Why partner venues matter
A venue partner is a local pub, bar, restaurant, or other spot that becomes an official check-in location for your club. When a fan watches a match there and checks in through the Game Set Engage mobile app, they earn points from your club, and the venue gets supporters through the door.
That creates a simple three-way win. Your club reaches fans who aren't at the stadium and gets check-in data from across town. Fans earn more points than they would watching at home, plus any offer the venue runs. The venue gets foot traffic on match days. Building a network of these venues turns every fixture into something fans can take part in, wherever they are.
This guide shows you how partnerships work and how to review the requests that land in your dashboard. Everything here lives under the Venues menu in your dashboard sidebar.
How a venue becomes your partner
Venues find you, not the other way around. The flow has two stages, and your dashboard has a separate screen for each one.
- A venue registers on the platform. A venue owner signs up, and their listing starts as pending until it has been approved. New registrations that need a first review show up under Pending Approvals.
- A venue applies to partner with your club. Once a venue is on the platform, its owner browses nearby check-in campaigns and applies to become a partner for your club. Those applications show up under Pending Partners.
Both stages put the decision in your hands. You decide which venues represent your club and where your fans can earn points.
Tip: The two queues do different jobs. Pending Approvals is the venue's first foot in the door. Pending Partners is a venue asking to join your club's network. A venue can be approved on the platform and still be waiting on your partnership decision.
The All Venues screen
Open Venues → All Venues to see your network at a glance. The stat cards across the top give you the headline numbers:
- All Venues — every venue on the platform
- On My Network — venues you have approved
- Waiting For Approval — venues that need your review
- Total Contribution — what your network has generated so far
Below the stats, a table lists each venue with its category, city, rating, and status. Use the status filter to switch between All, Approved, and Pending, and the sort buttons to order by newest, name, or rating. Select any venue name to open its full profile, where you can see its address, opening hours, owner, and partnership stats.
Reviewing pending venue approvals
Open Venues → Pending Approvals to work through venues waiting on their first review. This is the Approval Queue, and the stat cards show how many are pending, how many you approved today, how many have been rejected, and your total approved count.
Each row shows the venue, its category, when it was submitted, the owner, and its rating. For every pending venue you have three choices:
- Review details — open the full venue profile to check the address, rating, and opening hours before you decide
- Approve — add the venue to the platform as an approved listing
- Reject — decline the venue if it doesn't fit
Approving and rejecting both ask you to confirm first, so a stray click won't change anything. When the queue is empty, you'll see an "All Caught Up" message, which is exactly where you want to be.
Reviewing partnership requests
Open Venues → Pending Partners to handle venues asking to join your club's network. This is the Venue Partnerships screen, split into three sections: Pending Requests, Approved Partners, and any Rejected Requests.
In the Pending Requests table, each row shows the venue, its category, the message the venue left with its application, when it was requested, and its rating. Read the message to understand why the venue wants to partner with you, then:
- View details to open the venue profile
- Approve to add the venue to your approved partners
- Reject to decline the request
Once you approve a request, the venue moves into the Approved Partners list and can host check-ins for your campaigns. The number badge next to Pending Partners in the sidebar tells you how many requests are waiting, so you always know when there's something to review.
How partner check-ins reward fans
Partner venues exist so fans get rewarded for showing up, wherever they watch. When you build an Event Check-In campaign, you set the points fans earn at each tier. The pattern most clubs use looks like this:
| Where the fan checks in | Points |
|---|---|
| At the stadium or event | 5× |
| At a partner venue | 3× |
| At home | 1× |
These numbers are a recommended pattern, not an automatic calculation. The platform doesn't multiply anything for you. You choose the point values for each tier when you set up the campaign, and the 5 / 3 / 1 pattern is the starting point most clubs reach for because it rewards being there in person while still giving credit to fans watching from the pub or at home.
A partner venue sits in the middle tier on purpose. A fan who walks to a partner pub to watch the match earns more than they would on the sofa at home, which gives them a reason to turn up and gives the venue its foot traffic. For the full walkthrough of building a check-in campaign, see Creating your first campaign.
What partner venues bring beyond match day
Approved partners aren't limited to match-day check-ins. A venue can also run its own routine offers for your fans, such as a midweek discount, and those offers appear in your dashboard alongside the partnership requests. Each partner also sets its own fan incentive, like a discount on the tab when a fan checks in, which gives supporters one more reason to choose a partner venue.
For how the money side works and how to configure those offers, read Venue earnings and offer settings.
What's next
You've got the partnership flow down. From here:
- Venue earnings and offer settings — what you earn from partner check-ins and how to set offer rules
- Approving check-ins at your venue — written for your venue partners; send it to them when they join
- Creating your first campaign — build the Event Check-In campaign that partners host
- Campaign types explained — see how check-ins fit alongside your other options
- Understanding your fans — read the check-in data your network brings in
