What's new in MeetMaker
This release is the biggest set of changes to event setup and ticketing in years.
Spectators can now buy tickets without an account, event directors choose what kind
of event they are building before they build it, and a searchable support library
replaces the old list of links.
Everything below is listed in order of how much it changes your day, starting with
the biggest.
Start at the top »
Support Library
About the screens on this page: they are real screens from MeetMaker, filled with a
demonstration event. Every athlete and coach name, every date of birth, every membership or
organization number, every dollar figure and every business name – gyms, clubs,
venues and banks alike – is fictional and was made up for this page. No real
person's information and no real business appears anywhere on it. Any name here that happens
to match a real person or a real business is purely coincidental.
1Ticket buyers and event directors
Spectators can buy tickets without a MeetMaker account
Making a parent or a grandparent create an account before they can buy a ticket costs you
sales. On a ticketed event they no longer have to. A buyer gives their name, email address
and phone number, confirms the email address with a short code, and checks out.
- No account needed. Name, email and phone are all that is asked for.
- The email address is confirmed first. We send a six-digit code and the
buyer types it in before checkout, because the email address is how the tickets
are delivered.
- Tickets arrive by email with a link that opens them on a phone at the
gate – one ticket at a time, with the QR code, so there is nothing to
find or scroll past in the queue.
- An account is optional, and never lost. A buyer can set a password at
checkout, or create an account later from the ticket page. Either way, the
orders they already placed as a guest are waiting in the new account.
- You stay in control. Guest checkout is a setting on the ticketed event,
so you can turn it off for an event that needs accounts.
Buying tickets as a guest. The email address is confirmed with a code before checkout.
Ticketed events only. Competition registration still needs a club account, because a
registration has to attach to a roster.
2Event directors
You choose the type of event before you build it
The Event Wizard now opens by asking what you are setting up – a meet, a camp or
clinic, dues and fees, or a ticketed event. Previously every new event was created as a
meet and the type was set for you when the listing was approved, which meant filling in a
competition form for an event that has no competition in it.
The first step of the Event Wizard. The rest of the form follows the type you pick.
- A ticketed event gets a shorter form. Sport type, competition details,
registration limits and the competition levels grid are all put away, because
none of them apply. Purchasable items and tickets stay, since that is what the
event is.
- Your listing is live sooner, because the type no longer waits on an
approval step to be set.
Copy an event, then change its type
Copying is still the fastest way to build next season's meet, and now you can copy
an event and switch the type afterwards. Copy last season's meet into a ticketed
event and the purchasable items come across ready to sell.
Competition levels are dropped when a meet becomes a ticketed event
A ticketed event has no levels, so copying a meet into one leaves them behind
rather than carrying across a levels list nobody will ever see. The items you
actually wanted still copy.
An event no longer needs a competition level to be saved
A ticketed or items-only event has nothing to put in the levels grid, and a meet
is often easier to build by saving the shell first and adding levels once the
schedule is settled. Either way, the Save button no longer stops you.
The copy list only shows events worth copying
The Copy Event dropdown is now limited to your events from the last two years, and
to the same type of event you are creating – so building a camp lists camps,
not eleven seasons of meets. A ticketed event is the exception and lists both
ticketed events and meets, because ticketing is usually added onto a competition.
If you have nothing in the last two years, you still get your full list rather
than an empty one.
Link a meet to the event that sells its admission tickets
Meets and their admission tickets are two separate events, and spectators used to
have to go and find the right one. A meet can now point at its ticketed event, and
a Buy Admission Tickets link appears on the meet's page, in the event list
and on the home page – going straight to ticket purchase.
Linking a meet to the ticketed event that sells admission for it.
3Everyone
The event page has been rebuilt
The public page for an event was a single long list of labels and values, printed whether
or not there was anything to put in them. It is now a two-column layout with status badges
at the top: what the event is on the left, and the facts people scan for – dates,
location, admission, who to contact – on the right.
The rebuilt event page. Badges carry the event type, sanction and registration status.
- Empty rows are hidden. No more blank lines where an event has no fax
number, no second contact or no logo.
- The wording follows the event type. A ticketed event says Tickets On
Sale and Ticket Sales, and its items are headed Tickets –
not Registration.
- It reads properly on a phone, which is where most spectators open it.
- Your links still work. The Details, Schedule, Results and Forms tabs are
unchanged, and a link straight to one of them still opens it.
4Clubs and event directors
A refunded athlete can register again
Once a registration had been refunded, that athlete could not be entered into the same
event again – the roster still counted them as registered. A refund now genuinely
releases the athlete, so an injury that turns out to be minor, or a plan that changes back,
no longer needs a support call.
- Register them again like anyone else. The athlete reappears on the club
registration screen and can be entered normally.
- The refund record is kept. Re-registering creates a new entry and leaves the
refunded one exactly as it was, so the money trail is intact.
- Their place is released. A refunded athlete no longer occupies a spot against
an event or level registration limit.
5Everyone
A searchable support library
The Support page was a flat list of links. It is now a searchable library, split by who you
are: one path for people setting up events, another for people registering for them.
The new Support page. Search by keyword, or browse the category you need.
- Search by keyword across article titles, summaries and content.
- Browse by topic within either path, so you are not reading event
director instructions when you are trying to register.
- Written from the screens you actually see. Where a USA Gymnastics meet
behaves differently from every other meet – which it does, on both
registering and changing a registration – there are separate articles
for each, rather than one article describing buttons that are not on your
screen.
Open the Support Library »
6Event directors
Set the window when a ticket can be scanned
Each ticket type can now carry a scanning start and end time, so a Saturday session ticket
cannot be used to walk in on Friday night. The window is checked at the gate, before the
ticket is marked as used – so a ticket presented outside it is turned away without
being spent, and the holder can still use it at the right session.
- Set per ticket type, not per event, so a single-session ticket and a weekend
pass can have different windows.
- Both ends are optional. Leave the window empty and that ticket type scans with
no time restriction, exactly as tickets behaved before this release.
- Reentry has to fit inside it. A reentry deadline can no longer be set later
than the moment scanning stops, since nobody can be readmitted once the scanners are
closed.
- Dates and times are typed straight through. Date and time boxes across the
Event Wizard now add the slashes, the colon and the AM or PM as you type digits.
7Event directors
A deadline for changing clothing sizes
If you order leotards, shirts or jackets against your entry list, a size changed after you
have placed the order is a problem you find out about too late. An event can now carry a
size edit deadline, after which clubs can no longer change a competitor's size on an
existing registration.
The deadline is a date on the event form. Leave it blank and nothing changes.
- Optional. An event with no deadline behaves exactly as it always has.
- Clubs can see it coming. The deadline is shown on the event page and on
the club's own meets list, not just discovered when the box goes grey.
- The whole day counts. Sizes stay editable until the end of the date you
set, in your event's time zone.
8Clubs
Fill in sizes from the last time you registered
Picking a size for every gymnast, one dropdown at a time, is the slowest part of entering a
large squad. A Set Sizes button on the registration screen fills each competitor's
size in from their most recent previous registration.
The button appears only on events that collect a size.
- Only sizes this event offers are used. Events use different size lists,
so an older registration whose size is on this event's list is preferred over
a newer one whose size is not.
- Nothing is guessed. A gymnast with no usable previous size is left on
the default for you to set.
- Check before you submit. Last season's size may have been for a leotard
and this one may be a jacket, which is what the confirmation is there to
remind you.
You are asked to confirm first, because the last event's size may have been for a different garment.
9Event directors
Update every competition level at once
When you copy last season's meet, the fees usually have to move on all of it. Mass Update
All Levels applies what you type to every level in one go, instead of opening fourteen
level forms.
Fill in only what you want to change. Blank fields are left alone on every level.
- Eight fields are covered: fee, late fee, registration limit, whether the
level counts toward the event limit, minimum and maximum team members, team fee
and team late fee.
- Blank means leave alone. Filling in only the fee changes only the fee,
on every level, and touches nothing else.
- The Coach level is never changed.
- Nothing is committed until you save. The values are applied to the grid
on screen so you can see the result and adjust it, and are written to your event
only when you click Save Meet.
10Event directors
Also in this release
Three smaller fixes that remove three small annoyances.
Oversized logos are resized for you
An event logo, sponsor logo or item image over the size limit used to be refused,
with an email to support as the only way forward. It is now resized automatically
and the page tells you what it did, so you can check the preview. Photographs taken
on a phone come out the right way up.
Team names survive a sanction copy
Setting up a USA Gymnastics sanctioned meet and copying the settings from a previous
meet used to lose the team group names, along with the team level and multiple team
settings, leaving them to be typed in again. They now come across with everything
else.
Website addresses with a dash are accepted
The Event Website box rejected perfectly ordinary addresses that contained a dash in
the page name. It now accepts them.
Questions about any of this?
The support library has step-by-step articles for both event directors and
registering clubs, and we are happy to walk you through anything on this page.
We use essential cookies for website functionality only. By using this site, you acknowledge our
Privacy Policy.