A sports venue booking app is a phone app that lists badminton courts, football turfs, cricket nets and swimming pools across a city, and lets players book and pay for a slot by the hour. Many of these apps also help players find a game: a player who needs one more person for a match can post it, and a nearby player can join. In India, the turfs and courts are mostly small private businesses, and the app gives each of them a booking calendar and a way to reach new players.
How does the booking work? The venue owner lists each court or turf on the app, with its prices for each hour of the week. Evening and weekend slots usually cost more. The app shows players which slots are free. When a player books a slot, the app marks it as taken, so nobody else can book it. Some players still walk in or phone the owner directly. So the owner must also mark those bookings on the app, or the same slot could be sold twice.
Consider a group of ten colleagues in Gurugram who play five-a-side football every Thursday. One of them opens the app on Tuesday, filters for turfs within 5 km of the office, and finds one free from 8 to 9 pm at ₹2,400 for the hour. He books it and pays the full amount. The app then asks the other nine players for ₹240 each. Each of them pays through a UPI app, and the app shows him who has paid. On Thursday, one player cancels at the last minute. The organiser posts an open place in the game. A player who lives nearby, and whom none of them knows, sees it and joins. After the game, the players can rate the turf and each other.
Who pays the app? Usually the venue does. The app takes a commission on each booking made through it, or charges the venue a monthly fee for the booking software. Some apps also charge players a small fee for each booking, or sell memberships with discounts. Payments are made by UPI, which moves the money between bank accounts in seconds; see UPI.
How is this different from a fitness class booking app? A class booking app books a person into a class that a studio runs at a fixed time, such as a yoga class at 7 am. A sports venue app books the space itself, a court or a turf, for whatever game the players bring. Studios, salons and gyms run their own appointments and memberships on salon and spa software. Large venues such as stadiums and convention centres use venue management software instead, because they rent space for whole events, not by the hour.