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There are about 100 sports federations in Finland and 9,000 sports clubs within federations, most of which are run by volunteers. Many of them have sent out hundreds and thousands of invoices every year for decades, not to mention other administrative tasks.
In 2015, federations and clubs asked the Finnish Olympic Committee for an information system to streamline the sale, invoicing and management of memberships, groups and events of player and competition licenses and insurance.
Seven years later, the Suomisport service, developed by the Olympic Committee for sports federations and sports clubs, has already registered 800,000 users. A large number of sports federations and more than a thousand clubs use it to manage their activities and automate routine tasks. Another 3,000 clubs use the app to develop club activities, for example.
The use of the platform ensures that athletes’ personal data is processed in line with data protection regulations, rather than on paper on the sidelines or in Excel spreadsheets. At the same time, it generates new kinds of information about the sports community.
“We are making everyday life easier for the sports community so that there is less administration and more physical activity,” says Juha Saapunki, Digital Manager of the Finnish Olympic Committee, who has been developing the service from the beginning.
For individual sportspeople, the app is an online store and training calendar where you can pay membership fees, register for training sessions and buy insurance and licenses. You can do business at any time on the field, on the tatami or at the pool.
Federation, club and hobbyist users have a personal, individual account in the service. In other words, the user can see and control their own data.
Information to support elite sports and research
With hundreds of thousands of users, the service contains a huge amount of data about the activities of federations, clubs and individual athletes, such as the number of members, hobby events and participants.
“Previously, the view of the activities of the sports community was based on gut feeling or surveys. Now we are able to produce and evaluate information in real time and based on facts,” says Saapunki.
The Olympic Committee analyses the data in order to understand, for example, why children and young people are dropping out of sports activities and to develop elite sports in the future.
The National Institute for Health and Welfare has been using anonymised data for a number years to study social exclusion among young people. The institute’s researchers combine data about people who exercise and the sports community with other data sources to understand the background and nature of social exclusion.
The service combines systems used by federations and clubs, such as financial management, learning platforms and competition systems. Clubs can also apply for club support through the service.
Sports activities enter the digital world
Suomisport is bringing sports activities into the digital world, but the growth of the service has also renewed the Finnish Olympic Committee. New skills have been hired and staff have been trained. Today, the Committee employs experts in digitalisation, a data analyst, and experts in legislation and good governance.
The service has quickly become one of the most important functions of the Olympic Committee. In the future, the committee will focus on connecting new platforms used by federations and clubs to the service and getting more clubs to use the app.
“With Suomisport’s data, we can get to grips with the phenomena of exercise and sport. For us, it is a priority to use data responsibly, i.e. for the good of society,” says Saapunki.
