First Sports International
Centralized Administrative Solutions using Cloud Platform

Today sports entities, including national federations, clubs and teams have constantly changing system requirements. Therefore, solutions delivered to these entities require flexible and scalable capabilities. Technology affects sports from the grassroots youngster to the elite players and staff. An optimal solution encompasses meeting the needs of all of the different constituents within a sporting organization. Addressing these ever changing requirements; First Sports International (FSI) caters to the sports organizations with a unique combination of software development platform and expertise in sports management. “We provide comprehensive solutions that allow sports organizations to systematically manage their coaches, players, officials, competitions, fans, and members,” says Chris Goeckel, Chairman and CEO, FSI.

The FSI platform offers a complete suite of sport specific applications built on a cloud-based ecosystem integrated into the client’s existing infrastructure and processes. “We provide sports organizations with the ability to successfully manage their members, fans, players, officials, coaches, competitions, volunteers, venues, events, tickets, payments, sponsors, participants and more,” comments Goeckel. For example, the Membership Management (MM) module provides functionality to each group (societies, regions, clubs, and schools) within the organization to create and manage their own membership schemes. MM also allows the organiza¬tions to place their products and services ‘for sale’ online with a dedicated payment gateway. In addition, the module allows individuals to access and manage their own data through a secure login to ‘My Profile’.

We provide sports organizations with the ability to successfully manage their members, fans, players, officials, coaches, competitions, volunteers, venues, events, tickets, payments, sponsors, participants and more

FSI’s Club Web Site Portal (CWS) assists organizations in managing teams, coaches, fixtures, and other activities within a club. CWS also allows clubs and their members to update their personal details, to publish and sign-up for events, update social media content, and purchase products and memberships.

In order to support a club’s event activities, FSI has built an event management module that supports clubs in administering functions like ticket allocations, arranging training, track certifications, selling merchandize, making charitable contributions, and in creating and tracking 'special one-time' social events.

“We have a long history of success dealing with the large national governing body of sports ranging from rugby and football to tennis and canoeing,” explains Goeckel. The company is currently managing databases that hold over 17 million individual records across organizations like the English Football Association, Football Federation of Australia, Wimbledon Tennis Association, and British Canoeing. Recently, the Rugby Foot¬ball Union (RFU) approached FSI to update their legacy systems to the latest Game Management System. For the past two years, their operations such as player registration, membership, competitions, and discipline and coaching details were managed under an initiative called project Optimus. After FSI upgraded their entire legacy systems to the latest First Sports platform last summer, RFU gained the ability to effectively manage all their functionalities under each department from a single centralized database.

FSI has built a comprehensive technology base that serves numerous sports governing bodies worldwide. Aiming to reduce application complexity, FSI has recently created a new development platform—project Hermes. The new platform is based on a plug-in architecture that supports unique customer logic. The platform also provides a unified UI to access the complete application suite along with advanced security and audit functionality.

“We have world-class clientele and a proven database platform, but we are keen to ensure this foundation is ready for a future with flexible and scalable solutions. With the introduction of our latest platform, we are aiming to support smaller sports associations with a business model that they could afford and which can be rapidly deployed via the cloud with mobile connectivity,” concludes Goeckel.