Football Cooperative

Profile of Company

Football Cooperative is a start-up company based in Dublin and Limerick.

Physical inactivity is a modern health crisis. Across Ireland and globally, levels of physical activity in the general population are low, which can lead to increased risk of a range of chronic health problems for children and adults. The effective automation of organising recreational football through a technological solution will be paramount to building a network of sites that connect participants from all backgrounds to the wider recreational football community.

Problem to Be Solved

Up to this point, a bespoke technological solution enabled Football Cooperative to prove its model viable and impactful. It also supported the company’s understanding of how gamification can support a superior game experience for participants. This bespoke approach does however have limitations in that it does not achieve an optimal reduction in the administrative effort required to deliver activities. To this end, it escalated Football Cooperative’s need to explore options for establishing a technological solution.

How ICS Gateway at Walton Institute Delivered Solution for Industry

Walton Institute completed a Technology Roadmap that comprised exploration and mapped out features and functionality in the areas of:

• Competitor analysis
• Researching similar platforms and the type of cloud-based technology that is used
• This competitor analysis would be particularly beneficial for early identification and recognition of potential obstacles such a platform, as well as assisting the identification of innovative features that could be unique selling points to suit the sports and wellbeing user
• High Level System Capture

Impact for the Company

Some of the key goals that were achieved:

• Key information elicited and shared
• Player registration and participation
• Community belonging 
• Fosters belonging to the network of sites and the wider football family
• Manages participant numbers
• Coordination of who plays and who will go on a waiting list
• Participation statistics
• Demonstrate power of the network and supports production of impact reports
• Online payments
• Pay before play to deliver game reliability at sites and governance across network
• Finance
• Backend administration of income
• Game notification distribution
• Enables activities to be circulated to the participant population
• Security
• Delivers compliance to GDPR and resilience to cyber security challenges
• Game coordinator recognition
• Recognition and rewarding of volunteer Game Coordinators who are fundamental to delivering activities
• Impact measurement

Collection of input, output and outcome data from which measurement of impact can be delivered to all stakeholders including participants. Recommendations include building upon certain applications outlined for the platform with a complete end-to-end (front-end user interface through to back-end integrations including possible API endpoints for integration of other software).

Company Testimonial

“We were so fortunate to establish this partnership with Walton Institute at South East Technological University (SETU). The experience was fantastic from beginning to end. The team carefully considered our technological vision and articulated key goals to work towards within a system architecture. Each facet of this journey was delivered with substantial expertise and insight. The final report and recommendations have served our confidence to make our vision a reality. The outcome from this partnership has been a significant milestone on our journey to date.”