The League – Sports News & Magazine WordPress Theme

On a sports publication, the most visited page is not an article

It is the league table. Or the scoreboard. Or next weekend's fixtures.

It is the particularity that separates sports journalism from any other, and the one a generic news theme does not allow for. A match report gets read once; a league table gets checked on Saturday afternoon, on Sunday, on Monday at work and again on Wednesday to see how the postponed game finished. The same reader, the same page, four times a week for nine months.

The League is built around that: it is SportsPress compatible, brings a custom scoreboard and eight article layouts.

What it brings

• SportsPress compatibility, which is what manages teams, players, fixtures, results and tables.
• A custom scoreboard, for showing live or recent results.
• Eight article layouts and four featured post layouts.
• Over eight hundred typefaces available.
• Theia Post Slider and Theia Sticky Sidebar included, at no extra cost.

The sports data does not come inside

Worth understanding before buying, because it is half the project. The theme is the presentation; what stores the teams, the players, the rounds and the results is SportsPress, which is a separate plugin.

And here is a practical warning about that: the results have to be entered. They do not arrive on their own from any governing body unless you build a bespoke integration. If you cover a league of twelve teams with six matches a round, that is somebody entering data every weekend, every week, all season.

Before deciding the site's scope it is worth costing that work, because it is what leaves so many sports projects with an out-of-date table from November onwards, and an out-of-date table is worse than no table.

The legal problem almost nobody warns about: the photographs

It is what lands small sports publications in trouble, and it is easy to avoid once you know.

Photographs of professional matches belong to agencies that make their living from them and that watch actively. Taking an image from a search engine and putting it on your match report is a claim waiting to arrive, and in this sector they arrive.

There are four reasonable routes: your own photography, and for grassroots or local sport getting accredited with the club is usually enough; freely licensed images properly attributed; content supplied by the teams themselves, who almost always give it happily in exchange for the credit; or stock material with a commercial licence.

Requirements

It needs WordPress and, for the sports side, SportsPress.

Alternatives in the catalogue

The piece genuinely needed alongside the theme is SportsPress Pro, which manages competitions, squads, player statistics and tables. Without it, this is a good-looking news theme.

If your publication is not sport only and covers several areas, a general portal fits better: Herald organises the homepage by section, JNews is the sector's most complete and Fabula allows for paid content.

Since the theme includes Theia Post Slider, it is worth knowing what it does: it splits long articles into navigable screens, which works well on photograph-heavy match reports.

And if you publish results the same day, Yoast News SEO is what makes Google see you as a current affairs publication rather than a blog.

Frequently asked questions

Does it need SportsPress?
For tables, fixtures and statistics, yes. The theme is the presentation of that data.

Do results update themselves?
No. They have to be entered, and that weekly work is what to cost before starting.

Can I use match photographs I find?
No. They belong to agencies that pursue claims. Use your own, supplied or licensed material.

What does it include at no extra cost?
Theia Post Slider and Theia Sticky Sidebar.

Is it suitable for a club rather than a publication?
Yes, the combination with SportsPress works equally for a club's website.

Which is the most visited page?
The table or the scoreboard, not the reports. They belong one click away from anywhere.