Recent Additions

• Publicly display free slots
  You can now display free/unused time slots on your public schedule, e.g. to show options for reschedules etc.

• Different number of weeks by division
  We just added support for different numbers of weeks per division (added October 2024). You will see a Weeks input option under Divisions on the Schedule Maker. This lets you set specific season durations for each of your divisions.

  

• Average Score
  New standings column for average score (scores for divided by games played) has been added.
• Archive Teams
  You can now archive teams you no longer need. Before, you could only delete them, which would also delete their games from any old schedules. 
• Add Links to your menu
  You can now add custom links to your club page navigation menu via the manage pages view .
  
• Enter Scores independent of start dates
  Instead of relying on a game's start date to show the score inputs, we've now added an ENTER SCORES button at the bottom right that will show inputs on all games. This change also means that drag and drop remains available on past/today's games, making last minute changes more convenient.
  
• Export Users
  Export your users from the user dashboard. This respects the filters you've applied to the view at the moment of export so you can export by season or by active status or role on the team etc. The exported file is formatted to feed back into the import tool, so you can easily port users to a new organization.
• Contact your opponent
  Captains/coaches can now email the opposing captains/coaches via the team page.
  
• Map-based search
  Put your events on the map!
  Make sure you've entered your venues' address in order to be included on our new map and let players find you by location. Give your about us section in your organization settings a polish as well. The first 500 characters will be displayed on the search results.
  Use our online registration to get promoted to the top!
  Find leagues in your area at https://leaguelobster.com/search
  
  
• Import
  You can now import games to your schedule (in PRO).  Learn more.
  
• Swap Weeks
  You can more easily swap weeks (interchange games from one week with another's) by clicking the swap button next to the week header (in PRO)
• LobsterGPT
  We've deployed our experimental AI chatbot to answer your questions more quickly. Don't worry, we're still here for you too if needed!
• receipts are back!
  we've found a way to restore self-serve access to receipts
• hide past games
  you can quickly jump to where you're at in the schedule by hiding past games with the button at the top of your schedule
  
• decimal scores / half points
  you can now set a number of decimal places for scores in your standings configuration
• scorekeeping permissions for captains and coaches
  you can give all coaches and captains automatic scorekeeper permission for their own games by checking this box on your organization settings:
  
• simple league scheduler
  • you can now generate round robin fixtures using the LITE scheduler (schedule a league button on the homepage) without assigned dates, times and venues (see our updated tutorial video )
  • our LITE scheduler now also lets you generate and edit your schedule without signing up so you can see if it's right for you more easily

2022

• Set registration limits (max teams) by division
  you can now set separate registration limits for each division
  
• Insert Delay
  easily shift games during your tournament due to rain breaks or other delays. Read more.
   
• Division constraint options

  You can now choose whether you want to division constraints to apply only on selected weekdays – leaving other weekdays available – or whether you want them to block other weekdays – only scheduling on selected days.

  You can also now select multiple divisions for the same constraint – saving some pesky legwork.
  
  

• Pause constraints
  You can easily pause individual or whole categories of constraints now and re-run the allocation or regenerate the schedule without them.
• Reallocate mid-Season
  We added a Retry Allocating Unscored Games button to allow you to re-allocate mid-season without messing up past games' records.
• Reallocate Week
  You can reallocate each week on its own now by clicking the button next to the week header.
• Improved Balancing
  You can now select on which dimensions (venues / times / weekdays) you'd like to balance your schedule – you'll find this under allocation options (PRO).
• Custom Event Order
  You can set a custom sort order for how your schedules/signups are displayed on your dashboard and club page. On the Events page (calendar icon in the left navigation) simply drag and drop them into the desired order. This works for current (ongoing + upcoming) leagues – past seasons will contune to be ordered by their start dates.

2021

• Travel Constraints
  You can now enter distance (travel time) between venues and specify how far teams are allowed to travel between games and cap total travel time per team per day. Read more.

• Locked Games
  In PRO, you can now lock games and rerun the allocation while keeping those games locked in place. Play with it a little and you'll quickly find it supercharges your scheduling process! Read more.

• New Video on Custom Domains
  We've made a new video on how to link your custom domain – it's easy! Watch it here.
• Branded Team Pages
  Team pages now also get your logo and color scheme. Until now this was only the case if you had a custom domain.
• Team Assignment Notifications
  When assigning players (free agents) to teams, you can now send team assignment notifications. An email will be sent to the player, as well as captains (if any) of the receiving team and the previous team (if the player was previously assigned to a proper team). See assigning teams.

• More Visible Home Venues
  Home venues are now shown on the divisions panel next to each team to make them easier to review.
• Available Slots Change
  Unused time slots / availabilities are now shown as 'Available v Available' rather than 'Bye v Bye' as this was causing some confusion. 

• Points for Shutouts
  You can now award points for shutouts in your custom standings configuration
• Cornhole Standings
  We've added cornhole as one of the sports you can select for your league. It's been one of the more popular sports on our site, so it's been overdue. To celebrate, we're also adding a new standings template (which is automatically selected as the default if you select cornhole as your sport) – available in LITE –  that just simply adds up all the points for into one column and points allowed into a second column and sorts on most points scored with least points conceded as a tie breaker.

• Additional Pages
  You can now add additional pages under your club page, so you can add fancy stuff like blog posts, rules pages, and whatever else your heart desires. Learn more.
  

• Page Editor
  You can now fully customize your club page with our brand new page editor. Learn more.
  Also check out our post on Custom Domain Support for how to connect your .com or other domain and use your club page as your website.

• Multi-Team Constraints
  Before, when you selected multiple teams in a team constraint, that would designate it a coach constraint (meaning the teams included in the constraint aren't allowed to play simultaneously) and disable any other inputs. So if you had an identical constraint that applied to multiple teams, you had to set up a separate constraint for each of the teams, which could get tedious if you had a lot of them. Those days are now behind us! Since today's update, you can select multiple teams and then decide whether or not this is a coach constraint or just a regular team constraint that applies to multiple teams – or both! 
  
  We also made it easier to select teams within large events by adding a search box to the selector.
  
  
  Example: Teams in this constraint would BOTH not be scheduled simultaneously AND not scheduled on Fridays.
   
• Team Highlighter
  We've added a team highlighter to make inspecting team schedules a little more convenient. Activate the highlighter by clicking the highlighter icon, then click any team on the schedule to highlight its games. Click the team again to remove the highlight or click the eraser at the top to clear all highlights. Click the highlighter again to deactivate (keeps highlights but lets you click normally).
  
  
• Calendar Filters
  You'll find new filters at the top of the calendar view (PRO feature) that allow you to filter the venues shown (in the day view) and focus on specific divisions or teams at a time (others will be faded out)
  
• Draggable Modals
  We've made our popup modals draggable, so you can move them if you're trying to see something behind them.
  
• Odd Pairings Counter
  We've replaced the orange highlights for odd pairings (team playing each other more or fewer times than the norm) with badges showing the number of times the two teams meet. You can also turn the badges on/off to declutter.
   
  

• Profile Pictures
  We're using gravatar as users' default avatars now – you'll see a computer generated profile picture in the top right corner if you haven't uploaded one, which you can do from your account settings page now. Profile pictures are mostly used for team pages at the moment, but will gain greater significance as we add more player-level functionality (such as top scorers in the future).
• Facelift for the registrations dashboard
  You'll see some changes on the registrations dashboard. We mostly added more links to make it easier to navigate from the dashboard to the event's registrations page, the team's dashboard page, and the player's dashboard page.

2020

• Stripe integration = international registration support
  We've integrated Stripe in order to support registration in more countries. In all, 40 countries are now supported, including Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and most EU countries! 
• Variable start of the week
  Weeks now start on Mondays by default, but you can choose any day as your start of the week now! You can change your organization's default in your organization settings (this will also apply to LITE schedules). In PRO, you can also change it for individual seasons under each season's settings.

• Copy registration settings with season
  When copying a season, you now have the option of carrying over registration settings – this should make it easier to replicate your registration pages from one season to the next

• LITE BASIC is back
  We've reintroduced the LITE BASIC subscription tier to allow removing ads at a lower price point (however, the free tier is now limited to 25 teams)
• No ads on team pages with subscription
  If you have a subscription, we are no longer showing ads on team pages (the only place that would have still had ads before)
• Email Verification

• Modify Custom Form Responses
  You can now modify custom form responses for both player and team registrations (see this article)
• Special Request and Custom Form responses on Team Assignment page
  The team assignment page (where you assign free agents to teams) now displays any special requests next to the player's name and will show any custom form responses when you hover over a player with your mouse so you have all relevant registration info at your fingertips when assigning teams.
• Autofill Playoff Seeds
  You no longer have to tediously select each individual playoff seed for standard 1st through nth seeds – you can just click one button now to do this.

• Max back-to-back games
  Set a limit on how many back-to-back games teams are allowed to play before they need a break (see constraints)
• Choose home/away or away/home on schedule
  Select the order in which teams are displayed on the schedule (see standings)
• Toggle min/max time between games to be ignored for playoffs
  You can turn off the min/max and max back-to-back constraints for playoffs now (see constraints)

• Redesigned Club Page
  New look. Upload your own cover image. Read more.
• Custom Domain Support
  Connect your .com or other domain and use your club page as your website. Read more.

• User & Team management dashboard
• Player Import

• Message Center
  We added a new email tool to allow you to reach your participants more easily.

• New Admin Dashboard
  We launched our new admin dashboard, making it easier to find your schedules and manage your operations.

• Games Behind
  You can now display Games Behind in your standings.

Header image by NeONBRAND on Unsplash