About Leagology
Local sport deserves
a memory.
Every week someone beats the best player in the room. By the next week, nobody can prove it.
I set out to fix that.
Started in a pub.
Still in a pub.
I'm Bal. I don't look like a tech founder on paper. I've spent my life behind a counter: the family shop, my own off licence for ten years, and since 2015 the Weston Arms, my family's pub in Kent. Pool tournaments in it, once a month, for years.
They all finished the same way. Bracket off the wall, scores in the bin. Everyone remembers who won. Nobody agrees on how it happened, and the story's better every time it gets told.
Not that it bothered me. I just saw a better version of it. Over ten years ago I paid someone to build an app for it. BetPint. A bet on every game. Wrong idea.
So I dropped the betting and watched what actually happened when people played. Behind a bar you become a people-watcher. Where the laughs came from. Where the banter started. Who went quiet, and who came back for another go.
That's what it's built around. It's me, automated, doing for every player in the room what I'd do if I could get round all of them. Record the lot, keep the stats, and then you can remind a bloke you beat in March about it for the rest of his life.
Then I learned to build it myself. Treehouse, Pragmatic Studio, mentors on Codementor, more YouTube than I'd like to admit. First go in 2018. About forty false starts later, this one worked.
Took a lot longer to build than I told everyone it would.
I know what an MVP is. I didn't build one. I built it around my regulars. If it didn't work for them, it didn't go in.
Since May we've run four series at the Weston. Twelve came to the first. By the fourth it was sixteen and a waitlist, and one Sunday took over £500 more at the bar.
Leagology: the study of building a community through sport. It started in a pub. It doesn't have to stay in one.
My youngest is my co-founder. She told me to keep going. That's the only reason you're reading this.
The founding pub
All of it started at The Weston Arms, Rochester. Same room, same tables, same people arguing about who's actually any good.
The best stories happen
where nobody's watching.
The player who hasn't lost since March. Nobody outside that building knows.
The rivalry that's been building for six months. It should have a record.
Now they will.
Got a table, a court or a crowd?
We're looking for people to work with. Right now we're focused on sports you play one on one. Got a pool table, a pickleball court or a sports centre? Or a community initiative we could be part of?
Come and talk to me. I'll tell you straight whether it'll work in your place.
Got a pool table?
Put it on the map and run your first tournament. 45 days free, then £49 a month. Cancel whenever.