How Versus Sports Speeds Up Football Tournament Registration in Italy With WP Event Manager

In this case study, we look at why Versus Sports needed a flexible events framework, how five of our add-ons handle football tournament registration and communication, and why Mr Patrich calls WP Event Manager a long-term technology partner.

Company: Versus Sports, Italy
Industry: Sports, youth and amateur football tournaments
Contact: Mr Patrich, CEO
Website: versussports.it

About Versus Sports

Versus Sports started with one idea. Grassroots football deserves the same digital tools that professional clubs take for granted. Many amateur tournaments in Italy still run on paper sheets, phone calls and rigid systems, so Mr Patrich set out to replace them with a modern hub that clubs, parents and sponsors can all use from their phones.

The platform has grown from a local launch into a national listing of tournaments. On the site today, you can find:

• Tournaments across Italy, such as the Halloween Cup in Reggio Emilia, the Epiphany Cup in Rome and the Milano Winter Cup.
• Filters by format and category, from 5-a-side up to 11-a-side, plus amateur and women's football.
• Free team accounts, so a club can register for any tournament on the platform once it has signed up.
• Annual plans for tournament organisers after a free first year.
• A sponsor area where regional businesses can reach local football families.

Why Versus Sports Needed a New Event Management Plugin

Before choosing WP Event Manager, Mr Patrich looked closely at what was slowing amateur tournaments down. He found four main problems:

• Fixed limits on matches: Most tools only let you add a set number of matches to a bracket. If more teams joined, there was no simple way to add extra games.
• Scattered communication: Organisers, team managers and parents were sending messages in too many places. Some got far too many alerts. Others never heard about important updates from the pitch.
• Screens that are hard to read outdoors: Mr Patrich estimates that over 80% of the platform's users check updates on their phones from the sidelines, often in bright sun. Light, crowded layouts are hard to read there.
• Little value for sponsors: Most solutions only offered generic banners with no link to the local area, so organisers missed out on deals with regional businesses.

He needed a sports tournament management setup that could act as a base for his own development work. It had to handle publishing and registration well and leave room for the custom features he planned to build on top.

Why Mr Patrich Chose WP Event Manager

Mr Patrich compared several plugins, and two things put WP Event Manager ahead. The first was our support team. He needed many adjustments while building the platform, and he told us our team always solved them or was ready to help. The second was features he couldn't find in the other plugins he tried.

The way WP Event Manager is built also suited a developer-led project like his:

• The free core plugin already covers event listings, organiser and venue pages, search and a frontend submission form.
• More than 40 premium WordPress event plugin add-ons let him pick only the features Versus Sports needs.
• The code is open and built on WordPress, so his team could add their own features on top.
• Everything runs on the Versus Sports website, so the tournament data and the audience stay with the platform.

That flexibility is why Mr Patrich sees WP Event Manager as "a full-fledged development framework" rather than a simple event viewer. His team used it as the base and built features such as the high-contrast dark design, unlimited match entries, and regional sponsors targeting themselves.

How WP Event Manager Powers Tournaments on Versus Sports

We asked Mr Patrich which features helped most. His answer was the speed of registration across different tournaments and how simple and complete it is to publish one. Alongside the free core plugin, Versus Sports runs five of our add-ons:

Registrations Makes Team Sign-Up Fast

Registration speed was the biggest change Mr Patrich noticed. With our Registrations add-on, a club signs up from the tournament page itself, and the organiser sees every entry in one place. As an event registration plugin for WordPress, it lets the organiser set up a form for each event:

• Organisers can add, change, or delete fields to ask only for the details they need.
• You can add a GDPR consent box, which is useful for youth tournaments.
• Organisers can cap the number of teams and open a waiting list once the places are full.
• Entries can be exported as a CSV file for fixtures and match planning.

Emails and Contact Organizer Keep Organisers in the Loop

Mr Patrich didn't want messages to get lost. Each one had to reach the right person. The Emails add-on writes to organisers on its own when their tournament is sent in, goes live, or is about to expire. You can edit every email, and no code is needed. The admin picks who receives each one. Any email can also be turned off.

Contact Organizer puts a short form on every tournament page. Team managers and parents use it to send a message, and it goes straight to the organiser's email. So the person running the tournament gets the question first.

Event Tags and Bookmarks Help Families Find Tournaments

With many tournaments listed at once, visitors need a quick way to find the right one. Event Tags lets organisers add several tags to each tournament when they submit it, and visitors can filter the listings by those tags. Tags can also help tournament pages show up in search results.

Bookmarks gives clubs and parents a reason to come back. Users who are logged in can save the tournaments they're interested in. They'll find them in their dashboard later and can add notes too.

What Changed for Versus Sports After Switching to WP Event Manager?

Mr Patrich points to two clear improvements since the switch:

• Teams now register for tournaments much faster than before.
• Organisers have every tournament, registration, and message under control from one dashboard.

Versus Sports hasn't shared figures yet, so we've kept to what Mr Patrich has seen first-hand. The platform keeps adding tournaments around Italy, and its team keeps building new features on the same WP Event Manager base.

What Other Sports Platforms Can Learn From Versus Sports

• Start with a solid events base and build your own features on top instead of fighting a closed system.
• Choose add-ons by the job they do, such as registrations for sign-ups and emails for updates.
• Send questions to the person who can answer them, so parents and team managers aren't left waiting.
• Think about where your users are. For Versus Sports, that's a phone on the sideline.

Run Your Own Sports Tournaments With WP Event Manager

WP Event Manager suits sports clubs, leagues and tournament platforms of any size. You can begin with the free core plugin. It already has listings, frontend submission, organiser and venue pages, and search. Add more features one when you need them, or get a bundle for several at once.

• Get the free plugin on WordPress.org
• Try the live demo
• See add-on and bundle pricing

WP Event Manager isn't just an event viewer, but a full-fledged development framework. If you need a simple calendar for your business, the free version is fantastic and straightforward to use. If you're building a scalable business platform (monetizing through geo-SEO, local sponsorships, or dynamic management of complex events), its add-on ecosystem and flexible code base make it a superb tool and a long-term technology partner. Highly recommended for ambitious projects, agencies, and web developers!.

Patrich, CEO, Versus Sports