Building a scalable tennis club management platform MVP

40Love set out to modernise how tennis clubs, tournament organisers, coaches, and players manage their daily operations. The goal was to replace fragmented, manual processes with a single digital platform that could handle club management, tournaments, coaching, and payments in one place.

Before engaging Exline Labs, 40Love was operating on a locally installed FileMaker Pro setup. While functional, this system had clear limitations in scalability, accessibility, performance, and long-term growth. As the product vision evolved, it became clear that a cloud-based, modern SaaS platform was required.

Exline Labs was brought in to analyse the existing system, reverse-engineer its logic, and rebuild the platform as a scalable web-based MVP that could serve as the foundation for future expansion.

The project focused on three core objectives:

1. Replace the legacy FileMaker system with a modern, cloud-based web platform
2. Centralise tennis club, tournament, and coaching operations in a single system
3. Deliver a clean, intuitive user experience for players, coaches, and organisers

The solution needed to support multiple user roles while remaining fast, secure, and easy to use.

UX design played a critical role in making a complex system feel simple.

We began by gathering detailed requirements through multiple client workshops, mapping out all administrative and operational workflows. Competitor research across sports and club management platforms helped identify best practices and common usability pitfalls.

Key UX decisions included:

- A clean, minimalist admin dashboard with a clear sidebar navigation
- Role-based interfaces tailored to players, coaches, and organisers
- Reduced steps for common tasks such as tournament setup and bookings
- Clear data presentation for reports, leaderboards, and schedules

Low-fidelity wireframes were created in Figma and validated before moving into high-fidelity UI design. The web platform’s design system was aligned with the existing 40Love brand used in the mobile app. This ensured visual consistency across devices while keeping the interface focused on clarity and usability.

This was not a greenfield build.

The existing FileMaker-based system had to be carefully analysed and reverse-engineered to understand business logic, workflows, and data structures. Based on this analysis, Exline Labs rebuilt the platform using modern web technologies, transforming it into a cloud-based SaaS product.

Key aspects of the development approach included:

- Rebuilding all modules from scratch for performance and security
- Implementing Stripe for secure payment processing
- Designing scalable architecture to support global usage
- Maintaining close collaboration with the client throughout development

The client played an active role in testing and approving key decisions, ensuring the MVP aligned closely with real-world needs.

The result was a fully responsive, scalable web-based club management system ready for growth.

- A modern SaaS platform accessible across devices
- A powerful admin panel for managing tournaments, users, and payments
- Smooth user experience across all roles with minimal learning curve
- Developer-ready Figma files enabling efficient design-to-code workflows

The MVP was successfully launched and positioned to scale across tennis communities in the UK and internationally.