Run a recurring sports group on Brunchie

If you organize the Tuesday volleyball game, the Friday badminton drop-in, the Sunday pickleball ladder, the bi-weekly hockey shinny, or any recurring sports group — this guide is for you.

What this is

Brunchie is the free, multi-sport private-game organizer app for hosts who run recurring groups. One hangout per session, RSVPs that actually stick, capacity caps that close themselves, a waitlist that auto-promotes the head of the queue the moment someone declines, court-fee collection through Stripe (optional, opt-in per event, behind an experimental toggle you flip on yourself under Settings → Experimental Features), and automatic open-spot notifications for when life happens. All free.

Templates ship for volleyball, pickleball, badminton, basketball, soccer, hockey, padel, and tennis — each one drops in a sport-specific cap suggestion and a court / ice / field rental cost-split note. Pick one, fill in the date, share the link.

Why not just keep using a group chat / Venmo / spreadsheet

Because none of those scale to a recurring group. Here's the math:

• Group chats lose RSVPs in the scroll. Message 8 is "I'm in!" Message 23 is "wait who's coming again?" Message 41 is "@all I need a hard count by 6pm." You've spent more time in the chat than at the court.
• Venmo works for one person collecting from one person, badly. For 12 players splitting a $40 court rental on five different days, you're a part-time accountant and the players who pay last get nagged by everyone else.
• Spreadsheets are the lowest form of coordination. They don't notify anyone, they don't enforce capacity, they don't remember who paid, and the tab on someone's phone goes stale the moment they open the next tab.

Brunchie collapses all three into one shared surface that updates for everyone the moment anything changes. You stop being the person who manages the group and start being the person who plays in it.

So what — how it actually runs

Each phase below maps to one tab in your hangout. Pick the sport template at create time and these are pre-wired.

Decide

Pick the sport, the venue, the date, the cap. The wizard's "Repeats?" step turns one session into a series — weekly, every other week, or monthly. Set an end date in the "Ends on" field and Brunchie pre-creates the next sessions so your players see the next month at a glance instead of waiting for you to schedule each one.

If skill levels matter (tournament prep, mixed leagues), drop in a quick "rate your level" survey when you create the hangout — the toggle's right there in the template's setup questions.

Coordinate

Share one link in your group chat. Players RSVP on the hangout page (or by email — they don't need an account). The capacity bar fills. Once it hits the cap, the next would-be player joins the waitlist instead of seeing an error toast. When someone declines, Brunchie auto-promotes the head of the waitlist — no host action required.

If there's no waitlist (or it's empty), Brunchie automatically notifies pending invitees that a spot opened up — the people you invited who haven't responded yet get a push notification and can claim the slot in one tap. No group-chat begging. If you want to recruit beyond that invited list, post in the hangout — it fans out to all attendees through the existing notification pipeline.

Spend

Two paths:

1. Free events — track shared expenses (court rental, after-game beers, league fees) in the Expenses section inside the Planning tab. Settle up directly through the linked payment methods (Interac, Venmo, PayPal — whichever your group uses) without leaving the hangout.
2. Paid events — set a per-player fee on the hangout. Players pay through Stripe Checkout at RSVP time (behind an experimental toggle — flip on "Stripe Checkout at RSVP" under Settings → Experimental Features and you're in), money lands in your bank, all line items shown transparently to players (per-slot price, Stripe fee, platform fee, total). No more chasing.

Remember

The Posts tab is the single feed for everything that happened — game photos, "great kill from Maya in the third set," the rotation we tried that worked, the rotation we tried that didn't. The seating chart works for courts (lanes), too — handy for swim, bowling, lane-allocated tennis. Itinerary blocks handle warmup → drills → scrimmage → cool-down for practice nights.

Each session in a recurring series carries its own posts, photos, and itinerary tweaks — but the back-link to the series template is always one tap away from the hangout's hero card so you can see what you tried last week.

Personal notes from the founder

I run a weekly badminton group with friends — two courts, twelve players, $40 split across whoever shows. The first six months were a mess of Venmo chasers and chat-scroll archaeology. Then I built capacity caps, then waitlists, then templates, then recurrence — each piece because something in my own group annoyed me enough to ship the fix. Brunchie's sports surface is the founder's-own-itch product. Every default in those templates is what worked for my group. Tweak them for yours.

If your group's specific quirk isn't covered yet, tell me — I keep a list. Some recent additions came directly from organizer feedback (the auto-promote-on-decline flow, the open-spot auto-ping to pending invitees, the venue-agnostic cost-split label that says "court / ice / field rental" instead of just "court").

What's next

• Switching from Javelin? Read Javelin alternative for multi-sport organizers — direct feature comparison, what carries over, what's better.
• Toronto volleyball? Recurring volleyball pickup app for Toronto organizers covers the GTA-specific venue + cost patterns.
• Vancouver badminton? Vancouver badminton drop-in app walks through the rec-centre booking math.
• Calgary pickleball? Calgary pickleball court app handles the open-play scheduling pattern.
• Need to charge players? How to collect court fees from players without chasing Venmo covers the Stripe-vs-Interac decision.
• Already using Brunchie for a sport hangout? The pickup courts & ice time guide covers the in-app step-by-step for volleyball, pickleball, hockey, badminton.

Brunchie is free, multi-sport, and built for the host who'd rather play than manage. Set up your first recurring group and stop being the group-chat janitor.