PlayerSync

PlayerSync is a solo entrepreneurial project — a mobile app designed to replace the chaos of WhatsApp group chats for casual football organisers. The app will handle the weekly coordination loop: players confirm availability via RSVP, organisers select teams, and game payments are collected through Stripe, removing the need to chase bank transfers or manually manage the head-count.

Additional features include real-time group chat with breakout rooms, player profiles with position preferences and stats, a Slack-like user status system, and push notifications for reminders and updates.

The project is currently in active development. Product, UX and UI design are complete, and technical implementation is underway. The stack is React Native with Expo Router in a Turborepo monorepo, with Supabase handling the backend and data layer.

Key challenges include building a viral acquisition loop — each organiser naturally onboards 10–20 players — while ensuring the experience is compelling enough for players, not just organisers. Embedding social and collaboration features alongside the core utility layer is central to driving weekly retention beyond administrative use.

Roughly 10 million UK adults play recreational sports, with football dominant, yet the tools available to casual organisers remain poor overall. Competing apps are either generic and sport-neutral — prioritising broad coverage over tailored experience — or poorly built despite large install counts, confirmed by poor reviews in the app stores.

PlayerSync is aiming for a football-native UX that treats organisers and players as first-class users. A key product challenge is building genuine engagement beyond administrative tasks — embedding rich social and gamification features to genuinely enrich the group's experience and establish player-side pull that makes organiser adoption self-sustaining.