Do You Really Need a Sports WordPress Theme? The Pros and Cons

SportsPress turns your WordPress website into a full-blown sports tracking, automatic statistics calculating, burly metrics displaying machine. The nitty-gritty details are taken care of, but what about the front end? Do you need a sports WordPress theme?

The SportsPress plugin has everything you need to run a robust website for your sports league or tournament. It automatically calculates scores for you so all you need to do is enter the basics and everything else is done for you. That includes displaying tables with full statistics and metrics.

While the back end of your website is taken care of, what about the front end? Sure, you can use just about any WordPress theme with SportsPress, but should you? Is it better to use a theme that’s tailored specifically for sports and SportsPress? Would it make a positive or even drastic difference?

Today, I’ll go through the pros and cons of using a sports WordPress theme for your SportsPress-powered website or Multisite network. I’ll also delve into more detail about SportsPress and sports themes.

Creating Professional Sports Websites

SportsPress is a plugin that lets you professionally manage your sports club or league using WordPress.

It installs like most other plugins and comes with a truckload of features:

  • Equation builder
  • Player profiles and statistics
  • Events calendar
  • Events integration with iCal
  • Automated league standings with club logos
  • Over 20 sport presets
  • Season archives
  • Switch between club vs club and player vs player
  • Certified compatibility with WPML
  • And a lot more than what’s in Batman’s utility belt.

There are a ton of fabulous features that turn WordPress into a burly sports website. There’s even more in SportsPress Pro if you decide you want to make a tournament website, display a visual timeline of player performance, add sponsors, staff directory and lots more.

Pros of Using a Sports WordPress Theme

There are also themes for sports websites as well, but do you need one? Below, you can find the pros and cons in detail of using a sports WordPress theme such as the Premier, Courtside and Football Club themes from ThemeBoy.

Designed for SportsPress

Themes like these are specifically styled so you can seamlessly use them with the SportsPress and SportsPress Pro plugins. They are designed with stunning and eye-catching tables to display player performance, scoreboards and events.

Not only will tables display superbly, but they’re designed to match the theme as well.

ThemeBoy sports themes are styled for SportsPress.

Styled for Sports Websites

In addition to being styled for the SportsPress plugin, it’s also designed for sports and tournament websites.

You don’t need to worry or fuss about trying to make all the pages and tables look right and fit well together. It’s all taken care of for you. All you need to do is set up your players teams and schedule matches. Before you know it, your sports website will be set up and ready to go.

The Premier theme is as visually stunning as it is fully functional.

Ultra Sleek, Professional and Eye-Catching

Not only are these sports WordPress themes striking, they’re also styled to be incredibly professional. You could even say they look more professional and impressive than many big-time national sports league websites.

With a sports theme, it’s entirely possible to make a website for your sports club or team that rivals the most professional sports networks. To get a good sense of what I mean, take a look at the Premier theme demo above and compare it to the website for the NHL, directly below.

The NHL website.

Advanced Features Included

Each of the ThemeBoy Sports WordPress themes include the basic management features of the free SportsPress plugin available in the WordPress.org plugin repository. That means it adds so many advanced features to the WordPress core and this is achieved with the use of hooks. It creates several more innovative capabilities than you would be able to get from using page templates.

You can create an impressive-looking sports website while also being able to create a brawny, feature-rich site with player profiles with statistics, player lists, staff profiles, automated league standings, statistics and league tables as well as heaps more.

It has also become the best option for serious sports clubs, leagues, teams and athletes.

No Additional Setup

Once you install one of the sports WordPress themes, it automatically includes SportsPress. This means you don’t need to do any additional setup.

Not only can you get the features you need but all the pages and tables will show up properly on the page. You can also do this without any coding and all the page elements will still look fantastic and work perfectly.

You can certainly use just about any theme you want with SportsPress. But, you would need to modify it by adding in specific hooks. It’s necessary for displaying the boisterous event, player and staff pages as well as the sleek league and statistics tables.

For details, check out the Theme Integration Guide.

Saves You Time

Once you install and activate a sports theme, the SportsPress plugin can also be installed in a couple clicks. It saves you time since you don’t have to also install a plugin separately. If you want to upgrade to SportsPress Pro, you can also do this in a few clicks.

Beyond that, using a sports WordPress theme saves you from having to do any coding or having to modify your theme to be compatible with SportsPress.

As mentioned earlier, you also don’t have to worry about styling the theme to fit your sports team.

Overall, you’re saving yourself several hours of coding to create a theme that works for your sports website as well as the extra time it would take to tweak the stylesheet to match the SportsPress elements to your theme’s design.

The Football Club theme has everything you want and none of what you don’t want.

Reduced Conflicts

On that note, you’re also saving yourself from potential compatibility issues if you decide to use your own theme with SportsPress. Since the correlating sports themes have been created and tested by experienced developers, you rest assured that you aren’t going to face any compatibility issues.

In the off-chance that something does go wrong, you can ask for expert support and documentation to get the issue resolved quickly.

The Cons of Using a Sports WordPress Theme

I have gone through the benefits of using a SportsPress theme for your team’s website, but what about the disadvantages? You can find the cons of using a sports WordPress theme in detail below.

Sports Themes Aren’t Multipurpose

SportsPress themes are distinctly designed for sports websites. It’s styled to fit all the specific components needed for these types of websites such as scoreboards and player profiles. This means it’s not a multipurpose theme that you can tailor to use for any kind of website.

If you wanted to grab one theme and use it for multiple websites spanning over several different subjects, then it’s best to search for another theme.

Keep in mind that if you choose to create a sports website without a ThemeBoy theme, you may need to do edit the theme you use so everything displays well as mentioned earlier. On the other hand, you won’t need to touch any code if you choose a SportsPress theme.

Consistent Management

When you choose to use a sports theme, there’s an added responsibility of regularly managing theme updates that bring a lot of improvements and features. Without these updates, it becomes more and more difficult to remain relevant to your users.

While it’s possible to apply updates on your own, it can be a challenge since you would need to keep yourself up-to-date with the changes your sports theme undergoes. This may mean you also need to find or otherwise hire someone to take on the role and responsibilities of a webmaster.

The Cost

If you want to install a premium sports WordPress theme for your website, it’s going to be an added expense. Although, there’s a free sports theme called Rookie. It has tons of the features you need to make a home run sports site.

Once your website has grown, you can certainly upgrade your theme to match the brilliance of your sports team and website.

The free Rookie theme has everything you need to get started.

Wrapping Up

Sure, you could choose to use just about any theme you want with SportsPress. But if you’re serious about creating a smart, sleek, professional-looking and functioning sports website, you’re going to want to use a SportsPress theme. There are several premium options to choose from or you can use the free Rookie theme.

No matter which theme you choose, burly advanced management features are included and are ready to go once you have installed the theme since installing the SportsPress plugin is only a couple clicks away.

Have you created or plan to build a website for your sports team? What kind of design and features are you wanting to include? Which theme do you use or want to use for your sports website? Feel free to share your thoughts on Twitter and Facebook.

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Take your club to the next level

Already have a theme? SportsPress Pro adds advanced sports features to any WordPress site, and works perfectly together with any of our themes.