The Race Director Integration

Race Management Leader The Race Director and Roger Bradshaw Join Forces with RunSignup

The combined company will continue the open platform approach of The Race Director and RunSignUp, while working on a Next-Generation Cloud and Mobile native Scoring and Results Platform

Moorestown, NJ and Fremont, MI – January 5, 2015 – RunSignUp, the leading innovator for Races, Timers, Running Stores and Running Clubs, today announced the acquisition of Race Management Systems, one of the two leading timing, scoring and results tools in the market today.  Roger Bradshaw, creator of The Race Director, will join the company to continue to enhance and support The Race Director as well as lead a new effort to create a Next-Generation Scoring and Results Platform that we will simply called Race Director Go.

The Race Director

The Race Director is used by over 500 timers to produce scoring and results for over 5,000,000 race finishers each year.  Along with RunScore, it has been the hub of managing races for over 20 years.  Roger Bradshaw has developed a highly functional, stable and open software product that has strong customer satisfaction.  A key part of the success is the open approach that connects to all major chip timing equipment including ChronoTrack, MyLaps, Ipico, RFID, Winning Times, DAG, J-Chip, AMB and RaceResult.  In addition, The Race Director supports easy integration with registration and results systems like Active, CT Live from ChronoTrack, Xact, RunSignUp, SignMeUp, and The Driven.

Customers and Partners can expect the same level of support and integration in the future from the combined company.

Roger Bradshaw, founder of Race Management Systems and the creator of The Race Director, said “I am very happy to merge our business with RunSignUp.  This combination provides a stable place to continue to support and enhance The Race Director in an open fashion.  RunSignUp shares a similar vision for open platforms that are inclusive.  I am particularly excited to begin work on a Next-Generation platform with the RunSignUp team.”

“We have been collaborating with Roger for about two years integrating RunSignUp and The Race Director to make a lot of customers happy,” said Bob Bickel, founder of RunSignUp.  “Both companies get excited about the solutions we can bring to timers and race directors and have worked very well together providing a wonderful integration between RunSignUp and The Race Director with hundreds of races benefiting from easier and more accurate Participant transfer and fast results posting and notifications.  We began talking about the future and realized we could provide a whole Next-Generation Platform for timers and races.  That discussion led to the idea we should combine our businesses.”

The Race Director customers will see no change in prices or service.  The Race Director Partners will continue to be supported and enhanced.  The one change on integrations with registration and results systems is that we will be focused on using the RunSignUp Open API as a standard open interface and will collaborate with partners to continue to extend this.

Next Generation Platform

The power of the Cloud and Mobile is having a profound impact on the running community with simpler ways to register as well as report and view results.  While the existing integrations that The Race Director offers provide a good experience, there is so much more that can be done.

Roger Bradshaw brings the depth of experience on race management, scoring and results, while RunSignUp brings the experience on registration, results and notifications.  More importantly, RunSignUp is built entirely on a Cloud-Native architecture that can be used as a model and basis for a next generation platform for scoring and results.

The key areas for improvement are ease of use, access from anywhere, transition from a PC present at the race site to Mobile Tablets and Phones, mobile-native communications and notifications, and easier third party integrations.

The new platform will extend the current RunSignUp Open API, be based on a new database architecture and include a set of mobile applications.  The experience of The Race Director will allow for this new design to best meet the needs of timers and races. We expect to have good levels of compatibility between current The Race Director implementations and the new system.

The new system will evolve over the next two years, with parts of the new architecture already being deployed in the form of RunScore Results and Race Director Go, also introduced today.  Users can expect major new functionality to be in place by the end of 2015 with incremental improvements along the way.  The new system will not replace The Race Director over the next few years in terms of functionality, but will offer a new set of capabilities.

Partner and Customer Reaction

Alan Jones, RunScore:  “I am happy for Roger that he will get a chance to work on a cloud-based solution to scoring.  I intend to help with this new platform from a RunScore perspective and expect RunScore Results, which is based on the RunSignUp Results platform, to continue to evolve and become more useful to RunScore users.”

Aaron Ford, Ford Timing:   “Our company has been using The Race Director software for the past 5 years. We rely heavily on it for it’s scoring capabilities at nearly all of our road races. We’re looking forward to the future partnership as it will help expand the integration between RunSignUp and Race Director and further modernize Race Director’s functionality.”

Justin Ratike, Ipico:  “We are close partners with both The Race Director and RunSignUp. This increased collaboration and future roadmap is what our timers are looking for in terms of industry leadership.”

Chuck Block: “The Michigan Running Foundation timed over 200 road races and Cross Country Meets in 2014. We use the Race Director Software and Run Sign Up online registration exclusively. Both companies are very user friendly and always trying to improve their service. Now that they are going to join forces I know they will take race timing and online registration to a whole new level.”

About RunSignUp

RunSignUp is the leading innovator of online tools for Races and Running Clubs. Services include RunSignUp for race registration, RunSignUp Go for Race Day, RunSignUp Clubs to enable membership management and now The Race Director. Over 4,000 race directors, timers, and running club officers use these services today to register, time and manage millions of runners each year. Services are free except for processing fees when conducting monetary transactions like race registration or club membership renewals. RunSignUp is founded by runners for runners, using technical capabilities to bring the power of cloud computing to benefit the running community. For more information, visit www.runsignup.com.