How to Grow a Spikeball Club

1. Find where the players already are

Roundnet recruits by spectacle and word of mouth more than any racket sport — almost nobody played it in a structured club before, so you're not poaching from rivals, you're creating players. The trick is to put your net in front of the right crowds and let the game do the selling.

• Universities and colleges. Roundnet's heartland in the UK is student sport. A freshers'-fair stall, a campus society, or just a net on the union lawn at lunchtime will out-recruit everything else combined. If there's a uni near you, start there.
• Parks and beaches. Set up in a busy park on a sunny day and you'll recruit by curiosity alone — people stop, watch, and ask to have a go. Keep laminated QR cards in your bag to hand out before the moment passes.
• Crossover sports. Volleyball, beach volleyball, ultimate frisbee and futsal players are your warmest audience: athletic, social, used to low-equipment sports and already in group chats you can post into. A clip of a big rally in their channel lands well.
• The roundnet community online. Roundnet has no single UK national governing body with a club finder the way badminton does — it's community-run through informal player groups, regional tournament organisers and national-tour social channels. Get your club listed and posting in those player networks; that's where searchers who already know the sport will look for "roundnet near me".
• Local Facebook and community groups. Town pages and "things to do in [town]" groups convert well off a short clip and a clear "next session Wednesday 7pm, £4, all gear provided".

2. Make joining frictionless

You've got someone's attention at the net or under a clip — now you have about thirty seconds before they're distracted. Every extra step between "that looks fun" and "I'm in" loses people, and a young, casual roundnet crowd is the least patient of all.

The slowest way to lose them is "email me and I'll add you to the list". The fastest way to convert them is a single link or QR code that signs them onto the roster, shows the next session, and lets them pay if they want to commit — all from their phone, on the spot. In ClubLono every club gets a join QR code and a public page (something like clublono.com/c/your-club): they scan it, type their name, and they're in the roster. No email chain, no paper form, no spreadsheet for you to update later. Hosts can approve incoming members in a tap if you want to gate it, or leave it fully open for a park session where strangers wander up.

Put that QR code everywhere: on the laminated cards in your bag, in your social posts, on a flyer at the venue, and on a sign next to the net. The goal is that anyone who watches a rally can be a member before the next one's over.

3. Nail the newcomer experience

A roundnet newcomer's first session decides everything. The good news: the game is forgiving and the first clean rally is genuinely thrilling. The bad news: a beginner planted on the sideline watching experienced players dive around won't come back, no matter how good the sport looks.

Have gear ready

Keep a couple of spare nets and a stack of balls so a newcomer never waits to play. Making someone buy a £60 set before they know they like roundnet is the surest way to never see them again.

Give a one-minute brief, not the rulebook

Three things and a friendly partner is enough: you get three touches to put the ball back on the net (most pairs use two), there are no fixed sides so you can move anywhere around the net, and hitting the metal rim loses the point. Skip the pocket calls and hindrance nuance for now — those can wait until they're hooked.

Pair them up, don't feed them to the wolves

Put a first-timer with a patient regular as their partner, and against another mixed pair. A balanced first game where they win a few rallies beats a 21–4 thrashing every time. Re-draw partners between games so the night feels like a mixer, not a hierarchy — and so they leave having met half the club.

Keep them moving

Short games and a visible rotation mean a newcomer is always either playing or about to. Standing cold on the sideline is the single biggest reason first-timers don't return — a fair queue, run from people's phones, quietly fixes it.

4. Keep your regulars regular

Recruitment gets the headlines, but retention is what actually grows a club — a player who comes back fifty times is worth fifty first-timers who came once. Roundnet's churn is real (students go home, the curious move on), so the boring fundamentals matter most.

One communication channel

If reminders live in WhatsApp, cancellations in a Facebook event and social plans in someone's group chat, people miss things — and "I didn't know it was on" is the quiet killer of attendance. Pick one channel for everything. ClubLono includes a members-only club chat with photos and reactions; everyone on the roster is automatically in it, and booked players get a thread for their specific session, so a last-minute "rained off, moving to the sports hall" reaches the right people, not all 60 members.

A published schedule

"Same time every week" is the floor. Better is a calendar showing the next 4–8 weeks, including the weeks you're not on because the hall's booked or it's reading week — people plan around what they can see. ClubLono lets you publish a recurring session calendar with capacity limits, and members get a push notification when something opens. For an outdoor club, an easy way to flip a session indoors when the forecast turns keeps a rainy week from becoming a dead one.

5. Build a community people invite friends to

Roundnet's superpower is its culture: loud, daft, friendly and completely unintimidating. That's not a side-effect — it's the engine of growth, because people don't invite their mates to "a sport", they invite them to a good time. Lean into it.

• Make it social by default. A post-session drink, a group chat full of dive-save photos, a daft running joke or two — these are what turn "a thing I tried" into "my club, you should come". Take photos at sessions (with consent) and post the best ones.
• Give the club an identity. A name, a logo on a cheap set of shirts, a club hashtag for the rally clips. Roundnet players love the aesthetic of the sport; giving them something to belong to makes them ambassadors.
• Celebrate the newcomers, not just the stars. Shout out a first-timer's first proper rally in the chat. People come back to places where they felt noticed and welcome, not just out-skilled.
• Run the odd event. A summer beach session, a casual in-house tournament, a "bring a friend free" night. Events give people a reason to drag along exactly the friend who becomes your next regular.

The clubs that grow fastest are the ones where people make actual friends. None of this is software's job — but it shouldn't get in the way of it either, which is why keeping the admin out of sight matters.

6. Add competition once you have regulars

Open, social play is the welcoming front door and should always stay open — but once you've got a core of regulars, a light competitive layer gives them a reason to keep showing up beyond "it's fun". It's the difference between a player who comes when they're free and one who plans their week around your session.

Start small. A monthly ladder — a ranked list where players or pairs challenge those above them and swap places on a win — runs itself and suits a club where people drop in irregularly. When you've got enough regulars, a box league (small groups of similar standard, everyone plays everyone, top and bottom swap groups each cycle) guarantees close games and gives everyone something to climb regardless of ability. Crown a club champion now and then; people compete surprisingly hard for a £5 trophy and bragging rights in the group chat.

Keep it optional and keep it kind — knockout-only formats knock beginners out early and send them home, so favour formats that guarantee games. The goal is to add a reason to return for the keen, not to scare off the social majority who made the club fun in the first place.

7. Fund the growth with fees and membership

Growth costs a little money — more nets, more balls, the odd venue upgrade, a set of club shirts, a summer social. Roundnet is cheap to run, but "cheap" isn't "free", and a club that funds itself properly can keep saying yes to the things that make it grow. Fees and membership are how you do that without it coming out of one founder's pocket.

Charge a small per-session fee (most UK roundnet clubs sit around £3–£5), or a discounted monthly membership for regulars plus a guest rate for one-offs. The point isn't profit — it's a small, predictable pot that buys the next net and underwrites the next social. Collect it automatically so you're never the person chasing £4 across a car park, and so the money's there in the account when you need it.

ClubLono is £0/month for a single club, with no time limit and no feature cliff — roster, queue, round-robin sessions, scoring, chat, capacity and automatic refunds all work on the free tier. On paid sessions, the host receives the payment less Stripe's 1.5% + 20p and a 5% ClubLono platform fee. The Premium tier (£19.99/month or £199.99/year, with a 14-day free trial on either) drops that platform fee to 1% and unlocks multi-club hosting, leagues, kiosk mode for a venue tablet, cross-club stats and DUPR export. The annual plan works out at roughly £16.67/month — about two months free versus monthly billing. ClubLono never holds members' funds — money goes straight to the host's bank account via Stripe, and cancelled paid sessions auto-refund every booked player. There is no per-player fee, and there's no point at which Premium costs more than free. It's built so the money side of growing your club runs itself, leaving you free to do the part that actually grows it: get more people round more nets.