Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Ballrz is operated by BALLRZ LTD.

Company name

BALLRZ LTD

Company number

16802068

Registered office

2 Frederick Street, Kings Cross, London, United Kingdom, WC1X 0ND

Privacy contact

gdpr@ballrz.co.uk

In this policy, “Ballrz”, “we”, “us” and “our” means BALLRZ LTD.

BALLRZ LTD is the controller of the personal information described in this policy.

We have not appointed a formal Data Protection Officer. Privacy questions, requests and concerns should be sent to gdpr@ballrz.co.uk.

2. What Ballrz does

Ballrz helps people find local grassroots football through controlled contact.

It helps families, coaches, clubs, club officials, sellers and football-related businesses find relevant local football clubs, teams, team opportunities, listings and enquiries.

Ballrz is built around local search. Users can search by postcode or club name, see what is nearby, and take the next step through Ballrz where the feature is available.

3. What this policy covers

This policy explains how we collect, use, store, share and protect personal information when you:

• Visit the Ballrz website.
• Create or use a Ballrz account.
• Search for clubs, teams, team opportunities or listings.
• Use Ballrz as a parent or guardian.
• Use Ballrz as a coach.
• Use Ballrz as a club official.
• Use Ballrz as a seller or football-related business.
• Create or manage a profile, club page, team opportunity, Looking for Team, friendly request, listing, enquiry or message.
• Contact us for support, privacy requests, complaints or other enquiries.

This policy also applies to club and directory information where that information relates to an identifiable person, such as a coach, club official, seller, contact or representative.

4. The laws that apply

We process personal information in line with applicable UK data protection and privacy laws, including:

• UK GDPR.
• The Data Protection Act 2018.
• The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, known as PECR, where cookies, similar technologies and electronic marketing are involved.

5. The personal information we collect

We only aim to collect information that is needed to run Ballrz, provide local football search, keep contact controlled, manage accounts and protect users.

Account information

• Name.
• Email address.
• Password credentials, handled through secure authentication systems.
• Account role, such as parent, coach, club official or seller.
• Account status.
• Email verification status.
• Login and account activity.
• Communication preferences.
• Security and audit information linked to the account.

Location information

Ballrz is local by design. We may collect:

• Postcode.
• Postcode district.
• Approximate area.
• Search location.
• Saved radius or distance preference.
• Distance between a searched location and a club, team opportunity, listing or enquiry.

We do not need your full home address for normal club search.

Parent and child-related information

If you use Ballrz as a parent or guardian, we may collect information needed to help you find suitable local football options for a child.

• Parent or guardian account details.
• Child age group.
• Football type or category.
• Broad location context.
• Distance preferences.
• Parent-created Looking for Team posts or enquiries.
• Messages sent from a relevant club, team opportunity, listing or enquiry context.

Ballrz is designed so child-related activity stays parent-managed. Children do not need public profiles for the parent-managed search flow.

Users should not add unnecessary child personal information to Ballrz.

Coach information

• Name.
• Email address.
• Coach role information.
• Team details.
• Club links.
• Age group, team type and playing format.
• Team opportunities.
• Friendly requests.
• Messages and enquiries linked to team or card context.
• Approval or membership status where a claimed club controls coach links.

Club official information

• Name.
• Email address.
• Role or position at the club.
• Club claim request details.
• Information submitted to support a club claim.
• Club management activity.
• Coach approval, rejection or removal activity.
• Enquiry handling activity.
• Messages and administrative actions linked to the club.

Club and directory information

• Club name.
• Club page.
• Postcode or area.
• General club contact information where available and appropriate.
• Club description.
• Football type, such as youth football, adult football or both.
• Publicly available club information.
• Claim status or management status.
• Club official or coach links where approved through Ballrz.

Some club information may come from public sources, club websites, club submissions, user submissions or updates by approved club officials.

Seller and listing information

• Name.
• Business or trading name.
• Email address.
• Seller profile details.
• Listing details.
• Listing category.
• Location or service area.
• Messages and enquiries linked to listings.
• Account and moderation status.

Messages, enquiries and contact activity

Ballrz is not designed as an open messaging system. Contact should start from a relevant club, team opportunity, listing, friendly request or enquiry.

• Message content.
• Sender and recipient details.
• Date and time of messages.
• The club, team opportunity, listing, friendly request or enquiry linked to the message.
• Message status.
• Moderation, reporting or safety records where relevant.

We may review, restrict or disclose message information where needed to operate the service, investigate abuse, protect users, enforce our terms, deal with safeguarding concerns or comply with the law.

Technical and usage information

• IP address.
• Device type.
• Browser type.
• Operating system.
• Pages visited.
• Date and time of access.
• Referring page or website.
• Error logs.
• Security logs.
• Cookie and consent preferences.
• Approximate location derived from technical information, where relevant.

This helps us operate the website, protect accounts, understand usage, fix problems and improve Ballrz.

Support and correspondence

• Your name.
• Email address.
• The content of your message.
• Information needed to deal with your request.
• Records of our response.

This includes support requests, privacy requests, complaints, safety concerns and general enquiries.

6. Information users should not share

Ballrz is not designed to collect unnecessary sensitive information.

Users should not post or send:

• Full child names where not needed.
• Home addresses.
• School details.
• Medical details.
• Safeguarding details unless reporting a serious concern to the correct person or authority.
• Identity documents unless we specifically request them for a defined verification purpose.
• Payment card details in messages.
• Offensive, abusive, discriminatory or unlawful content.

If we receive unnecessary sensitive information, we may delete, restrict, redact or review it where appropriate.

7. How we use personal information

We use personal information to:

• Create and manage accounts.
• Verify email addresses.
• Let users choose and use the correct role.
• Show local clubs, teams, team opportunities and listings.
• Calculate distance and local relevance.
• Let parents manage child-related search.
• Let coaches create team profiles, team opportunities and friendly requests.
• Let club officials claim and manage club pages.
• Let club officials approve, reject or remove coach links.
• Let sellers create and manage listings.
• Support controlled contact between users.
• Keep messages tied to the right club, team opportunity, listing, friendly request or enquiry.
• Prevent misuse, spam, fraud and abuse.
• Moderate content where needed.
• Handle support requests, privacy requests and complaints.
• Improve the website and product.
• Send service messages, such as account, security, enquiry, claim, role and listing notifications.
• Send Ballrz-related marketing where allowed by law.
• Comply with legal duties.
• Protect users, clubs, children and the platform.

8. Our lawful bases

Under UK GDPR, we need a lawful basis for each use of personal information.

The lawful bases we rely on include:

• Contract, where processing is needed to provide Ballrz to you or take steps before providing the service.
• Legitimate interests, where processing is needed for our reasonable business, platform, safety or operational interests and those interests are not overridden by your rights.
• Consent, where we ask for clear permission, such as for certain cookies or optional marketing.
• Legal obligation, where we need to use or keep information to comply with the law.
• Vital interests, in rare cases where processing is needed to protect a life.

9. Children information

Ballrz is designed with child privacy in mind.

Parent-managed child search should use football-relevant information rather than public child profiles. This may include age group, football category and broad location context, rather than unnecessary identifying details.

Parents and guardians are responsible for the child-related information they add to Ballrz.

We aim to reduce public exposure of child-related information by:

• Keeping child-related activity parent-managed.
• Avoiding public child profiles in the parent-managed flow.
• Using controlled contact tied to clubs, team opportunities, listings or enquiries.
• Limiting the information needed for search.
• Encouraging users not to share unnecessary personal or sensitive details.

Where Ballrz offers features directly to players aged 16 or over, those features must only be used by users who meet the relevant age requirement.

We may remove, restrict or review content if we believe it contains unnecessary child personal information, unsafe contact details or information that creates a risk.

10. Special category information

Special category information includes information about health, ethnicity, religion, biometric data, sexual orientation and similar sensitive matters.

Ballrz does not normally need special category information to provide local football search.

Users should not add special category information to public pages, listings, cards, messages or enquiries unless it is genuinely necessary and appropriate.

If special category information is provided to us, we will only use it where we have a lawful basis and an additional condition under UK data protection law. This may include explicit consent, legal claims, substantial public interest, safeguarding or vital interests, depending on the situation.

11. Contact details and public visibility

Ballrz is not intended to be a public directory of personal contact details.

Public pages may show basic club, team, listing or location information. Personal contact details are not shown publicly by default.

Where contact is available, it should usually happen through a relevant Ballrz flow, such as a club enquiry, team opportunity, listing enquiry or message thread.

If a club or business chooses to provide public contact information, they must make sure they have the right to share it and that it is accurate.

12. Messages and moderation

Messages on Ballrz should be relevant to the club, team opportunity, listing, friendly request or enquiry they relate to.

We may access, review, restrict or disclose message information where needed to:

• Provide the messaging service.
• Investigate reported content.
• Prevent abuse, spam or fraud.
• Enforce our terms.
• Protect users, clubs or children.
• Deal with safeguarding concerns.
• Comply with legal requirements.
• Respond to law enforcement or regulatory requests.

We do not use private messages to create public profiles.

13. Cookies and similar technologies

We use essential cookies and similar technologies to make Ballrz work. With your permission, we may also use analytics cookies to understand how people use the service and improve it.

You can read more in our Cookie Policy. You can change your choices at any time by selecting Cookie settings.

14. Marketing communications

We may send service messages about your account, security, enquiries, listings, roles, club claims, coach approvals or platform activity. These are not marketing messages and are needed to provide the service.

We may also send Ballrz-related marketing where allowed by law. This may include updates about Ballrz features, local football tools, club features, coach tools, seller features, marketplace features, events, offers or other Ballrz-related services.

We will only send electronic marketing where we have a lawful basis under data protection law and where PECR allows it. This may be because you have given consent, or because another lawful marketing route applies.

You can opt out of marketing emails at any time by using the unsubscribe link where provided or by contacting gdpr@ballrz.co.uk.

If you opt out of marketing, we may keep a suppression record so that we know not to contact you again for marketing.

You may still receive service messages that are necessary for your account or use of Ballrz.

15. Selling personal information

We do not sell personal information.

We do not sell user, parent, child, coach, club official, seller, enquiry, message or listing data to third parties.

We do not allow third parties to buy Ballrz user data for their own advertising or marketing.

We may use trusted service providers to help us run Ballrz, such as hosting, authentication, email delivery, analytics, security and support providers. These providers process personal information for us and must only use it for agreed purposes.

We may share information where needed to provide Ballrz, comply with the law, protect users, investigate misuse, handle safeguarding concerns, or manage club, coach, seller, enquiry or listing activity.

We may contact users about Ballrz-related service messages, account updates, feature updates and relevant offers where allowed by law.

16. Who we share personal information with

We may share personal information where needed to run Ballrz, provide the service, protect users, or comply with the law.

This may include sharing information with:

• Hosting providers.
• Database and authentication providers.
• Email delivery providers.
• Analytics providers.
• Security, spam prevention and abuse prevention providers.
• Support and customer service providers.
• Professional advisers, such as lawyers, accountants or insurers.
• Regulators, courts, law enforcement or public authorities where required.
• Other users, but only where the product feature requires it, such as messages, enquiries, listings, team opportunities, coach links or club management activity.
• Club officials, where needed to manage club claims, coach approvals, enquiries or club-linked activity.

We require service providers to handle personal information securely and only for agreed purposes.

We do not sell personal information.

17. Sharing with clubs, coaches, parents and sellers

Ballrz works by allowing the right users to see the right information in the right context.

For example:

• A parent enquiry may be visible to the relevant club or coach.
• A coach team opportunity may be visible to nearby parents or relevant users.
• A club official may see coach approval requests linked to their club.
• A seller listing may be visible to local users.
• A message may be visible to the sender, recipient and relevant moderation or support staff where needed.

We aim to avoid exposing unnecessary personal contact details on public pages.

18. Public club information

Some club information shown on Ballrz may come from public sources, club websites, public directories, user submissions or club official updates.

We use this information to help people find local football clubs and make club pages more useful.

If you believe club information is inaccurate, outdated or should not appear on Ballrz, contact gdpr@ballrz.co.uk.

If you are an authorised club official, you may be able to claim and manage your club page through Ballrz.

19. International transfers

Some of our service providers may process personal information outside the United Kingdom.

Where personal information is transferred internationally, we will take steps designed to protect it in line with UK data protection law. This may include using adequacy regulations, approved contractual safeguards, or other lawful transfer mechanisms.

20. How we keep information secure

We use technical and organisational measures designed to protect personal information.

These may include:

• Account authentication.
• Email verification.
• Role-based access controls.
• Server-side permission checks.
• Database security controls.
• Access restrictions.
• Logging and monitoring.
• Encryption in transit where appropriate.
• Backups and recovery processes.
• Abuse prevention and rate limiting.
• Staff or contractor access controls where relevant.

No online service can guarantee absolute security. Users should use strong passwords, keep login details private, and contact us if they believe their account has been compromised.

21. How long we keep personal information

We keep personal information only for as long as needed for the purpose it was collected.

UK GDPR does not set one fixed retention period for every type of personal information, so we use retention periods and criteria based on the type of record, why we hold it, legal requirements, safety needs, dispute risk and platform integrity.

Where we no longer need information in identifiable form, we will delete it, anonymise it, aggregate it, or securely restrict it until deletion is possible.

We may keep anonymised or aggregated information because it no longer identifies you.

These periods are a guide.

We may keep a record for longer if required by law, a regulator, law enforcement, a court, tax or accounting rules, a legal claim, a serious safety or safeguarding matter, fraud or abuse prevention, or a live dispute.

We may keep a record for a shorter period if it is no longer needed.

22. Your data protection rights

Depending on the circumstances, you may have the following rights under UK data protection law:

• The right to be informed about how your information is used.
• The right to access your personal information.
• The right to correct inaccurate information.
• The right to ask for deletion of your information.
• The right to restrict how we use your information.
• The right to object to certain uses of your information.
• The right to data portability.
• The right to withdraw consent where we rely on consent.
• Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling, where applicable.

To make a request, contact gdpr@ballrz.co.uk.

We may need to verify your identity before responding.

We will normally respond within one month, unless the request is complex or we are legally allowed more time.

Some rights are not absolute. For example, we may need to keep certain information for legal, safety, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, safeguarding or platform integrity reasons.

23. Account deletion, correction and records kept after deletion

You can contact us if you want to correct account information, update club or listing information, or request account deletion.

If you request account deletion, we will close or delete the active account and remove or anonymise personal information that is no longer needed for Ballrz.

Account deletion does not always mean every record is immediately erased from every system.

After account deletion, we may keep limited records where necessary and lawful, including:

• Records needed to complete the deletion request and show how we handled it.
• Suppression records so we do not send marketing to an opted-out address.
• Security, audit and abuse-prevention records.
• Records linked to disputes, chargebacks, complaints, claims or legal obligations.
• Club claim, coach approval, message, enquiry or moderation records needed to protect other users, clubs, children or platform integrity.
• Records held in backups until those backups are overwritten or deleted in the normal backup cycle.

Where we keep records after account deletion, we will keep only what we consider necessary, restrict access where appropriate, and delete or anonymise the information when the reason for keeping it no longer applies.

If you are a club official and want to update club information, we may ask you to verify your authority before making certain changes.

If information relates to another user, club, coach, enquiry, listing or dispute, we may need to consider the rights and interests of others before deleting or changing it.

24. Automated decision-making and profiling

Ballrz may use rules, filters and matching logic to show local and relevant results.

For example, we may use postcode, radius, age group, role, team type or listing category to decide what appears in search results or user areas.

This is used to make Ballrz useful and locally relevant.

We do not intend to make decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on users.

25. Safeguarding, abuse and legal requests

If we become aware of a serious safety, abuse or safeguarding concern, we may use or share relevant information where necessary and lawful.

This may include sharing information with:

• Law enforcement.
• Regulators.
• Safeguarding bodies.
• A club official where appropriate.
• Professional advisers.
• Other parties where needed to protect someone or comply with the law.

We will only share what we consider necessary and proportionate in the circumstances.

26. Your responsibilities when using Ballrz

Users are responsible for the information they add to Ballrz.

You should:

• Keep your account details accurate.
• Use the correct role.
• Avoid sharing unnecessary personal information.
• Avoid sharing unnecessary child information.
• Only claim or manage a club if you are authorised to do so.
• Only share contact details where appropriate.
• Respect the privacy of other users.
• Tell us if you see inaccurate, unsafe or inappropriate information.

27. Complaints

If you have a privacy concern, contact us first so we can try to resolve it.

Email: gdpr@ballrz.co.uk

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK data protection regulator.

You can contact the ICO through its website or by using the contact details published by the ICO.

28. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time.

If we make significant changes, we may notify users through the website, email, account notices or other appropriate methods.

The latest version will be shown on this page with the updated date.

29. Contact us

For privacy questions, requests or concerns, contact:

Email: gdpr@ballrz.co.uk