Adapting Your Registration Process for the "New Normal"

With the effects of COVID-19 cancelling much of the 2020 sport event calendar,the future of participant registration is at the forefront of every race director’s mind. According to a recent study from the Sport for Life Society, the biggest concern regarding COVID-19’s impact on amateur sport orgs is athlete participation. Like every sport leader, Interpodia is looking for ways to adapt the registration and event processes to minimize risk to volunteers, officials, spectators, and the community at large.

Across the nation of Canada, sport activities are slowly resuming in accordance with Return to Sport Guidelines and public health protocols. One adaptation we have seen moving forward is that events are geared more toward community participation rather than provincial competition.

Event Directors have been advised to work with their key stakeholders, insurance providers and/or legal council on risk mitigation. As Interpodia is a key provider of event risk management tools, we want to provide some more examples of adapting registration to the Covid-19 conscious consumer.

Upgraded Refundable Terms

As expected, we have seen that registrants are hesitant to sign up for events because they are concerned they may not be able to attend their event due to various unexpected reasons in these unpredictable times. We will be providing our clients, in most sports we serve, the ability to offer registrants an upgrade of refund terms on their registrations during the sign up process.

These Refundable Terms allows registrants to apply for a 100% refund of fees which is paid for you if they cannot attend for a wide range of reasons listed in the refundable terms including illness, pre-existing medical conditions, private & public vehicle failure, home emergencies, emergency circumstances and more. This applies to both membership e.g. club, provincial and national sports body memberships, as well as event registrations, including clinics and camps.

Direct Pay Merchant Channels

More control over chargebacks, removing refund fees and finding ways to get faster payouts through direct pay merchant channels like WePay and Stripe can be very helpful for event organizers.

By using a direct pay merchant channel with your registration software, you receive benefits such as:

Expediting direct deposits with daily, weekly and monthly deposit options
Payment type options that include American Express and Discover
Enabling organizations to manage payment disputes and chargebacks
Ensuring your organization’s name appears on the card statements received by your purchasers, even for multi-order transactions. This feature will reduce confusion and unintentional chargebacks.
The elimination of refund fees

Direct Ship Event Merchandise

Event directors can also partner with third party suppliers to offer merchandise purchase options at the time of registration in a COVID-19 safe method.

Suppliers can ship directly to the athlete or prepare your bulk orders with items that are individually packaged and labeled. This removes a significant administrative burden for organizers and eliminates mountains of boxes piling up in your organization’s office. Removing the need for kit pick-up will make for less contact working to keep things safe. What’s more, the system provides athletes with the opportunity to purchase event-branded athletic face masks that will likely be mandatory in expo areas.

Enhanced Waiver/Digital Agreement for Health Declarations and Tracking

A key part of the return to play process is making sure that prior to participating all registrants, coaches, officials and volunteers complete a COVID-19 self-declaration of informed consent. Using integrated technology like Interpodia’s allows you to collect these waivers during the event registration process as a requirement before the registration is completed.