One very important aspect of your sports business is a well executed client/athlete waiver. This will help protect you from any liabilities due to injuries during classes or training, or other unforeseen circumstances. In addition, a sports waiver is designed to help save your business, even if an injury were to occur due to negligence.
The problem with a typical sports waiver form is that it can become challenging to create when relying on a paper-based system. You may end up wasting money sending a paper waiver in the mail to your clients. And even worse, you may mis-track who has signed a waiver, leading to real issues in the case of an injury or lawsuit.
You need to create a waiver you know your clients will be aware of, and will sign in a convenient way that is easy to track. Here are some tips to creating an athlete waiver form for your sports business so it doesn’t become burdensome for you or your clients.
Even if waivers are all seemingly similar, there are subtle differences in language of which you must be conscious. You may need to create a waiver that’s exclusive to a particular training program you have, or a one-time event like a camp or clinic. This isn’t easy to keep on file when you asking clients to submit in paper form.
Consider the costs and time involved in creating specialized waivers. Plus, creating one without any legal guidance is one of the riskiest things you can do. As a business analyst notes:
“A waiver can fail for many reasons, but one of the most frequent causes is that the waiver is poorly written or is not sufficiently broad and encompassing.”
This is why it is crucial to make sure you are building your sports waivers into your online registration system for a cost effective, and easy to track process.
One thing to consider when it comes to any communication with your clients: How are you making it easy for them to manage client registrations on-the-go? Any kind of documentation you need to send them should be available in a digital format and available on their mobile device. This doesn’t have to be complicated if you’re working with a sports management software. Make signing the sports waiver a required part of your registration process. Clients aren’t going to miss your waiver if they see it when signing into their account.
By using an online waiver form like this, you can rest assured they accessing and signing before they get registered for your event.
The same process above can occur if you need to update your waiver or add a new legal or athlete release form due to new procedures or upcoming events. Each event you hold might involve potential liabilities you need to offer a unique waiver for.
Digitizing your athlete waivers lets you continue to present them during account sign-ins. Whenever the client signs in, they’ll automatically see any waiver updates first, and be required to sign before continuing into their account. This is going to ensure your client has signed all recently updated waivers if a major lawsuit ensues.
Despite placing a new athlete waiver on your sign-on page, some of your clients may not have recently signed into their account. If they don’t, they may not see the new waiver before attending an event for which they had previously registered. Without having seen or signed the waiver, you are left vulnerable if injuries occur.
The way to prevent this is through digital tracking. When you create a digital athlete waiver, you’ll have metrics to see if your clients agreed to the new waiver. Now, you can contact any clients you still need agreements from before the day of your next event, eliminating liability risks and day-of hassle, tracking paper forms.
At Upper Hand, our sports management software brings all the above features to your athlete waiver and release. We’ll let you customize and integrate seamlessly so your business is protected.
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