The additions required significant upgrades to the sport's premier live scoring site
February 20, 2018 by Alex Colucci in News with 0 comments
Late in 2017 the PDGA and UDisc announced a partnership that would bring the popular live scoring platform, UDisc Live, to the National Tour Series and the 2018 Pro World Championship. Now, they’ve added the United States Disc Golf Championship and the RE/MAX Open, the first event of the Euro Pro Tour and largest pro event in Finland this year, to their schedule.
“This year, adding on the National Tour and other events, on top of the Disc Golf Pro Tour, it was necessary to make foundational improvements to the site,” UDisc co-founder Josh Lichti said. “Those improvements will support multiple tours going on at the same time and then stats for players across the entire season.”
In total UDisc Live will be collecting statistics from 19 high-profile events this season and that increase required a number of significant updates to the site with the aim of easing its use for fans. Fans will be able to break down stats from players by tour, and a new search feature allows you to quickly jump between player pages.
“It provides more ways to slice and dice the information since we have a lot more stats coming in and a lot more players,” Lichti said. “Simplifying a lot of the navigation was important, like making a table on the schedule page so you can quickly find the event you want, and one of the big ones is for looking up players. It’s a lot easier to find the players you want, and that kind of fits into the next big phase of the updates for 2018: really helping fans connect with pros.”
Lichti emphasized the improved player pages on the site, saying they have been “totally enhanced and redesigned” to connect fans with the players. Part of that redesign allows the pros to edit their own player pages themselves.
“We’ve added a lot more demographic information about the players,” Lichti continued. “So, you can see who their sponsor is and links to their social media pages and websites. And, the players themselves can add bios or an ‘about me’ section, and upcoming clinics or events that they’re going to that we aren’t covering. They can list those on their player profile pages so it’s easy for them to connect with fans and it’s easy for fans to go back and, say, ‘oh, Eric Oakley is doing really well at this event, let me figure out who he is, see his Instagram account and the photos he’s posting and learn more about him as a person.’”
The player pages can also be updated by anyone by submitting edits that will be verified by UDisc to make sure the information is correct. Lichti also added that, for example, if you’re a professional photographer taking photos at an event and you want to submit images for certain players that’s possible too.
Here are some highlights of the new features including screenshots, in some cases:
- The tournament and leaderboard pages now have easier access to tournament-level stats across all rounds (previously to access these you had to go to the Stats page and select the tournament to see these)
- Each tournament the site is covering has its own event page with extra details, like who is currently registered for the event, and links to media website that are covering the events
- A throw tracker on the live scoring page during each event that shows the result of every throw in real time
- Player pages include links to their social media profiles, and a short biography, all of which is editable by the players themselves so the information can stay current
- Players pages have an instant search feature that allows you to pull up other player’s individual pages quickly
- Schedule page the lists and links to all events UDisc Live is covering
- Course photographs for every event
- A toggle switch to change between metric and U.S. customary units of measure on the bottom right of the site
- Navigation upgrades on mobile devices are now at the top of the screen to save space
With the additions of the USDGC and the first event of the Euro Pro Tour, UDisc Live is expanding quickly in taking over live scoring for what many regard as the most prestigious single event on the calendar and Finland’s premier event. Lichti was excited about expanding their reach to Finland, saying that as much as 10-percent of the total site traffic during the 2017 Memorial Championship came from Finland, a country with a population around five and a half million people.
“These guys that reached out to us [from the RE/MAX Open] are partnering with a lot of people and really working hard to grow the sport in Finland, and they have RE/MAX on board,” Lichti said. “They were looking for another thing that would set their event apart, came across UDisc and really wanted to work with us. It’s a great way for UDisc to expand, do events in Europe and get more pros using the system and following these events.”
Lichti added that they were in talks with MVP Disc Sports about partnering to provide live scoring for the United States Women’s Disc Golf Championship in Lansing, Michigan. He said that given that the majority of the USWDGC field consists of divisions other than Open Women’s, that a partnership wasn’t feasible for organizers this year, but he is optimistic about working with the event in the future.
“Potentially in future years when we expand to cover more divisions and as the pro women’s field continues to grow, I think it will probably make more sense,” Lichti said. “UDisc Live is really built, right now, to cover MPO and FPO and not other divisions. It just doesn’t fit well with what we’re doing right now.”
