Dugout: Football Manager

Tom had always believed in the power of teamwork. As the head coach of the Roddingham Under 14s, he prided himself on fostering a love for the game among his players. However, this season, he faced a challenge that threatened to unravel everything he had worked for.

With a roster of 16 enthusiastic players, Coach Tom aimed to ensure equal playing time for everyone. But as the season progressed, he found it increasingly difficult. During crucial matches, he felt the pressure to put his best players on the field, sacrificing his ideal of fairness.

One evening before practice, Owen, a talented but quieter player, approached Tom. “Am I doing something wrong? - I just want to play.” his voice trembling with nerves. “I love playing for you and this team, but I’m thinking about leaving.”

Tom’s heart sank

Millions of Teams around the World 🌎

Soccer coaches are trying their best to develop the game, and develop the players under their care - but they sometimes miss the small details.

They need the right tools - they need a way of recording and measuring their players and matches.
It's a small part of a bigger picture

What it does

Dugout: Football Manager is the ultimate companion for coaches, players, and football enthusiasts who want to elevate their team's performance through data-driven insights. This powerful mobile application allows you to effortlessly collect, analyze, and visualize match statistics for your entire team and individual players.

Simple Real-Time Data Collection
Easily input match events as they happen.
Track goals, assists, shots, passes, fouls.
Record playing time and substitutions.
Compare player performances and key statistics across matches and seasons.

How we built it

iOS Application
Dugout: Football Manager (v1.0) was deliberately built and released in 10 weeks.
The native iOS application was built using Swift and Xcode.

Designs / UI
We used Figma to create the low-fi skeleton of the application, and then also to create the high-fidelity screens.

SimpleMind
To ensure we extracted to very best features, we ran a mind-mapping exercise with two enthusiastic soccer coaches, and used SimpleMind to capture the huge list, but also the minimum features for our first release.

In-App purchase / Subscriptions
RevenueCat SDK - Excellent and seamless

User Analytics
Firebase Analytics

Challenges we ran into

Match Event / Data Entry whilst not distracting the user from the match was one of our primary concerns - being able to add a Match Event within a couple of seconds.
GOAL > SCORED BY > ASSISTED BY > HOW > WHERE

We think we achieved that by using our quick event buttons for the popular event types - and easy player selection

Another challenge faced was how to give the user as much as possible, to give them a rich first impression with all the features. To allow them to fully evaluate the application, before presenting the subscription plans.
We achieved this through an approach of 'isSubscriberOrFreeRun' .. where the free-run provides full access with generous limits. Once the FreeRun expires the user can opt for a further 7-Day Trial or subscription.

We decided to implement a two-tier pricing model for our two typical user types.

Casual team coach with 1 or 2 teams
Large scale soccer clubs with up to 100 teams

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Without doubt, the greatest accomplishment that we are proud of is the early engagement from 6 enthusiastic users.

Through the in-app feedback feature we are able to nurturing relationships from real users. We have been able to respond to their needs and requirements, not just what we thought was important.
It really has been an eye-opener to have this amount of early engagement from users.

Some of these users will undoubtably become 'Ambassador Users' and we look forward to them sharing our application with others

What we learned

This is the second Football/Soccer based application we have released (Teamsheet, being the first) - and realising the potential earnings and audience size gave us a high degree of confidence that Dugout would do well.

We have learnt the audience to very enthusiastic about the sport, in particular, about their team/players.

Actively listening to your users, especially our early adopters is critical - not only for feature feedback, but also they become friends of the app. They can feel part of the development team, become Ambassadors, and promote the app to others.

Understanding the small, subtle - yet very important details of how games are played around the World. e.g. US High School soccer pauses the clock after each Goal, Card and Substitution.

What's next for Dugout: Football Manager

We are not short of ideas and we're excited to continue delivering features our users' ask for.

We've received great initial feedback .. and looking forward to receiving more.

"Think this app is absolutely fantastic, very appropriate for what I need to make note of what has happened in the match and it’s just a great set up."

"Just downloaded. Looks great"