The case for your committee

Because they do different things, and plenty of clubs run both. The LTA's tool feeds results into the World Tennis Number, and Clayside does not and will not: if a national rating matters to your members, keep using it.

What it asks in return is that every player has an LTA account and signs in to submit a score. Clayside asks for a tap on a link in the group chat. That difference is the whole reason a box league either finishes or fizzles out in March. The full comparison is on LTA Box League Manager and Clayside.

Export everything at any time, as one file you own: every season, box, player and result. It is one click and it is yours, and you do not have to ask for it.

If a subscription lapses the league goes read-only rather than being deleted, the link your members have goes on working, and nothing is removed without us emailing you first.

Invite a second owner before it happens. They get the same keys, and there is nothing to hand over. You can name up to 10 owners, on any plan including the free one, and hand individual boxes to a box admin as well, so the season does not stall while one person is on holiday.

Register the club with an address the club controls rather than a personal one, and the renewal notice reaches whoever holds the job next.

A player is a name, and that is the entire record. No email address, no phone number, no date of birth, no password. A junior in a box is a name on a table exactly like an adult, and there is nothing to collect from them, because they are never asked for anything and never make an account.

If a surname is more than you want on a public table, enter them as Tom H. You must be 18 to run a league.

No, and keep paying for it. Clayside does not book courts, take subscriptions or hold your membership list. It does the one job those systems do badly, which is running the internal leagues your members actually read the table for. There is a page on exactly this: does Clayside replace ClubSpark?

It is, and the arithmetic was never the hard part. What a spreadsheet cannot do is show every member a table that is right tonight. Scores wait in one person's inbox, the screenshot is out of date before it is posted, and a member who cannot see where they stand has nothing pulling them back on court.

If your league is running well and the person running it is happy, there is no case here. The longer version is on running your box league on a spreadsheet.

Yes. Plenty do. It is £150 once a year on a personal card, receipted, and it takes one meeting off the critical path.

They do not have to be persuaded to do anything except tap a link. There is no app to install, no account to make and no password to forget, which is the difference between forty members and twelve.

Look at the live demo before you decide: it is a full season with real fixtures and real standings, and you do not need to sign in.

Clayside is new, and we are not going to pad this page with logos. What we can show you instead is the whole product running: the live demo is a complete season, with boxes, a doubles box, a ladder, a walkover and a retirement in it.

Look at that, and at what happens to your data if you leave, and judge it on those.

You do not have to pay it, and you should still run the league. One box of up to 12 players is free for good, with no card: the same live table, the same scores coming in from the players, the whole product rather than a trial of it.

A small club is where this matters most. A league your members can see is how you hold on to the ones you have and give somebody thinking of joining a reason to. Move up when you outgrow it: 3 boxes is £75 a year, and £150 is the plan for a club running up to 10.

Count it yourself: a season of eight boxes of six schedules 120 fixtures, and most of them get booked midweek at times you are not otherwise selling. Set a box to play everyone twice and the same roster schedules double.

What gets them played is that everybody can see the table. A member who can see they are one win off second arranges the match, and the ladder gives them somebody to play in the weeks between seasons, which are the weeks the courts go quiet. Whether that is worth anything to your club depends on whether you charge for courts and lights, which we cannot know and you do.

Members leave when they run out of reasons to turn up. A box gives them a named opponent and a fortnight to play them, a table that moves the moment they do, and a ladder that carries on when the season stops. That is something in the diary rather than an intention to play more this year.

Your club probably runs a league already, so it has decided competitive play is worth having. What changes here is how many of your members can be in one, because entering costs them a tap on a link rather than an account, an app and a password.

Boxes are graded, so a member plays four or five people of roughly their own standard rather than the club champion. The bottom box is the point of the format, not an afterthought in it.

Nobody is entered against their will, and a member who plays one match and stops has cost you nothing. Put in the members who ask about a league, and let the rest watch the tables.