If you organise a five-a-side or Sunday league group, you already know the two things that eat your week. Chasing three or four players who still haven't paid for last week's game. And scrambling on Tuesday night because your Wednesday session is short two players and you're not sure who to ask.

Neither of those things has much to do with football. They're admin. And they're exactly what we built FC Urban to take off your plate.

The two problems every organiser knows too well

Ask any organiser what actually makes running a group hard, and it's rarely the football itself. It's two things.

Not enough players. Someone drops out on the day, a spot stays empty, and you're left covering the pitch cost yourself or sending the same "anyone free tonight?" message to a WhatsApp group that's gone quiet.

Chasing payments. Collecting money from ten, fifteen, twenty players every single week by bank transfer, cash, or a payment app is slow, awkward, and never fully lands. Someone always "forgets," and now you're the one sending reminder texts instead of talking tactics.

Add it up over a season and it's hours of unpaid admin work just to keep a group alive.

Payments, handled automatically

This is the one organisers feel the most, so it's where we started. On FC Urban, players pay through the platform when they book their spot, not after the fact and not through you. The payment is processed automatically, so there's no invoicing, no "I'll send it later," and no awkward reminder messages.

You get a clear overview of who's paid and who hasn't at a glance, and if someone cancels late or doesn't show, your fair-play rules kick in automatically — no more eating the cost of a no-show out of your own pocket. Refunds, when they're needed, go back as credit instead of another manual transfer to process.

In short: you stop being your group's unofficial accountant.

No more admin, full stop

Payments were the biggest headache, but they weren't the only one. Between finding players, tracking who's coming, managing waitlists, and keeping tabs on venues, most organisers end up running their group out of a mix of spreadsheets, WhatsApp threads, and memory.

That's what Dugout, our organiser dashboard, replaces. Every game, every player, and every payment lives in one place. You can see which upcoming sessions are at risk of running short before it becomes a problem, add or manage players in a session without leaving the page, and send a targeted nudge to nearby players if you need a couple more bodies for Wednesday. Recurring sessions can be set up once and reused, so you're not rebuilding the same game from scratch every week.

The result isn't just less admin — it's admin that doesn't need you to remember to do it.

Features your players will actually notice

Handling payments and admin is what gets organisers to switch. What keeps players showing up week after week is a different story, and it's one we've put a lot of thought into.

Every player gets their own stats tracker — games played, goals scored, win/loss ratio — filterable by week, month, or all time. There are leaderboards they can climb against other players in their city, and FUT-style player cards that update automatically after every match, so their card actually reflects how they're playing.

Players can follow friends, see who's already signed up for a session, get achievement badges as they hit milestones, and rate the Urban Master who ran their game. None of this is admin for you to manage — it happens on the player side of the app and simply makes people more likely to come back next week instead of drifting off after a month.

How easy it actually is

Here's what setting up a session looks like in practice. You create a game, assign a venue and a host, and share one magic invite link with your group — players tap it and they're in, no account-juggling or manual approval needed on your end. Teams get balanced automatically using player ratings, so you're not the one trying to work out fair sides on the sideline five minutes before kickoff. When the final whistle goes, results and stats sync straight into the app, ready for players to check, share, and compare.

That's the whole point: less time spent setting things up and chasing people, more time actually spent playing.

Try it with your group

We're onboarding a small number of organisers to start — free to use while we do. If you're tired of being the one collecting money and filling spots for your group, FC Urban is worth ten minutes of your time.

Set up your group on FC Urban →

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