Every golfer in New Zealand knows the feeling: scrolling through scattered Facebook posts, checking notice boards at three different clubs, or digging through pages on Golf NZ, just to find out when the next tournament is actually happening. The TeeTime App was built to fix exactly that.
TeeTime is a two-sided golf events platform, connecting golf clubs, who need an easier way to run and promote their tournaments, with players, who just want to find and join a good game without the hassle.
Background – TeeTime App
TeeTime came from a genuinely personal frustration. Its founder has been playing tournament and representative-level golf for more than 30 years, and kept running into the same problem: golf clubs across New Zealand had no centralised way to promote their events, and players had no easy way to find them.
The brief for Elegant Media was to design and build a platform that could serve both sides of that problem at once, a web app for clubs to manage events, and a mobile app for players to discover and join them, working together as one connected system.
That meant solving for two very different users at the same time:
- Golf clubs needed a genuinely useful admin tool, not just a listings page, something that could handle event creation, player registrations, and club management day to day
- Players needed something fast and low-friction, built around location and region, so finding a nearby tournament took seconds, not a search session
- Both sides needed to stay in sync in real time, from new event notifications through to live draw sheet updates
The Solution — One Platform, Two Experiences
TeeTime launched as two connected products built around the same shared events data.
TeeTime for Clubs (Web App)
Golf clubs get a full web-based dashboard to run their events and manage their presence on the platform:
- Create and manage golf events, with the ability to schedule posts and save drafts before publishing
- Manage player registrations for every event in one place
- View event statistics to understand participation over time
- Manage their club or business profile
- Keep track of past and upcoming events at a glance
- Events and clubs are organised by New Zealand region, so clubs are surfaced to the right local audience
TeeTime for Players (Mobile App)
Players get a simple, location-aware app built for quick discovery and easy registration:
- Create a player profile and select a home golf club, or use the app without one
- Discover nearby and regional events based on location
- Get notified about new events and club activity
- Register for events directly in the app
- Choose to pay online or at the venue, whichever suits
- Get notified the moment an event’s draw sheet is uploaded
- Stay updated with important event information as it changes
TeeTime App Development Challenges & Solutions
1. Designing for Two Very Different Users on One Platform
The Challenge: Clubs and players use TeeTime for completely different reasons; clubs need administrative depth, players need speed and simplicity. Building both experiences on shared underlying data, without compromising either one, is a genuinely tricky balance.
The Solution: We built the club-facing web app and player-facing mobile app as distinct experiences, each designed around how that specific user actually works, while keeping them connected to the same events, registrations, and notifications behind the scenes. Clubs get the depth of a proper management dashboard. Players get an app that feels quick and effortless.
2. Making Regional Discovery Actually Useful
The Challenge: New Zealand has golf clubs and tournaments scattered across dozens of regions. A simple list of every event in the country isn’t useful to a player who just wants to know what’s happening near them, or in a region they actually travel to.
The Solution: We built discovery around New Zealand’s regional structure from the ground up, so players can find events near their location or in the regions they care about, and clubs are organised the same way. It turns a national database of events into something that actually feels local.
3. Keeping Clubs and Players in Sync in Real Time
The Challenge: A lot of the value in TeeTime comes down to timing. Players need to know about a new event before it fills up, and they need to see draw sheets the moment they’re published, not hours later.
The Solution: We built a notification system that keeps players updated automatically, on new events from their club or region, and specifically when a draw sheet gets uploaded. That single feature turns TeeTime from a listings app into something players genuinely check regularly.
4. Supporting Flexible Payment Without Adding Friction
The Challenge: Not every club or player wants to handle payment the same way. Forcing a single payment method onto every event risked making registration harder, not easier, for exactly the people TeeTime was trying to help.
The Solution: We built registration to support both online payment and pay-at-the-venue, letting clubs and players use whichever suits the event. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of flexibility that makes an events platform feel genuinely built for golf, rather than adapted from something else.
Conclusion
TeeTime is live today, connecting golf clubs and players right across New Zealand, and turning what used to be scattered flyers and outdated web pages into one simple, connected platform. From event creation through to registration, payment, and live draw updates, both sides of the golf community now have a single place to meet.
We’re proud to have partnered with TeeTime to bring this platform to life, and we’re excited to see participation keep growing across New Zealand’s golf clubs.
DOWNLOAD TEETIME APP – Live on Google Play and App Store
Why the Right Development Partner Matters for Two-Sided Platforms
Building a platform that genuinely serves two different user groups at once is harder than it looks. It takes:
- Designing distinct experiences for each user type, without fragmenting the underlying product
- Getting the real-time details right, notifications, updates, and syncing, since that’s often where the actual value lives
- Understanding the specific community a platform is built for, not just building a generic marketplace template
- Building something flexible enough to fit how people actually already do things, like paying online or in person
At Elegant Media, we’ve spent more than 15 years helping founders bring platforms like TeeTime, and plenty of others, to life.
Thinking About Building Your Own Platform?
Whether it’s a two-sided marketplace, a community platform, or the next big consumer app, we’d love to hear about it.
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