Sports club association software: licences, slots and dues, alongside the federation

The federation portal knows who is licensed. It does not know who comes on Tuesdays, who returned their shirt or which coach has an up-to-date suitability check. What a club can build alongside it, and what per-member billing costs.

Sports club association software is built beside the federation portal, never in its place. INJEP counts 152,000 approved sports clubs in 2022 and 17.4 million annual licences issued in 2025. SportEasy charges €0.45 per member monthly for Classic, SportMember €0.18 per member with a €22 monthly minimum, and Kalisport a flat €170 including VAT annually (pricing pages consulted September 2, 2026).

Licences stay in the federation portal

Basketball manages licences in the French Basketball Federation's FBI extranet, whose login page announces ‘Licensee data is now available to clubs in licence management’. The French Tennis Federation lists Ten'Up among its federation sites. The French Football Federation's Footclubs denies unauthenticated access, confirming a club-only extranet. Electronic match sheets follow the same path at FFBB, listing e-Marque among its tools. A tool you commission does not issue licences and must not suggest it will.

What volunteers criticise about club apps

The first complaint concerns what sits behind the paywall. Ptidje, January 19, 2022, on SportEasy's French App Store: ‘A shame some features are paid, such as attendance’. The vendor replies that attendance summaries belong to Premium, raising the price question for a club's most-used function. The second complaint concerns incorrectly recorded availability: a Spond user reports on Trustpilot, April 24, 2026, clicking ‘attending’, receiving an error, having to recreate their account and discovering on the second attempt they had been removed from the group. The third, April 27, 2026 on the same listing, describes calendar synchronisation dumping every available session rather than only accepted invitations.

Per-member pricing punishes club growth

SportEasy and SportMember bill per licence holder. SportMember gives its example: 250 members cost €45 monthly, or €540 annually, before modules listed excluding VAT, accounting €12 monthly, premium website €25, widgets €10, and before payment commissions of €0.40 plus 1% per transaction. Kalisport takes the opposite approach with a free unlimited-member plan and optional extensions listed including VAT at €28–€120 annually. Spond presents itself as free without publishing rates; Comiti and MonClub have no retrievable online price. A club recruiting forty youngsters in September therefore sees its bill change with some vendors and not others, like an association treasurer discovering the subscription line during budgeting.

What the federation portal will never know for you

Five things live in the club and nowhere else. Category invitations with availability responses and reminders, letting the coach see a live count instead of a message thread. Training attendance sheets and season attendance summaries, marked in three seconds beside the pitch. A staff register with the last suitability-check date and an approaching-deadline alert. Each licence holder's sports file: health questionnaire or certificate received, image permission granted or refused, parental transport authorisation, with missing documents listed before the first match. Inventory of numbered shirts and ball sets, recording who received them and when they returned.

Suitability checks cover volunteer coaches, referees and licensed operators; Article L212-9 of the French Sports Code provides annual checks for disqualifications through criminal-record bulletin no. 2 and access to the national judicial register. The CNIL recalls prior permission is required to publish an amateur athlete's photograph, obtained from legal representatives for minors; collected health data requires consent. For invoicing, a club not subject to VAT falls outside electronic invoice issuing requirements, whose schedule targets transactions between VAT-liable businesses. Have your accountant or federation verify your situation.

The time the committee must invest

The cost a committee underestimates is its own. Allow one to two hours daily in the first days: the leading volunteer describes categories and gym slots to agent Margaux, reviews Victor's proposed requirements and circulates them before the committee says ‘Looks good to me’. Then you approve every stage Amélie builds and Félix verifies against tests written before code. Documents and code stay on the club's machine, which matters when handling minors' data. Allow an assistant subscription of around €20 monthly plus a few euros in tokens. If the vocabulary intimidates you, the non-technical requirements guide is enough to start. During beta, Maestro is free and requires an invitation.

Where to start

Count where club information lives: the federation portal, a messaging group per team, a treasury spreadsheet, a medical-certificate binder and a shirt cupboard without a list. If you exceed four places, write what each contains and what is missing when a parent asks a question on Saturday morning. That sheet starts a requirements document and takes a quarter of an hour to read.