Homefield Kansas City Levels Up Technology Experiences at its New Facility With SportsEngine’s Expertise
At a Glance
Homefield Kansas City’s state-of-the-art training facility offers athletes and spectators a pro-level experience across a variety of experiences like teams, coaching, tournaments, and more. They use SportsEngine’s Motion and Play to bring their technology stack up to the same professional level as the rest of their services.
Challenge: Provide professional sports experiences for athletes, parents, and coaches by simplifying registration, booking, and multi-sport scheduling. Additionally, offer live streaming and enhanced team management capabilities | |
Solution: SportsEngineMotion combines to provide one flexible, adaptable technology interface for Homefield KC’s evolving program. SportsEngine’s Play provides live streaming, clips, and pro-level content for athletes, parents, and college coaches | |
Results: Homefield KC delivers an elevated experience for athletes, parents, and coaches with adaptable technology that evolves alongside their programs, catering to their changing needs |
Intro:
Homefield Kansas City is a state-of-the-art training facility offering a professional-level experience to youth athletes in multiple sports. The facility recently unveiled a $60 million, 150,000 square-foot indoor sports arena, along with outdoor football and baseball fields. It offers a pro-level experience for both athletes and fans as its coaches teach athletes to become leaders both on and off the field.
Challenge:
Homefield KC began with the goal of providing a pro-level experience for both athletes and fans, elevating youth sports by providing the best in training facilities, coaching, and technology.
“Our goal was to find out: what can we be the best at? What can we do for our athletes, for our families, for all of the stakeholders?” said Dustin Lewis, president of Homefield KC. With a beautiful facility and a highly experienced coaching staff, the pro-level experience Homefield KC wanted to provide for its athletes and their families was hindered by only one thing: its technology.
While many technology solutions worked well for one area, all of them fell short of being capable of providing a single source for communication, payment, signing up for new events, and everything else Homefield KC wanted to offer its players.
“Our customers weren’t happy with us. We were having to explain the technology, and you can’t really tell your customers that it’s not your problem. You can’t detach from the technology if it’s in your building. You own it. And we weren’t getting it right,” said Lewis.
“Finding technology that communicates clearly together in one seamless workflow has been transformative for how we do our business, and for how we communicate to our clients.” - Kelce Ahern, Director of Operations
Solution:
Enjoy a smooth experience with SportsEngine’s comprehensive solutions
Homefield KC wanted to provide an elevated experience for five key stakeholders: players, coaches, parents, officials, and college coaches. A large part of providing a pro-level experience involved perfecting the technology and providing access to next-level content and communication.
As a startup with a staff of just three people, Homefield KC didn’t have the resources to constantly put out technological fires. SportsEngine listened to the struggles Homefield KC has had with technology in the past and provided solutions for every problem Homefield KC was facing. After implementing all of SportsEngine’s integrated solutions, Homefield KC could put down the extinguisher.
“SportsEngine allowed us to quickly pivot and get some things right that we knew we were failing on,” said Lewis. Homefield KC found the multi-faceted solution it needed by implementing SportsEngine’s HQ, Motion, and Play.
With SportsEngine Motion, parents can easily register and pay for all the trainings, camps, and other experiences Homefield KC offers its athletes. Parents can track payments in the Motion app, view their payment history, or change their payment details, while coaches can easily message their players with reminders or other important information.
Another part of providing an elevated experience is providing video content for the people who matter most. SportsEngine Play offers live streaming and on-demand video, providing an accessible platform so family members can watch live games no matter if games are on the road, or at the Homefield KC facility.
“If parents can’t make it to every traveling game, they can still be there in a way that really makes sense,” said Lewis. College coaches can watch prospects in action, athletes can create their own highlight reels, and officials can improve their calls by reviewing game clips.
“SportsEngine does what it says it's going to do. The only way we’ve found to have reliable and scalable information, data, and technology is through SportsEngine.” - Dustin Lewis, President
Conclusion:
Simplified Tech Integration Boosts Satisfaction for All
Now, when someone signs up for a tryout, they’re in the SportsEngine system and can easily sign up for individual lessons, teams, camps, or anything else that Homefield KC has to offer. “It’s just one fluid process for them, and that’s unheard of in this world,” said Ahern. “We have one solution from start to finish, and that’s a game changer.”
And maybe even more important than the software is the human touch SportsEngine has provided throughout its relationship with Homefield KC, with on-demand customer service and creative problem-solving.
“At the end of the day, the software is going to be there, and that’s always evolving and changing. But if you have people you can trust, people you can call when a camera isn’t working on game day, and they actually pick up their phone, that’s bar none. SportsEngine has killed it on that,” said Lewis.
“We didn’t want to be handicapped by technology in what we could do, and we had big dreams and aspirations. Finding the right software to communicate clearly to our customers and parents was a difficult task, but we’ve found the solution with SportsEngine.” - Kelce Ahern, Director of Operations
SportsEngine’s dedicated staff provides continued solutions to support Homefield KC’s growth
Homefield KC has continued to add services and experiences for its players, and its relationship with SportsEngine continues to provide support for these experiences. “Every time we’ve added a layer on to what we do as a facility, SportsEngine’s been able to solve our problems and make a pathway to make it better than it was before,” said Lewis.
Homefield KC recently unveiled a new $60 million facility and is continuing to provide pro-level experiences for student-athletes in the Kansas City area. As it grows, it plans to continue using SportsEngine to provide a level of technology on par with the experiences Homefield KC offers its players.