Requirements for RacketClub

Author: M Chippendale
Version: 1.0 (Draft)
Date: 27/11/1998

Background

RacketClub.com is being built by TSL with some sponsorship from Slazenger/Dunlop. By providing services to players, coaches and facilities, TSL aim to raise the profile of racket sports in the UK and to develop a large community of RacketClub.com members. Paneris will be responsible for providing interactive services to users of RacketClub.
 

Business Need

By building a substantial audience, TSL aim to secure further sponsorship and advertising revenues, with the possibility of charging registration fees in the future. There is also a possibility of selling sports merchandise to members via RacketClub based e-commerce, and to provide a service to host a facility's (single-page?) website. TSL intend to record the actions of RacketClub members on the site to use as marketing information for their (potential) sponsors and to provide extra services to some of their members (particularly coaches and facilities).
 

Users and Services

This section only mentions the areas of the website for which Paneris would be responsible for implementation. There are a number of other services provided by the club which will be undertaken by TSL (for instance, news).

There are three main classes of users of RacketClub:

  1. players of racket sports
  2. coaches of racket sports
  3. facilities for playing racket sports
Initially the site will concentrate on tennis players, coaches and facilities, but the scope will be increased in the first year to encompass squash and badminton players also.

Note that there is actually another class of user - RacketClub staff. These are mentioned in point 10 below.
 

  1. Each type of user will be allowed to register to become a member of RacketClub. In the case of coaches and facilities, RacketClub staff will process the registration to confirm the coach or facility's details and perhaps to charge registration fees. (Players will not be charged and will be made immediately available to the system, at least initially.) Note that a coach will also register as a player, and so all services mentioned below which are available to players are also available to coaches.
  2. Users will be allowed to update their membership details
  3. Facilities might be able to pay RacketClub a higher fee so that they can have more prominent positions in searches or to expand the details stored in the system (in effect, to have RacketClub host their websites).
  4. Players can search for - a partner to play a match with - a coach for training - a facility to play a match on/at by a number of criteria, primarily by proximity.
  5. There will be a number of 'ladders' in which players can compete at their chosen sport.
  6. There will be a number of Bulletin Boards available for use by members of RacketClub and non-members alike.
  7. There will be chat rooms for use by members
  8. There will be a newsletter sent periodically to members of RacketClub
  9. There will be some facility for monitoring member activity on the site to provide coaches and facilities with information about how many times their details have been consulted.

    10. Note that not all of these services will be provided initially. In particular, Paneris will initially provide software to provide services 1,2,4,6 and 9 - the registration and updating of user details, searches on these details and a bulletin board system.
     

  10. Besides the above, there is a need for RacketClub staff to administer each of the services mentioned above.

    11. Paneris will be responsible for providing an administration interface.


Constraints

TSL have previously employed the services of Mazware, a London based ISP who use Windows NT, but they are happy to move to a different ISP.

It is expected that there will be around 250-500 coaches and 200-2000 facilities on the system. The number of users is unknown, but the audience is racket sport players in the UK and so would probably be under 50 million :-)

Slazenger/Dunlop will be providing data for a number of coaches. We can, however, specify the format and data design of the data required.
 

Document Dated: Mon Nov 30 22:37:16 1998
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