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Mar 18 2012

LeagueApps Platform Technology

Press, Product News

We often get asked about the technology that we use to build and run the LeagueApps platform. The questions are usually around the speed, reliability and security of our system. Since sports organizations choose to use LeagueApps as their digital solution, it’s essential that we have a reliable and secure platform. Here is more information on all of the “behind the scenes” elements that keeps our web software platform running smoothly!

Technology Stack
LeagueApps is built using freely available and open source Java based frameworks including Struts2 for web application development, Hibernate for managing database interactions, and Spring to glue it all together.
All data is persisted by MySQL, the world’s most popular relational database management system.

Performance & Scalability
It’s cool to be fast and we continuously try to optimize server speed and loading times. Our Java runtime environment is naturally optimized for performance.

Amazon S3 is the CDN service used by LeagueApps for image/file storage. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier by providing access to the same highly scalable, reliable, secure and fast infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. It is also easily scalable.

LeagueApps uses DNS Made Easy to deliver fast, accurate DNS services with sub 30 millisecond response times in the United States.

LeagueApps system architecture is developed for horizontal scalability so our entire platform will remain fast and stable as we grow. Your site should never be affected by usage spikes by any of our other customers.

Data Security
At LeagueApps, we take great pride in ensuring our network is safe and secure for making payments. All web pages with sensitive information that are hosted on the LeagueApps domain are served over https (TLS) supporting 256 bit encryption. Currently https is served on the public site purchase page, the console login page, and any console page communicating with a payment gateway. Credit card numbers are never stored anywhere within the LeagueApps system.

Here is an example of LeagueApps payment page. You can see that the page is verified and secure, as noted by the “https” on the browser.

Data Center Facility and System Administration
The LeagueApps main data center is at the Canvas Dreams data facility in Portland, Oregon. Canvas Dreams offers on-site support and personally monitors all maintenance performed on co-location equipment. Cabinets and caged racks are secured through biometric checkpoints, multiple keylock entry and 24/7 video surveillance. From over two dozen available network upstream carriers, Canvas Dreams upstream carriers include AT&T (our primary connection), MCI, Sprint, and Level3 (backup providers). Enterprise-grade Cisco networking equipment is used for all switches and routers.

An interesting note is that the Canvas Dreams data facility is actually powered by clean wind energy Oh, and just in case of a natural disaster, five 50,000 Watt Diesel backup generators ensure uninterrupted connectivity.

The LeagueApps system administration tasks are performed by Infinitium and led by Tim Yardley. Also located in Portland, Oregon they have unparalleled access to the Canvas Dreams data center to perform and supervise maintenance on hardware equipment and IT infrastructure projects.

Data Backups
LeagueApps websites don’t just have daily back-ups but we have almost real-time redundancy. The production MySQL database is subjected to replication, meaning a “slave” instance is continuously copying data over from the “master” (the real production database). This ensures that all data is backed up if there are ever any issues with the production server.

Email Delivery
LeagueApps uses SendGrid email infrastructure to ensure that email messages sent by our league partners to their members through the LeagueApps platform is delivered successfully (and not caught in junk or spam). SendGrid offers world class deliverability expertise and handles ISP monitoring, DKIM, domain keys, SPF, feedback loops, white-labeling and link customization. SendGrid also offers unique IP addresses so that LeagueApps can maintain complete control of its email reputation. Large web platforms including Four Square, Spotify and Gowalla and Bebo use SenGrid to power their email solution.

This should better explain our system. We’re always open to feedback on our services, share how we made these decisions and discuss new technologies that we may utilize within LeagueApps in the future.

Mar 13 2012

Sportsvite Signs Yankee Super-Fan Jeffrey Maier For His Helping Hands

Press

Sportsvite’s newest employee, Jeff Maier, recently joined our team to manage new league partnerships for our LeagueApps platform. Jeff had all kinds of great qualities and skills that made him the right man for the role. He gained great experience as a key member of a growing software infrastructure sales team in his previous position. He’s been involved in sports his entire life and currently holds the all-time base hits record at Wesleyan University, where he captained the squad during his senior campaign. He worked in professional baseball and has coached high school and baseball camps. Jeff is passionate, hard working, innovative and fits in perfectly with our Sportsvite squad.

If that isn’t impressive enough, then let us share with you what young Jeff was able to do for the New York Yankees baseball franchise. In 1996, the Yankees had a promising playoff team featuring a talented but unproven rookie named Derek Jeter. Despite George Steinbrenner’s best efforts, the Yankees were in the midst of an 18-year championship drought (the longest in the storied franchise’s history). In the opening game of the ALCS, Jeter stepped to the plate in the 8th inning with the Yankees down 4-3. Jeter drove a long fly to right field. As Orioles outfielder Tony Tarasco backed up to the fence to attempt to catch the ball a young 12-year-old fan stuck out his glove and snatched the ball into the stands. The umpires official ruling was a Home Run! The Yankees would go on to win the game and the World Series. Actually, it was the start of one of the most impressive dynasties in baseball history as the Yankees would win three more championships in the next four years. Derek Jeter has gone on to be one of the best baseball players in the history of the game.

That fan that caught the ball…That’s Jeff! Ask him about it (or read about him on Wikipedia). His version is a much more modest yet entertaining account of the sensational events. Just be warned, he might also try and share with you why LeagueApps is the right digital solution for your sports organizations. He also might block your call if it’s from a 410 area code as Orioles fans still give him grief to this day!

The Major League Baseball Network rates Jeff’s play as the 6th best fan moment in baseball history. MLB also recently did a featured segment to commemorate the play. In 2006, the New York Times did a story on Jeff’s quest to play professional baseball.

 

 

While we applaud Jeff for his great play, we most appreciate that he brought his baseball glove to the game! (Our partnership manager, Asaf, also appreciates that Jeff enjoys getting sushi for lunch.) That’s the type of kid who loves the sport so much he always wants to be part of it…for his entire life. We’re glad to give Jeff another opportunity to make sports part of his life. We’ll even let him bring his glove to work if he wants!

 

 

Jan 29 2012

LeagueApps Sponsors The SSIA Sport and Social Industry Conference

Press

The LeagueApps team recently sponsored and attended the 2012 Sport & Social Industry Conference in St. Petersberg, Florida on January 19th-20th. The conference, organized by the Sport & Social Industry Association, brought together over 40 of the top sport & social clubs throughout the country. Here is a list of all of the SSIA member organizations.

LeagueApps/Sportsvite currently partners with many of the sports clubs attending the conference through the LeagueApps platform, Sportsvite league profiles or past RSN sponsorship programs and activations. It’s always great to catch up with so many partners and friendly friends in one place (especially in warm weather!).

SSIA sponsor roundtables

LeagueApps met all of the clubs during the sponsor roundtables.

Through both formal presentations and casual conversations (where a few beverages may have been consumed) we were able to learn so much about the opportunities and challenges for sport and social clubs. Being the digital guys, we were eager to get a better grasp of how digital solutions and platforms are succeeding and where more needs to be done.

We shared our vision for how we want to partner with sports clubs through league management software, promotion and marketing tools, develop digital monetization opportunities and create social and engaging features that allow members to further enjoy their sports club experience on and off the field. We also had a chance to demo the LeagueApps platform to all of the clubs. There were lots of interesting conversations around mobile applications and social media platforms.

Jeff having a drink and talking sports.

LeagueApps would like to say thanks to the SSIA and Tampa Bay Club Sports for organizing the event. Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about the SSIA and we can put you in touch directly with the organizers. We’d also like to express our gratitude to all of the member clubs and other sponsors that support the recreational sports industry! It was also very cool to meet Nico Marcolongo and his service dog. He runs a non-profit organization called Operation Rebound which provides opportunities for disabled military veterans to compete and enjoy sports!

Dec 26 2011

LeagueApps Holiday Hackathon

Press

Last week the entire Sportsvite/LeagueApps team gathered together in NYC for team meetings, strategy sessions and most importantly some good old team bonding and holiday revelry in the form of a Bowling Bowl tournament. Here are the results for those scoring at home.

To mix things up a bit we decided to hold a half-day, mini “hackathon”. For the non-techies out there, A hackathon can loosely be described as a free-spirited event where developers collaboratively build a program, application or feature over a condensed period of time. It’s almost like a pickup game for developers. For our LeagueApps hackathon we incorporated the entire team so even our sales, marketing and account management teams “hacked” up and contributed to the project.

After discussing social media and digital engagement around sports participation in earlier meetings during the week the team was eager to build something “social”. We’re already working on Facebook projects but haven’t yet really had the chance to dive into Twitter. So we decided our hackathon would focus on leveraging the Twitter platform for sports leagues.

Early in the afternoon we hijacked all of the [212] Media conference rooms and split the project into different tasks that incorporated research, product management, development, design, marketing, account management and corporate relations. Each member of the team discussed their preliminary objectives and we agreed to meet one hour later with each of our plans and tasks.

When we reconvened, our product team had decided the scope for the project and developed a half-day project “sprint”. They were going to build a twitter button to easily allow players to tweet out information from a LeageuApps program page. We would also integrate bit.ly link structure to make it easier to track. We shared some quick research that more than half of our LeagueApps partners were actively using twitter and many had already incorporated twitter into their league website. After some rapid fire questions, answers and information-sharing everyone understood what needed to get done by the end of the day.

While we were all eager and excited for the end result, we soon realized the real value of the project was to work together in real time and better understand and appreciate each other’s roles. It felt like a classic championship team first coming together and gelling!

By the end of day we had made our first foray into Twitter and launched the new feature. You can learn more about it in the blog post that our account management team published. Our product and partnership teams also created a support article for more detailed information on how the feature works. We talked through our product roadmap for twitter and hashed out best practices for how local sports leagues can leverage twitter. We also created a marketing survey for our league partners to learn more about how they use twitter and where they see value in it. In less than a day, we had not only developed the first twitter feature for LeagueApps but we also had a very clear path for what we want to accomplish moving forward.

After such a great day of teamwork and accomplishment we felt like big leaguers. So naturally we capped it off by acting like pros and autographing a bucket of baseballs. The limited edition balls will be awarded to some of our corporate partners as a holiday gift and thanks for their support (got to keep the front office happy!).

 

 

Happy Holidays From Team Sportsvite!

Aug 30 2011

The Washington Post Shows LeagueApps Some Love

Press

Recently, LeagueApps was featured in the Washington Post in the Capital Business Section. Both fair and balanced, we appreciated the overview and description of both Sportsvite and LeagueApps and really liked the line that “LeagueApps aims to be the behind-the-screen shop that keeps the field, and beer mugs, full.”

Below is the full article and here is the link.

—

For adult sports leagues, LeagueApps helps teams get off the bench
By Steven Overly, Published: July 10

As the region slides further into summer, adult recreational athletes often flock to fields in Capitol Hill, Rockville, Arlington or just about any other patch of grass where a post-game trek to the bar isn’t far.

It’s a sort of seasonal migration that plays out all across the country through a network of sports leagues large and small. LeagueApps aims to be the behind-the-screen shop that keeps the field, and beer mugs, full.

A trio of University of Virginia graduates in 2006, the company has developed Web properties to connect prospective players, and most recently, to help leagues streamline the process of getting a team off the ground.

Co-founder Steve Parker said the company will soon close on an investment and now aims to expand its footprint. It currently collects a portion of player registration fees, but plans to form a network for national advertisers to reach local audiences.
“We want to be the leading media company in recreational sports. Eventually our goal is we’re going to have this aggregated hyper-local audience across the country totally focused on recreational sports,” he said.

The firm made its first move into the recreational sports market with Sportsvite.com, a social network to connect prospective players. About 2,500 leagues across the country created and update profiles on the site.

“What we were doing with that strategy was connect individuals, and the more we worked on it, the reality is that sports are played through leagues and clubs, so we needed to do more to work with these organizations,” said Parker, who is also chief technology officer.

That’s when the founders, who are split between Vienna and New York City, began to craft a Web platform, called LeagueApps, that would allow organizers to manage player registration, fees, scheduling and other operational tasks in one hub.

For some of the nation’s bigger leagues, such as the World Adult Kickball Association, or WAKA, that’s quite an undertaking. Since 1998, WAKA has grown from a group of friends in the District to thousands of players across 35 states.

“There is a quite a bit of work that does have to go on to get a league up and running at the start of the season,” said Mike Holden, director of marketing. Holden is familiar with LeagueApps but WAKA uses its own software. “All of the systems and practices and procedures are things we have developed and refined over the last 14 years.”

But not every league has WAKA’s footprint or resources.

“They basically do everything manually. There’s a lot of that going on,” Parker said of smaller leagues. “So the number one competitor [for us] is switching the league away from their home-grown process.”

The market isn’t exactly wide open. Many sports leagues have moved to online platforms that they’ve put together or acquire through other software providers, such as Blue Sombrero or e7sports, to name two.

For WAKA and many other leagues, the administrative duties involve more than sports. They also include coordinating weekend happy hours or movie screenings. The leagues are often as much about social outings as sports.

“We have a substantial number of players who are in it only for that,” Holden said. “The win-loss record is not as important to many players as meeting people, networking with people and getting out and having some fun.”

Parker said LeagueApps and Sportsvite seek to bridge those in-person meetings into the digital world. Facebook is integrated into their sites and mobile products are in the works, too.

“This is something that’s way far off from what sport organizations can do now,” he said. “We see that as a necessary channel for any kind of Web venture that has a social or community element to it and that cares about engagement.”