Digital Connectivity

What's Changing & What Are The Benefits?

Tennis New Zealand has been developing the national database for a number of years now and we have over 150 clubs connected to it. The club portal provides access and tools for communicating with your members on this database. The national database is vital to the ongoing modernisation of tennis as we look to connect everyone, keep everyone safer and more informed.

Connection to the national database will now become a requirement which will be phased in over the coming years with support from Tennis New Zealand. Having a complete national database will mean:

All tennis organisations will have visibility of who has agreed to be bound by policies, helping us all to keep the sport safe. Clubs will easily be able to get help from other organisations to manage situations of poor behaviour.
Automated annual returns for clubs will simplify workload for club administrators.
Aggregate data will be available at regional and national level to provide to stakeholders such as Local Government and funding trusts.
Regional communications around events such as tournaments will reach all targeted participants.
National communication campaigns such as Love Tennis will have maximum reach and provide opportunities for targeted follow-ups with the right audience.
Up to date statistics will be available on who, how and where people are enjoying tennis. This will allow us all, from club to regional bodies to Tennis NZ, to tailor delivery to the needs and wants of those in our communities.
Our tennis community will also be well positioned to take advantage of technology that is being developed by the International Tennis Federation, such as extensions to the World Tennis Number platform.

"As someone who runs regional junior competitions, when I send out communications about events I need to know that all participants are in the database, it needs to have 100% coverage or people will miss out on the information"

Deborah Dowland, Tennis Bay of Plenty

What Will This Mean For My Club?

If You Are A Clubspark Club

The sending of the required information to the national database will continue to happen automatically as it does now. You will see no difference to how things are now.

If you have an alternative online membership system that is not Clubspark

We know that the likes of our Tennis/Squash/Rackets clubs may use different products. Tennis NZ is underway in creating digital links to a number of commonly used platforms. We will form partnerships with approved platform providers to allow information to flow into the national database. This work is ongoing and we will be in touch with those clubs about how and when they can expect their system to be connected – you should see no real difference to how you operate currently.

If you are not using any digital online systems

We appreciate that for some clubs – especially our smaller ones, you may not see the need right now for a digital membership management system. While we believe digital connectivity is important for all clubs and players, we understand that it may not be an immediate priority for all clubs.

Tennis NZ will be reaching out to clubs not currently using Membership Management systems, to see if we can support you to begin to do so. For those who are not yet digital, we will work in a pragmatic and bespoke manner to devise the easiest, yet compliant way to have your information drawn into the national database.