The Problem: Five Courts, No Way to Follow the Action
Eccleston Park Tennis Club has been running tournaments since 1904. The club is small, volunteer-run, and sits just outside Liverpool. For most of its history, spectators followed the action the same way everyone did: by standing courtside and hoping the match they'd picked was still going.
That meant parents arriving mid-match with no idea what the score was. It meant wandering between five courts without knowing which ones were close. It meant people drifting away when they couldn't find a reason to stay.
Marc, a data analyst who's volunteered at the club since he was 17, describes what they actually needed:
"We wanted to try and enhance those tournaments based on having screens up around our tennis club that would tell people the actual live score that was happening on the tennis court, because we don't normally have that."
The constraint was real: a 60-player tournament brings in roughly £900 in entry fees. The budget for scoring technology was £50 maximum. Whatever they chose had to be simple enough that junior members aged 14–15 could operate it without training.
How They Found KeepTheScore
Marc started researching in April, about six weeks before the club's May tournament—the Merseyside Open, which draws players from clubs across Liverpool.
His first call was to the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the UK's governing body for tennis. Their official partner, a Dutch company called TTP, quoted £700 for one court for one day. That wasn't a negotiation—it was a rejection.
Marc used ChatGPT to search for alternatives and found KeepTheScore near the top of results. He compared a few options:
- TTP: £700/day
- A stats-focused app: £60–70/month, no streaming integration
- KeepTheScore: ~$20 for what they needed
Price got him to try it. Simplicity made him commit:
"It's such an easy tool to use. My 6-year-old nephew was able to do it. I love the fact that when I showed you that screen before it had a tournament logo on it, it had all the tournament colors that matched how the club looked at the time."
After one session during a social play night, the club stopped looking at other options.
The Part Nobody Planned For
Marc's original plan was practical: put TVs around the club showing live scores, rotate junior members as scorekeepers, and give spectators a reason to stay in one place.
Then, during his trial, he noticed something in the interface.
"I literally pressed open display scoreboard, and it said, you can put this into say like your OBS streamlabs type of thing. I would not have looked into that if it didn't say that."
That one accidental discovery turned a simple scoring project into a YouTube livestream.
The total equipment cost for streaming came to about £250—a basic camera for around £100, a telescopic stand, and a microphone. Reusable across every future tournament. The live scoreboard embedded into the video feed via OBS at no additional cost.
What Happened
The in-person impact was immediate. Live scores on screens around the club kept spectators present and engaged. The club sold more food and drinks. The three-day event felt like an event, not a series of matches that happened to overlap.
Players shared the YouTube stream link in WhatsApp groups across Liverpool tennis clubs. People watched remotely—parents who couldn't make it, club members from other venues, friends following along from home.
Marc described the moment that made all of it worth it:
"One of the lads who got to the finals—his granddad's really not well at all. His granddad's not been able to watch him play tennis all year, because he can't leave the house. But we were able to share a link with him, and he managed to watch his grandson win a final. That type of stuff was just like all the effort that had got into it made it really, really nice, and something that we'd always do now."
How the Volunteer Model Works
The club rotated 6–7 scorekeepers throughout the three-day tournament, switching hourly. That's only practical with a tool simple enough to hand to a 14-year-old between rounds without explanation.
Marc is careful with club money. For future tournaments—typically 2–3 singles events and 5–6 doubles tournaments per year—he plans to subscribe only during the event window:
"I'd probably buy it for a week. I get pro version for a week, and then I drop it, and then the next one I'd get the pro version for a week, and drop it. And the main reason for that is that it's not my money that I'm spending, and we're really, really careful."
For a club that grew from near-closure to 180 adult and 100 junior members through careful financial decisions, that attitude is what makes sustainability possible.
What Any Small Club Can Take From This
The Eccleston Park setup cost less than a single day of the LTA's recommended solution. It ran on equipment that'll pay for itself across dozens of tournaments. And it connected a grandson in his final to a grandfather who couldn't leave the house.
None of that required a broadcaster, a technical team, or a large budget. It required a volunteer with a laptop, a £100 camera, and a scoreboard tool his nephew could figure out in five minutes.
The tennis scoreboard and OBS streaming integration are both available on KeepTheScore. For clubs working with tight budgets and volunteer staff, it's a realistic place to start.
Ready to bring live scoring and streaming to your tennis club? Get started with KeepTheScore and see how real-time scores can transform your tournament experience.
