hoops.love vs LeagueApps

TL;DR

LeagueApps is enterprise software for youth sports organizations. hoops.love is purpose-built for adult rec leagues. If you're running weeknight leagues at a fieldhouse, or small facility, hoops.love gets you off spreadsheets without the complexity or cost.

Who Is This Comparison For?

If you're running basketball leagues at a small facility with 1-4 courts, you've probably hit the same wall as every other league manager: spreadsheets work until they don't.

Tracking registrations in one place, schedules in another, scores in a group chat, and standings in another spreadsheet tab gets old fast. You start looking for software to help, and you see names like LeagueApps thrown around.

Many of the other competing league management platforms were built for youth sports organizations with hundreds of players, club memberships, and complex registration requirements. If you're running Tuesday night B leagues, that's not you. You can easily get away with something far simpler and easier to use that saves you time and gets out of your way.

LeagueApps: Built for Youth Sports Organizations

LeagueApps is a well-established platform primarily designed for youth sports clubs and large organizations. It offers:

• Website builder with custom pages and branding
• Complex registration supporting team, free agent, and group sign-ups
• Promotional tools like early-bird discounts
• Dashboards and reporting for large-scale operations

For a youth basketball club managing travel teams, tournament registrations, these features make sense.

But for a facility running weeknight adult rec leagues? Most of these features will go unused. You're paying for (and wading through) a lot of complexity you don't need when a cheaper and simpler solution already exists just for you.

hoops.love: Built for Adult Leagues

hoops.love was created specifically for the problem you're trying to solve; running adult leagues without spreadsheet headaches.

The core features address exactly what takes up your time each week:

Scheduling done for you. Tell us your courts, time slots, and any team accommodations ("Team 3 can't play at 6pm"), and we create a fair, balanced schedule for you meeting your accommodations. You can review and approve or reject and get new revisions with additional requests. No more hours in a spreadsheet trying to make sure nobody plays at 9pm every week.

Players report their own scores. After games finish, players can enter scores right from their phones easily in just a few taps. If they forget, hoops.love automatically reminds them. Standings update in real time.

Payments happen at registration. If you want it, you can leverage in-app payments to ensure payment is collected when teams register for your league. No more chasing people down for money throughout the season. It's an optional feature and you can still use Venmo or however you currently collect payments if you wish to avoid processing fees.

Easy communication. Need to cancel due to weather? Send a notification to all captains in seconds. Reschedule games with a few clicks.

Calendar sync. Players can subscribe to their team's schedule in Google or Apple Calendar. No more "when do we play again?" texts.

Simplicity. LeagueApps is made for large organizations and clubs and the application complexity reflects that. hoops.love is made to be as simple and intuitive as possible. Whether you're running a single league, or multiple leagues each night of the week, hoops.love will always be super simple to navigate and understand.

The Pricing Difference

This is where things get interesting for small venues.

LeagueApps uses a transaction-based pricing model where they take a percentage of each registration payment, plus a one-time setup fee. Their exact rates require requesting a quote. At least as of writing this, you cannot tell by looking at their website how much it will cost you to use LeagueApps for your leagues. You have to schedule a demo and talk to a sales person.

hoops.love takes a different approach. Full transparency:

League Size	Price
Up to 8 teams	$59 (one-time)
Up to 16 teams	$159 (one-time)
More than 16 teams - Full Service (we run it for you)	$399 (one-time)

That's per season, not per year. No subscriptions. No contracts. And you don't pay until the day before your league starts, so you can set everything up and make sure it works before committing and without entering any payment method.

If you choose to process team registration payments through hoops.love, there's a 4.4% + 30 cent processing fee per transaction (which you can pass along to teams if you want). But you can also continue to collect payments yourself and skip that entirely.

For a venue running 3-4 leagues per year at $59-159 each, you're looking at roughly $200-600 annually. Compare that to enterprise software pricing, and the math is straightforward.

What You Actually Need vs. What You're Sold

Here's a quick comparison focused on what matters for small venue rec leagues:

If you need a website builder or enterprise reporting, LeagueApps offers those and might be the right choice for you. If you need to automate the weekly grind without adding new complexity, hoops.love is purpose-built for that.

The "Set It and Forget It" Factor

When you're managing leagues part-time alongside running facility, you don't want software that requires training or ongoing maintenance. You want to set up the league, let teams register, approve the schedule, and then let the league run itself until playoffs.

hoops.love is designed around this philosophy:

1. Setup takes less than 5 minutes. Enter your league details, set the registration fee, share the link.
2. Registration handles itself. Teams sign up and pay. You see who's registered.
3. Schedule is made for you. Once enough teams register, we create the schedule based on your constraints.
4. Scores and standings are automatic. Players enter scores, standings update. You don't touch anything.
5. Communication is built in. Need to announce something? It's one click away.

The goal is that once your league is running, you're not doing administrative work every week. You're just showing up to play or make sure the courts are ready for the teams.

Who Should Use LeagueApps?

LeagueApps makes sense if you:

• Run a youth sports club or travel team organization
• Want to build a custom website for your organization
• Manage hundreds of players across multiple programs
• Need complex registration with group discounts, early-bird pricing, etc.
• Have dedicated staff to manage the platform

Who Should Use hoops.love?

hoops.love makes sense if you:

• Run adult leagues at a small facility
• Have 1-4 courts and run weeknight or weekend leagues
• Currently manage everything in spreadsheets or on paper
• Don't need website builders or youth sports compliance features
• Want something that works on day one without training
• Prefer transparent, predictable pricing

Making the Switch From Spreadsheets

If you're currently running leagues in spreadsheets, the transition to hoops.love is simple:

1. Create your league with your venue details, format, and schedule preferences.
2. Share the registration link with your existing teams or post it where you normally recruit.
3. Review the generated schedule once teams are registered. Request changes if needed.
4. Approve and go. Teams get notified, the schedule goes live, and you're done with setup.

During the season, the app handles score collection and standings. You handle cancellations (which hoops.love makes easy to communicate and reschedule).

There's no payment required until your league actually starts, so you can test everything beforehand.

The Bottom Line

LeagueApps is a solid platform for youth sports organizations that need its enterprise features. But if you're running adult leagues at a small venue, it's more than you need.

hoops.love was built by someone who runs volleyball leagues (that's me) for other people who run leagues. Every feature exists because it solves a real problem I've encountered managing leagues over the years.

Try it out. Set up your next league. You don't pay until it starts, and there's a money-back guarantee if it doesn't work for you.