About — Groundr

BUILT BY SOMEONE WHO REFEREES.

"I showed up to a game that nobody told me was postponed. I was still waiting to be paid for the two matches before that. I thought — there has to be a better way."

Groundr was built out of genuine frustration with the tools available to grassroots football in England. Not as a business opportunity — as a problem that needed solving.

THE GAME RUNS ON VOLUNTEERS. THE TOOLS DON'T RESPECT THAT.

English grassroots football is remarkable. Every weekend, thousands of leagues run across the country — organised almost entirely by unpaid volunteers. League secretaries, appointments officers, club welfare officers, coaches. People who give up their Sundays because they love the game.

But the technology available to them? It's a mess. FA Full-Time for fixtures. Centre Circle for referee allocation — when it works. WhatsApp for team sheets. Bank transfer for fees. Spreadsheets for everything the apps miss. And a phone that never stops with messages from clubs chasing the referee's name.

We kept asking: why does no platform connect all of this? Why do league secretaries have to be experts in five different tools just to run a season?

"The admin is killing people's enthusiasm. I know three league secretaries who've stepped down in the last two years. Not because they stopped caring about football — because the tools made the job too hard."

Referee Secretary · East Midlands · 2025

CREDIBILITY THAT CAN'T BE FAKED.

Groundr didn't come from a team of developers who spotted a market opportunity in sports management software. It came from direct experience inside the game — as a referee, as someone who built penalty.app (a tool used by thousands of referees for Laws of the Game preparation and career tracking), and as someone who has watched the Centre Circle rollout struggle across County FAs.

We know the grassroots ecosystem from the inside. We know the politics of County FAs. We know what a referee secretary actually needs on a Thursday evening when they're trying to cover eight Sunday fixtures. We know what a Sunday League club president means when they say "it just needs to work."

That knowledge is the product's unfair advantage.

⚽

Built on the foundations of penalty.app

penalty.app is an existing tool used by referees for Laws of the Game preparation, match tracking, and career development. The community and credibility built there is the starting point for Groundr's referee-first distribution strategy. If you're already a penalty.app user, you'll find a familiar home here.

THE STANDARD TOOL FOR ENGLISH GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL.

The ambition isn't to be a niche tool for tech-savvy leagues. It's to become the platform that every league in England — from the Sunday League in Hackney to the County Cup competition in Cumberland — uses as a matter of course.

That means being free enough to remove the barrier to adoption, reliable enough to be trusted with critical admin, and complete enough that no other tool is needed. Fixtures, refs, payments, team sheets, safeguarding, club websites — one platform.

And it means building in the open, with leagues and County FAs as genuine partners in the product — not users of someone else's vision.

May 2026

Groundr founded · groundr.co.uk launched

Early access applications open. Product specification complete. Tech build begins.

Jun–Jul 2026

Core build · Pilot league onboarding

Fixtures, referee allocation, payments, and team sheets in closed beta with 5 pilot leagues.

Aug 2026

🚀 Public launch — Season 2026–27

20 pilot leagues live. iOS and Android apps in the App Store. Full platform open for applications.

Sep–Apr 2027

In-season growth · County FA partnerships

Target first County FA partnership. Referee development tracking. Bulk communications module.

2027–28

Scale · The standard tool for English grassroots

Multiple County FA partnerships. Full-Time import tool live. AI allocation. The platform that runs the game.

OUR VALUES.

Reliability over features

A platform that does ten things and works is worth more than one that does twenty things and crashes. Every feature we ship has to be production-grade before it leaves our hands.

Built for the volunteer

The league secretary is unpaid, time-poor, and essential. Every design decision starts with: does this make their Sunday easier? If not, it doesn't ship.

Honest pricing

We'll always be transparent about what we charge and why. No hidden fees, no bait-and-switch, no holding your data hostage. The grassroots game can't afford surprises.

England-native

Built for English football specifically — FA structures, County FAs, grassroots levels, DBS requirements, Stripe UK. Not a US product retrofitted for England.