Frequently asked
questions

SportNet is a sports networking app built specifically for sport. Athletes build credible profiles with their achievements, experience, stats and highlight reels, and coaches, scouts and teams search, message and recruit that talent directly. It is made by The Sporting Network and is free to join on iOS, Android and the web.

A sports networking app is a professional network for the sports world rather than a general social network. Instead of a feed built for entertainment, it gives athletes a structured profile that shows who they are, what they have achieved and what they are looking for, and it gives coaches and scouts search tools to find them. SportNet is built around exactly that: profiles, discovery, direct messaging, teams and events.

That is the simplest way to describe it. LinkedIn is a general professional network built around office careers, whereas SportNet is built only for sport: profiles have positions, levels, clubs, achievements and performance stats, and discovery is filtered by sport, position, location and level. The idea is the same, a professional presence that can be found by the right people, but every part of it is designed for athletes, coaches and teams.

SportNet is for athletes of every level, from grassroots and academy players to professionals, as well as coaches, scouts, teams, clubs and academies. Athletes use it to be seen, coaches and scouts use it to find and contact talent, and teams use it to manage a squad, post events and trials, and recruit. Accounts are available to anyone aged 13 or over.

Yes. Creating an account, building your profile, messaging, joining teams and appearing in scout search are all free. There is no credit card and no trial period. Premium options for athletes and for scouts and organisations are planned, but the core platform remains free.

Download SportNet from the App Store or Google Play, or sign up on the web, and create an account. Sign-up asks for your name, email and password (or Apple or Google sign-in), your date of birth, whether you are an athlete or a coach, one to five sports and a username. After that you can fill in your profile yourself or let the AI Profile Assistant organise it from a description of your sporting life.

Instagram and TikTok give athletes reach, but they do not give them a structured sports profile or give coaches a way to filter by sport, position, location or level. SportNet is built so that a coach or scout can search for a specific type of athlete, read a proper profile and message them directly. Posting highlights is part of it, but the profile and the discovery tools are the point.

Agents represent a small number of athletes and take a percentage. Club-side scouting and data tools such as Wyscout or InStat are priced and designed for professional organisations rather than for an individual trying to be noticed. SportNet puts a professional profile, direct messaging and discovery tools in one place for athletes and coaches alike, with no middlemen and no fees for the core platform.

SportNet works worldwide and supports any sport, from football, rugby, basketball and cricket to athletics, swimming, combat sports and more. The app is English-first and can also be used in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Arabic, and posts written in another language can be translated with a tap. Your interests, including regions and level, decide which athletes and posts are surfaced to you.

Complete your profile, keep it public and switch on your scouting profile. Coaches and scouts search SportNet by sport, position, level and region, so a full profile with real achievements, experience, stats and highlights is what puts you in front of them. Posting regularly, following people in your sport and joining a team all increase how often you are seen.

Your profile has dedicated sections for achievements, experience, performance stats, physical attributes, goals and contact links, and a Posts view for highlight reels and updates. Tap Edit on your profile to fill in each section, or describe your sporting life to the AI Profile Assistant and accept the suggestions it organises for you. Your profile strength percentage shows how complete it is.

Yes. Verified coaches use Scout search to look for athletes by sport, position, level and region, and everyone on SportNet can find you through search, Discover and Trending. You control this: your scouting profile is opt-in, and your privacy settings decide who can see your profile at all.

The AI Profile Assistant turns a plain description of your sporting life, typed or dictated, into suggested profile fields. Nothing is saved until you review the suggestions and accept them, and you can untick anything you do not want. It is powered by Claude, an AI model from Anthropic, and it only runs after you agree on a permission sheet the first time you open it.

Follow athletes, coaches and teams in your sport to see their posts, and send connection requests to the people you want to work with. Following is one-way and needs no approval; connecting is mutual, and connections can message each other and see content you have set to connections only. SportNet also suggests people you may know based on your mutual follows, invite, sport and city.

Every sport. You pick one to five sports when you sign up, your first pick becomes your main sport on your profile, and you can change your sports at any time in Settings. Profiles adapt to the sport with relevant positions, levels and stats.

Yes, if you are 18 or over. Settings → Privacy → Public profile link creates a link that anyone can open without an account, showing your name, photo, sport, position and follower count. It only works while your profile visibility is set to Everyone. You can also export your full profile as a PDF from Settings to send to a coach or club.

SportNet is not an agency and does not represent athletes. What it does is remove the need for a gatekeeper just to be seen: your profile is searchable by coaches, scouts and teams, and they can message you directly. Many athletes will never need an agent to get a trial or a conversation started; those who do can still use SportNet alongside one.

Yes. Discover → Events lists trials, camps, games and recruiting events, with a Nearby map sorted by distance and filters for date and type. You can RSVP, share an event, add it to your calendar and see who else is going. Team pages and team posts are another place clubs announce openings.

Sign up as a coach, get verified, then use Scout under the Discover tab to search the athlete database by sport, position, level and region. Search and Discover also let you browse athletes, teams, posts and hashtags. A complete athlete profile shows sport, position, club, experience, achievements, stats and highlights before you make contact.

Scout search returns detailed athlete results, including athletes who are under 18, so it is limited to coaches who have verified their identity. Verification is done through our partner Persona: you photograph an ID document and complete a short liveness check. Once approved you get a blue tick and Scout unlocks.

Yes. Scout search filters by sport, position, level and region and has its own sort options. Athletes choose whether to appear in scout search through their scouting profile, so results are people who want to be found.

Send them a direct message from their profile. Messages from people an athlete is not connected to arrive as a message request, which they can accept to move the conversation into their inbox. There are no intermediaries and no fees.

Sport, position, level, club, location and bio, plus sections for experience, achievements, performance stats, physical attributes, goals, contact links and credentials, and a posts grid of highlights and updates. Athletes decide who can see each section, and an athlete can allow coaches to download their profile as a PDF.

Only where the athlete's settings allow it. Under-18 accounts are set to Connections Only automatically, which hides them from search, Discover and scout results until they choose otherwise, and profiles set to Connections & Coaches Only are visible only to verified coaches, scouts and teams. Contact between adults and under-18 users is governed by our adult-to-minor contact policy.

Your account type, athlete or coach, is chosen at sign-up and shapes the app: coaches get Scout search and coaching-specific profile sections, athletes get performance stats and a scouting profile. It cannot be changed inside the app, so contact support if you need it switched. You can also add more than one SportNet account on the same device and switch between them.

Open the Teams tab and create your team with its name, sport, location and crest. A team page has its own posts, members and staff, fixtures with results, and a following. Owners and admins manage everything from the team's Manage screen.

Create an event from Discover → Events and set its type to a trial, with the date, location and sport, an optional number of spots and an optional weekly repeat. If you own or are staff on a team, link the event to the team so the team's crest and name appear on it. Trials show in Nearby for athletes in the area, in the feeds of your followers, and athletes can RSVP directly.

Athletes can tap Join Team on your team page to send a request, which an admin accepts or declines under Manage → Members & staff → Requests. You can also share an invite link or code that takes people straight to the join screen, or invite specific people, who accept the invite themselves.

Team owners and admins edit team details, review join requests, manage members and staff, and see archived and deleted team posts from Manage. Ownership can be transferred to another member, and if an owner has left SportNet an admin can claim the team.

Yes. Every team page has a Fixtures tab with Upcoming and Results. Admins add fixtures with the date, home or away, venue and competition; if the opponent is also on SportNet the fixture is confirmed by both sides and shown on both pages. After the match either team enters the score, the other confirms it, and the Results list keeps the season record and recent form.

Yes. When you create a post, choose the team as the author. Team posts appear in the feeds of everyone who follows the team, alongside the personal posts of the people they follow.

SportNet is open to anyone aged 13 or over, and under-18 accounts are private by default. When a user enters a date of birth under 18 their profile visibility is set to Connections Only, which hides them from search, Discover and scout results and hides their posts from anyone who cannot see their profile. Reports that may involve someone under 18 are reviewed the same day.

There is no separate parent account, but parents can be closely involved. A young athlete's account is private by default, their date of birth is never shown on their profile, and every profile, post, comment and message can be reported. Our Child Safety, Safeguarding and Adult-to-Minor Contact policies explain the rules in full, and support can be reached at main@thesportingnetwork.com.

You choose in Settings → Privacy. Everyone means anyone signed in to SportNet; Connections & Coaches Only adds verified coaches, scouts and teams to your accepted connections; Connections Only means accepted connections alone; Private means only you. Each profile section also has its own visibility chip, and Health & Recovery is set to only me by default.

A blue tick means the person has verified their identity through Persona, our verification partner, by photographing an ID document and passing a liveness check. For coaches it also unlocks Scout search. It confirms who someone is; it is not an endorsement of their coaching or playing ability.

Tap the ••• menu on any post, comment or profile and choose Report, or use the flag icon in a chat. Reports are anonymous to the person you report, and every one is reviewed by our team, within 72 hours for most reports and the same day where someone under 18 may be involved. To help prioritise, reported content is also classified automatically by Claude, an AI model from Anthropic, but that never decides the outcome on its own.

Open their profile, tap the ••• menu and choose Block. Blocking stops that person interacting with you or seeing your content. You can review and unblock people in Settings → Blocked users.

Yes. Email reports@thesportingnetwork.com within 30 days of the decision. Appeals are reviewed by a different team member from the one who made the original decision, within the same timescales as reports.

Accounts use secure authentication, including Apple and Google sign-in, and your data is stored with Supabase on encrypted infrastructure. You control who can see your profile and each section of it, health and physical data is only stored with your explicit consent, and you can export or delete your data at any time. Our Privacy Policy and Your Privacy Explained page set out exactly what we collect and why.

SportNet is available as a native app for iPhone on the App Store and for Android on Google Play, and as a web app at thesportingnetwork.com that works in any modern browser. It is the same account and the same data everywhere.

Yes. Sign in with the same account on the web and in the app and your profile, feed, messages, teams and events stay in sync. Some newer features arrive in the apps first, so the app is the most complete experience.

In the app, go to Settings → Send Feedback to send a bug report, feature idea or general feedback straight to the team. From the website, email main@thesportingnetwork.com with what happened and how to reproduce it.

Go to Settings → Delete Account in the app. Your profile is hidden immediately and permanently erased after 30 days; if you sign back in within that window your account is restored. After 30 days the deletion cannot be undone.

Yes. Deleted posts go to Settings → Recently deleted and stay there for 30 days, where you can restore them. If you only want a post off your profile, archive it instead: archived posts are kept indefinitely and can be restored at any time.

Not yet. The Integrations screen in Settings lists Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit and Strava, but each is marked coming soon and none can be connected today.

Yes, all from Settings. Change Email sends a confirmation to the new address, Change Password works from Settings or through Forgot password on the sign-in screen, and Language switches the app between English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Arabic. Measurements lets you choose the units used for height and weight.

Users aged 18 or over can share a referral link from Settings → Invite friends. Each friend who downloads the app and signs up with your code earns you an entry in the draw for a SportNet hat, up to ten entries. It is free to enter, no purchase is necessary, and the winner is contacted through their SportNet account.