Clayside

Box leagues for badminton clubs

A badminton league that lasts longer than Tuesday night

The peg board resets every week and nothing carries. A box league does: four or five of a standard, singles or fixed pairs, everyone playing everyone, and a table that is still there next month.

Create your first season Look at a demo season

No card, no password · Your league is running in a few seconds

The problem

Why club night never adds up to anything

01

Three hours, twelve games, no record

The pegs go up, the games get made, everybody has a good night. Next Tuesday it starts from nothing again. Nobody could tell you who has come on this year, because nobody wrote any of it down.

02

Grading is somebody’s opinion

A new member turns up and two or three people who know everyone’s game decide roughly where they fit. They are usually right. They are also the only people who can do it, and they are not there every week.

03

The keen ones have nowhere to go

Your team players have county fixtures. Everybody else has social doubles and a rotation that puts them with a different partner every twenty minutes. The members who want a match that counts have nothing to enter.

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How it works

You set the round up once. After that it is your players.

Put four or five of a standard in a box, singles or pairs, and every fixture appears the moment the roster is saved. They play on club night or book their own court. The only new thing is where the score goes afterwards.

Your players, every week, without you

Players enter scores, their opponent confirms

They tap the link in the group, tap their name, and they are in. No account, no password, nothing to install, and it works on whatever phone they already have.

Walk off court, put the score in. Their opponent gets asked to confirm, and until they do, it counts for nothing. Nobody has to take anyone's word for it, and you are not the referee.

Forgot to confirm? After three days it confirms itself. That is the nagging job gone too.

Your club, all season, on its own

The table moves on its own

The moment a score is confirmed the standings recalculate: points, bonus games, head to head, game difference, the lot. Anyone with the link reads every box, every result, every season. No login just to look.

So “what's the table?” stops being a question. It is a link, it is always right, and nobody had to crop a screenshot to answer it.

Still want it in the group chat? Share drops the standings straight into WhatsApp, current to the second.

That's the whole loop

Five minutes to set up, five minutes at the end to sort out who goes up and down. In between, the only thing you have to do is play.

Best of 3 games to 21, won by 2, first to 30 if it gets that far

Badminton scoring, cap and all

The season is set to a badminton format and every score is checked against what that format can produce. Nobody has to remember the rule at 29-all, because the page already does.

To 21, by two, and 30 ends it

21-19 goes in. 21-20 is a game still being played and it is refused. Past 21 you win by exactly two, so 24-22 is a game and 24-21 never happened. At 29-all the next point takes it, and 30-29 is accepted because that is how it finishes.

3x15 in January, and 21 is staying

BWF approved best of three to 15 in April 2026 and it starts on 4 January 2027, with best of three to 21 kept as an approved alternative for domestic play. Both are formats here, permanently, because your league and the one next door will not change over on the same day. Pick the one your season is played under and the scores are checked against it.

Open, Ladies’ and Mixed, side by side

Boxes have names, not just numbers, so the categories your club already runs are the boxes: Open, Ladies’, Mixed, and a singles box beside them. A pair is one entry, chosen when the box is rostered and together for the round, which is how club box leagues have always worked. One person can be in more than one box.

Play everyone twice

Four in a box playing everyone once is three matches in a season, which is not much of one. Set the box to play everyone twice and it is six, both meetings kept apart on the same sheet, which is the home-and-away habit your league nights already have.

A point a game, if that is your table

The table above pays a point for every game won, one for the match and one for turning up, which is what a published club table tends to look like. Manchester’s league adds one for a drawn match. Choose the table your club publishes, or set the nine numbers yourself, and the standings are scored that way rather than the way a tennis league would score them.

Pulled out, never arranged, ran out of hall

Somebody retires mid-game. Somebody cannot get a court all round. The hall time ends with the match level. Record it as a walkover, a retirement or unfinished, and the points land where they should instead of a 21-0 that never happened going on the sheet to tidy the table.

Grading becomes evidence

After a round you have a table instead of an impression. Top two up, bottom two down, both numbers yours to set, and the new member who came in too low moves up next month without anybody having to be diplomatic about it. Set a minimum number of matches and somebody who played one is not promoted over somebody who played three.

And the season leaves as a file

One button saves it as a spreadsheet, a tab for each box and one with everything on it: a row a match, with the date, both sides and the game scores. Nothing here reports to Badminton England and nothing needs to, because club play does not feed the national ratings. That file is your club’s record of a season that used to be three hours a week and no record at all.

All year round

And a ladder, all year round

A box is four people and a month. The ladder is your whole club, all year: one list, a rating beside each name, and any two members can arrange a match that counts. Run a doubles ladder beside it too: pairs that hold one rating between them, or rotating doubles, where partners change and the rating is yours.

A minute to start, nothing to maintain

Press start and everybody already in a box is on it. Anyone you add to a box later joins without being asked, so there is no second list to keep up to date.

Then it runs the way your boxes do. Two players sort a match out between themselves, one records the score and the other confirms it. Both ratings move as they walk off court, and every match says what it was worth.

Nobody has to understand the maths to enjoy it. Win, go up. Beat somebody good, go up a lot. On every paid plan.

Look at a demo ladder See more about the ladder

Club tournaments

One tournament, every event you run

A badminton club championship is several events at once. Run them all in one tournament: singles draws beside doubles draws, one player link across the lot.

The draw is made for you

Put the entries in and press one button: seeds on their lines, byes where the regulations put them, and a play-by date on every round unless it is all played in a day. Players enter their own scores and the bracket keeps itself.

One player link covers every event, a plate catches everybody who loses their first match, and finals day gets a published order of play.

On every paid plan. A pair enters as one entry, so the Mixed draw never has to know an entry is two people.

Look at a demo tournament See more about tournaments

Games to 21, win by two, capped at 30, checked against badminton’s own rules. Any round can play a shorter format: to 15 in the early rounds is a club night that finishes.

For the committee

The hall costs the same either way

Your biggest bill is booked months in advance and does not care whether twelve people turn up or thirty. Everything below is about making it thirty.

01

A match in the diary gets people out

A member with a box match to play comes out on a wet Tuesday in February. A member with nothing arranged means to come and does not, and by March they have stopped coming at all. The table is the thing that puts something in the diary, and it costs you no extra hall time to have one.

02

The keen ones stay at your club

Every club loses the same members: the ones who have got good enough to want games that count and cannot find them in a rotation. A box gives them four opponents of their standard and a month to play them. That is cheaper than losing them to the club down the road, and it is the same subscription either way.

03

A new member placed right comes back

Grading is a favour two people do from memory, and when it goes wrong the member has three bad nights and is never seen again. After a round you have a table instead of an impression, so the ones who came in too low move up next month without anybody having to be diplomatic about it.

Taking it to a meeting? The case for your committee is one page, written to be forwarded without editing.

The other half

And the subs, if your club collects any

Plenty of badminton clubs are a hall booking and a subs pot, and a term's fees collected in cash at the door. If yours keeps a membership list, Clayside can keep it here with your own categories and collect the subs by Direct Debit into the club's own account, so the person who runs club night is not also the person reconciling a bank statement.

What the membership half does, and what a club plan costs. The leagues work exactly the same either way.

Questions

The things badminton clubs ask first

How do we set it up?

About five minutes. Create the league with a club name and an email, no card and no password. The first time you sign in it walks you through the whole thing on practice data and then clears that out, so the only real thing you type is what your boxes are called, Open, Ladies’ and Mixed or whatever your club calls them, and who is in each. Then you paste one link into the club chat.

Can we run doubles and mixed?

Yes, and the boxes carry the names your club uses: Open, Ladies’, Mixed. A doubles box is pairs rather than players, with partners chosen when the box is rostered and together for the round, which is the rule club box leagues use anyway. All of them run in the same season, each promoting and relegating within itself, and one person can be in more than one.

Does it replace our club night?

No. The peg board, the rotation and the mixed-in games are the club and they stay exactly as they are. This is for the members who want matches that count, and most of those matches get played on club night anyway.

Does it run our county or league fixtures?

No. This is internal club competition: your own members, your own boxes. Team matches against other clubs are not something it does, and your league secretary carries on as they are.

Is the ladder doubles too?

It can be, and there are two kinds. A doubles ladder holds pairs: a pair takes one place on the table and one rating between them, and either of them can record a match or confirm one. A rotating doubles ladder holds people: partners change from match to match, a match names four players, and each of you holds your own rating, moved by the same amount as your partner's. Your club-wide ladder fills itself from the boxes and can be singles or rotating; a ladder of pairs is the pairs you put in it.

Do players need an app or an account?

Neither. They tap the link in the club’s group chat, tap their name, and they are in. It works on whatever phone they already have, and there is no password to reset for somebody who plays one round a season.

What do badminton clubs usually run this on now?

A spreadsheet, if anything at all. Most club box leagues are a grid on one person's laptop and a screenshot in the group chat, and that works right up until the person is away.

Can we run our club championships on it?

Yes, on any paid plan: knockout draws seeded to the regulations, a plate for first-match losers, groups into a knockout, and an order of play for finals day. Players enter their own scores, the same as a box. The championships, in full.

Is it safe for our juniors?

In a league, a player is a name on a table and that is the whole record: no email, no phone number, no date of birth, no account. There is nothing to collect from a child, because nothing is ever asked of them. A club plan adds a membership register, which holds what your club already holds on paper and never feeds any of it into a box. Safeguarding, written down.

What does it cost?

One box of up to 15 players is free, for as long as you want it, and it is the whole product rather than a trial of it. After that every paid plan runs the same thing — as many boxes and seasons as you like, 8 club ladders, the championships, promotion and relegation and career records — and what you pay is set by how many members your club has. It starts at £120 a year or £12 a month, for a club of up to 125. Every paid plan carries a sponsor line on the league page, which is the one item here a club can turn straight back into money. See what is in each. The case for your committee. How the sponsor line works.

Have a look

Your club night is full. Give the regulars a season.

Put one box in, paste the link into the club chat and see what a month looks like when the games get written down. Nothing to install, no card.

Create your first season Look at a demo season

That table goes on your own club website too. Two lines to paste.