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Do you want more people to enjoy your activities? We want to let you know about an exciting opportunity to advertise your sessions, facilities and services to a much wider audience, for little to no additional cost.
Yorkshire Sport Foundation is committed to opening activity data, so it’s as easy to find and book a dance class as a hotel room.
We are also an OpenActive Champion with the ODI, committed to a programme to support people working with data to transform the sport and physical activity sector across the country.
OpenActive is a community-led initiative to support the physical activity sector to share information faster, smarter and more accurately. It helps people to find the right activities for them, and helps organisations reach new customers.
What is in it for me as an activity provider?
- Get your activities and sessions listed in a wider range of apps and services, letting you reach a broader audience through more channels than before
- Make it simpler for new or existing customers to find the activities that you run
- New ways of reaching the more vulnerable groups of people that may struggle to be physically active i.e people with disabilities
- Find new ways to promote and fill quiet sessions. You could see a 15 to 20% increase.
- Making your data open means that developers and apps can use it straight away; you don’t need to set up data sharing agreements with individual companies
- Have your say on the development of the data standards so that they work for you
- Make sure that you comply with the most recent funding agreements from Sport England.
How it works
Providers upload data in a format than finders can share to referrers and public.
I want to open my data – how do I do it?
Through our site
Method 1:
1. Log in to our Sportsuite system
2. Add your organisation
3. Add your activity
That’s it, you are now on national activity finders.
Add a widget to your website
Step 1
Add the below script to the <head> portion of the website
<script async src=”https://widget.activityfinder.net/app.js”> </script>
Step 2
add the following markup to the part of the page where you want the widget to appear.
<played-activity-widget sub-domain=”yorkshiremoving” main-title= “Yorkshire Moving” sub-title=”Find the activity that suits you” font=”Plus Jakarta Sans” canvas-colour=”#FFF” primary- color=”#5D2C6F”> </played-activity-widget>
And it looks like this!
Other providers:
Other free open data sharing services are available, they all open their data to activity finders
Check the ODI for more providers
Common questions
Will customers be able to book our activities through different apps and services once I’ve opened my data?
Our focus is helping organisations like you to publish their timetables and availability. This is the first step in the process, after which we will look at how to establish a seamless booking experience for customers, as in other sectors. Once a critical mass of data has been opened we will be encouraging innovators and data users to create new products and services with this data. .
What sort of things will people build with my data?
There are a wide range of applications for opportunity data. Tools that allow people to find activities in their local area are already starting to appear. There are other use cases that we expect to appear, such as a tool that allows a doctor to prescribe activities to patients. We will be encouraging innovators and developers to cater to a range of different customers and scenarios.
How will people know that I’ve published data?
The OpenActive website lists all the data that is published; developers can then find this data via Google. We are also actively promoting these datasets among the developer and data user community.
What about data quality?
This is part of our future work, though the current focus is on getting data published. We are planning on incorporating national schemes such as ClubMark and CoachMark and local schemes such as CamdenMark.
How do I open my data?
Opening your data is straightforward, although you will need some technical skills. There are step-by-step instructions you can follow on the OpenActive website.
How is OA different to previous initiatives/attempts?
Previous work to open up data in the physical activity sector has focused on creating a single centralised website to help people find sport and fitness opportunities near them. Gathering all the data in one place while also crafting a great experience for the consumer proved too much for a single programme. OpenActive is promoting a decentralised approach. Rather than an activity finder on a single website we are working to build an open market where innovators can build apps, tools and services (including activity finders) using open data. This will allow a broader range of services to appear that can help specific types of users.