rinks can then post a link to an available drop-in session and players can confirm entry from there.
It ultimately provides convenience for the players and potentially allows rinks to fill any gaps in their ice schedules.
“If they have any spare rink time or cancellations of rink time, it’d be a solution to help fill that void,” Bartlett said. “So if they have an hour here or an hour and a half or two hours, it helps list that time, it makes it public for the players to utilize in the area. Right now, they don’t know if an eight o’clock, primetime ice slot just got cancelled because a coaching situation happened and eight o’clock is just going to be sitting there. Why not list it out there toward the public, toward the player so that they can use it and if it maxes out, it maxes out, which is a good revenue generator, but also it provides a casual opportunity whenever there’s rink time available to focus players, saying, ‘Hey, you can go right here, and you can see it from the palm of your hand.”