We have delivered to our download area the hotfix for Joomla based JoomSport.

There were three issues fixed:

- fixtures analytics for knockouts

- fixtures analytics for single players

- 1054 unknown column '$team2_id' error once saving mathcdays

As a response for large number of request from our clients we have added analytics for future matches in JoomSport. This applies both for WordPress sport plugin (ver. 5.0) and Joomla extension (ver. 5.5) released.

The main objective of the new analytics offered is to help predicting on match outcome.

Before we start the development we have analyzed a lot of sports sites and analytics variations. Many of them offer a large amount of numbers but poorly squeezed data and we didn't want the same. We wanted to avoid overloading you with the useless numbers. Instead we have carefully selected the most important figures that might correlate with upcoming match outcome.

The new data blocks offered includes the three sections added to future JoomSport matches (fixtures status).

Season analytics

Season win / draw / lost numbers and last 5 matches blocks are offered with "All season games" OR "Home / away games" filter depending on where is the selected team plays. "Position" chart is only displayed for the seasons that are without knockouts or playoffs matchdays.

Averages analytics

For player / match events averages it is possible to set what kind of events do you need to display. Scores averages analytics offers you the three numbers for each team: scored, conceded and total. Again, season total and home / away filter is offered for both blocks.

Head to head analytics

Two blocks to analyze previous head to head game between opponents. All leagues and seasons are included. 10 games stats included inside the block.

See how the functionality looks like on our demo.

Thank you VERY much to all the bakers who supported us financially with this particular feature development! It would be impossible to deliver all that functionality without you. Special thx to Yannis (Sentragoal), Roberto (ESM), Aldi (Universfootball), Juan Luis (Quesomecanico)!

Some other improvements and features are developed

JoomSport for WordPress ver. 5.0:

* (feature) New analytics, H2H
* (feature) Custom match status for match shortcode filters
* (feature) Season options - Spanish ranking rules added
* (improvement) Improved mobile views
* (improvement) Club layout design
* (improvement) Tabs naming changed
* (Bugfix) Person menu for other languages
* (Bugfix) Hiden image for team page
* (Bugfix) Match page speed issue

JoomSport for Joomla ver. 5.5:

* (feature) New analytics, H2H
* (feature) additional columns for lineups added so you can add player numbers, position etc.
* (improvement) Improved mobile views
* (improvement) Tabs naming changed
* (improvement) SEO - browser page titles changed for Match, Team, Player, Calendar, Standings pages
* (Bugfix) Match page speed issue
* (Bugfix) Match generator fixed for double elimination knockouts

Right after we have published the release for WordPress we also glad to announce the Joomla! CMS based JoomSport update. Here is the overview of the functionality we delivered:

Timeline Live update 

Information about Player events and substitutes will be automatically updated on Timeline on match page, if match status is marked as "Live". This feature is delivered as a part of our strategy preparing for EURO 2020 by providing the better integration with the EURO 2021 API data package by Statorium football API.

Improvements:

• Player page speed load performance significant improvements
• Highlight places in standings module
• Date filter for Today Matches section
• Matchday name to be displayed on Match page - Optionally
• Multilanguage for newly added fields
• Ability to display country as a additional field in Roster
• Person, Player, Venue, Team. Do not show tab photos if there is one photo only
• Order events in statistic tab on Player page
• CSS Match page improvements
• User icon removed from match comments

Certainly bugfixes:

• Extra time is not working Live commentary
• Add matchday name to match page
• Scroll matches module CSS issue
• Matchday order specifed in BE applied in Search option (Calendar page)
• Person Extra field option "Do not display in Roster" doesn't work

Please update your version. If you have any ideas or suggestions how to improve JoomSport product please don't hesitate to share it on JoomSport feedback page and we will definitely consider it. Feel free to contact us by Chat or HelpDesk if any questions appear.

The time has come to update JoomSport version for Joomla! CMS. We did our best to deliver worth features to new version. Please enjoy!

Flexibility of Team names display

Developed new default fields for team (Short name, Middle size name) will deliver full flexibility to show different Team names in the Standings and Player stats module. Forget about ugly views with long and badly proportioned Team names. Enter all possible Team names and use required one in full accordance with your design. Specific option to choose name that will be displayed on Mobile devices will make website page 100% percent mobile friendly.

Adjusted Player profile

We implemented new default fields for player (Short name, Home Country name) that allow to display Player names all over the front pages as well as in JoomSport modules.
Optional new system field “System Player number” will help you to manage Players numbers once they are related not only to Season but also to Team.

All the fields added helps to make the perfect integration between JoomSport and our new Statorium football API data service.

Secondary Player event stats. Own goals

• Related Event stats for Player is added. Once you associate events stats with another one on event settings page you will get correct display of such stats as Assists. Available for Live commentary and FE management functionality.
• New way to display Events related to opposite Team e.g. Own Goal. Make sure you configure it in JoomSport settings.

Minor improvements:

• Width of data field optimized on Matchday page
• Player Roster CSS adjusted
• Matchday navigation on BE
• Scroll module CSS improvements

Certainly bugfixes:

• Number of vulnerabilities fixed. IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED for all clients to update.
• Matchday management for Team moderator
• Win Games Ranking criteria can't be removed
• Box score bugs
• Link type Extra field fix
• Extra time save issue

Please make sure that you update your version.

Feel free to share your ideas and suggestions on JoomSport feedback page and we will definitely consider it. Don't hesitate to contact us by Chat or HelpDesk or Forum if any questions appear.

Fact: As of the current moment, we have managed to create the most stable growing Sports plugin on the WordPress market - JoomSport. It is growing steadily, and since its first release in 2016, there was no single week when active installs growth went below 0%. No other WordPress sports plugins can say the same about their product!

Active installs growth (the latest 9 months):
 


Downloads number (since the beginning):
 
This was our failure. So were did we fuckup? You might ask…

The story began in 2009 when my partner Andrew decided to develop the solution for managing soccer stats for his own private league. The Joomla extension market was so hungry for sports solutions so once we pulled the first release we got a huge number of free downloads during the first day. It became extremely popular within a short period. We monetized the idea by offering a paid version of the product and started selling it through our site.

The first profit allowed us to hire a small team who would care about product development, testing, and support. Owners still had their primary job outside of the JoomSport at that time. Being in such state for almost 5 years JoomSport software grew without the proper attention to features implemented, code quality and overall strategy.

By the end of 2015, we had a disaster like situation: The Joomla market slowed down significantly, the software became unwieldy with a huge number of clunky features. It was the time to change something…

On November 2015, my partner and I decided to be involved on a full-time basis for JoomSport and change the software we loved.

We developed a strategy that consisted of three points:

• Rebuild the product to create the best sports stats solution worldwide
• Port our product to WordPress. So we wouldn’t lose this market point.
• Create a Mobile App builder integrated with our core solution, allowing us to deal with professional clubs and leagues.

Rebuilding the product (Nov 2015 - Jul 2016):

By the end of 2015, our JoomSport became a product with a huge number of unused and hard to learn features. The UI was poor; naming was terrible so as a result, we started having more and more customers complaining about our solution. “Hard to learn, hard to use, complicated” and “bad looking.”

We wanted to change all of this to create the solution that customers really love.

We started a full product review process at the beginning of 2016. The idea was very simple: "Let's create a product that will be powerful yet VERY simple to learn. Customers will love the simplicity." We then followed the number of directions to achieve the goal.

Here are they:

• Cut as many features as possible. Remove anything that was not used by many customers.
• Items naming review. We checked every item to see if it really reflects the value it delivers. As a result, ~80%! of our product strings were replaced.
• Pages UI. Fully reviewed every single page and implemented many standards for UI as well as coding. Some features were redeveloped from scratch. Bootstrap framework was used to get all pages to the same flat looking and modern view.
• We started gathering feedback for product ideas on our new feedback portal and were trying to answer "NO" as many times as possible for the new feature requests.
• Evaluating the new features using a complicated process, so we knew we are adding only critical elements.

By the mid of 2016 we released the new version of JoomSport that was significantly different from what we had till that moment.

Porting our solution to WordPress (Jul 2016 - Jul 2017).

For some reason, the team decided not to port the solution to WordPress in 2014 even we understood the Joomla CMS market had started weakening. There was already a well-known plugin named League Manager on WordPress catalogue and the team thought it would be hard to tackle it.

We did a mistake. At the same time, the first version of SportsPress (current active installs leader) was released. They quickly picked up the empty niche and grew to ~15000 installs by the moment when we brought the first JoomSport release to the public. So, we entered the sport WordPress solutions market a year and a half later than we could! This late market entrance turned into very slow growth in the initial stages. I understand this better now: what if a customer sees the solution with 100 active users and the solution with 100-x time's bigger audience? Of course - many leads don't even install it; don't want to spend their time comparing the leader and others..."   This is what happens when you do not pay proper attention to your product and the markets in time.

The second big mistake we did was actually entering this market after we missed that chance to enter early. After so many efforts spent on solution development, we started the market evaluation. We suddenly realized that the market niche is not that big, and it would be hard to feed our current team and future development even if we were the first and the biggest here.

Asa conclusion, it was fact that we entered the market late – instead of exploring blue oceans we had to fight sharks in red water. A cherry on top, the market was not that big as we expected to be.
If it were there now, I would put my investments into a stand-alone product in a different niche rather than porting our solution to WordPress.  

Creating the Mobile App (July 2017 - Feb 2018)

Another difficult decision we took was building the Mobile App. Extremely expensive development (iOS and Android developers cost a fortune!) took us ages to create and soaked all our investments. We have it now and have the first customers using it successfully. The problem is that such an expensive feature requires quite a lot of efforts to sell it. It is a pity we realized this fact after we’d built this.

Changing our sales method and pricing (April 2018 - May 2018)

One of the best decisions taken was changing our pricing strategy. Starting from 2010 and until May 2018 we were oriented to very low budget customers and were selling onetime fee licenses. This resulted in many small level sales to people that were using our software for ages but never paid us a penny for expensive product development. Our support manager was overloaded with many tech requests that never paid off neither. On the other hand, because of that load, we couldn’t pay proper attention to better customers.

We did two changes: switched to subscription model sales and increased our pricing 2-3 times on different positions. That allowed us to remove extremely low budget customers and free some supporter time for the clients who deserved our attention. The upside of this was that we found a segment of customers who are ready to work with us on a long-term basis that could support us constantly. So now, we don’t try to compete on price, but focus on quality and proper delivery for someone who is ready to start working with our products and rely on our support.

Finally, the subscription model allowed us to count our main business parameters. We counted such critical SAAS financial indicators like Live Time Value (LTV), Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA), Monthly Recurrent Revenue (MRR). We are no longer financially blind! – We know who our customer is, we know how much we can invest in marketing, we can evaluate better the changes and the new product that we implement.

Creating API data connector (July 2018 – December 2018)

This was not part of our strategy. One of our customers paid for this feature and agreed to share the source code with us. We built the soccer data feed integration. Therefore, that allowed our customers to import data into the product for major public soccer leagues. We did not expect much from this feature but in fact, it turned that many customers were interested.

Nowadays not many clubs or leagues (well except some private leagues) want to fill the game results for public leagues their selves manually. Almost every pro level club is looking for the two tools: Automatic data feed for the leagues were they participate + import tool to add their own game results using CSV.

Retrospective

So let do a retrospective of the mistakes we did and the things we learned.

1. We missed the moment when we should enter the WordPress market in 2014.
2. We entered the WordPress market when it was full of sports solutions and one big leader.
3. We entered the niche without the proper market evaluation.
4. We paid a lot of attention to product quality and building features instead of paying attention to sales processes and active customer relation management.
5. We built an expensive Mobile solution without proper attention to how we should sell it.

What we do different now:

• We are now paying a lot of attention to our internal customer relationships and sales processes. CRM, Customer relation processes - are the things we are improving much now.
• We are always trying to evaluate the market before we start building any features or tools.
• We are interviewing potential customers. Ideas list and voting are insufficient! We are visiting our customers offline, discussing potential(s) with them and pay a lot of attention to the features they need and use already. So we know what market requires before we build the new solution.
• Another thing is that we are paying attention to niches that are popular with tech investors. Not because of the money but mostly because they reflect the potential interest in modern software.
  
  

What is next on our roadmap?

Based on that customer interest, DATA become our key focus now and we are planning two new ventures in that area. The first one will be creating big soccer database to become a reliable soccer data feeds provider. We started creating Statorium football API service already and plan to release to the public shortly. The second one will be dedicated to scouting and will use Machine Learning technologies to improve player selection process for professional soccer clubs and intermediate agents.

Keep tuned for our updates, we are creating something cool!

Thanks for reading!
Dmitry,
the BearDev team co-founder.

p.s. Many thanks to Kraftblik marketing agency and Bruce Ogilvie for helping me with this post prep!