pops.bg
A national sports map, kept up by the people who play there
We built pops.bg from zero: a national map of public sports places, open games, a sports passport and rankings. We also run the project's social media.
TWO PILLARS
pops.bg
Group project
Overview
Disclosure: pops.bg is a project from our group. We built its website and platform from zero, and we run its social media.
POPS stands for “More than just sport”. It is a national map of public sports places in Bulgaria, and the people who play there keep it up to date. The home page opens with one line: “Sport is closer than you think.”
— Audience: people who play sport outdoors, organisers of open games, sports clubs
— Scope: website, platform, social media
— Languages: Bulgarian and English
— Site: pops.bg
Five things, shown on real phone screens
The home page explains the whole platform in five steps: find a place, add to the map, play, collect points in a passport and compare yourself in the rankings. Each step is shown with real phone screens, and the rules with pictures.
The map belongs to the people who use it
Anyone with a profile can add a place, confirm it or update its condition, and earns points for it. Points count only on site: when someone sends a contribution, the phone shares its location once. A contribution sent within 250 metres of the place earns points. From further away it is still recorded, just without points. The location itself is not kept.
The facility data comes from three places, and a correction from someone on site is never overwritten by an import. Photos go live after a moderator reviews them, and the rule is short: “Photograph the place, not people.” The data is open under the ODbL licence, with OpenStreetMap credited as the source.
Open games, a passport and rankings
Open games bring people together at public places for basketball, football, table tennis and more. Players sign up with one tap and check in with the organiser's QR code.
Everything a player does on POPS goes into a sports passport: points, badges and streaks. The passport stays private until its owner decides otherwise. Only players with a public passport enter the rankings, under the name they chose themselves, and weekly divisions give everyone a chance.
Tools for clubs
Clubs can run their work on POPS: members and memberships, timetable and bookings, QR attendance, payments, events, messages and a club page on the national map.
Trust, built into the product
The site says it plainly: POPS is an association, not a company. It runs without ad trackers, its map data is open, and a profile can be exported or deleted in one step.
What we did
— Website and platform: built from zero, in Bulgarian and English — the map, contributions with points, open games with QR check-in, the sports passport, the rankings and the club tools
— Social media: we run the project's social media
The platform is live at pops.bg.
Need work delivered to this standard?
Public institutions have trusted us since 2016. Tell us what you need to deliver, and a senior team member will reply within two working days.