SHEPLAYZ
Portal concept · the interim step · 2026
Build the audience on the web — before the app
A fan portal puts the features we were saving for the app onto the site instead — behind one free sign-in, tied to the newsletter. It checks the audience box, it's a fraction of the lift of a native build, and it's a working proof: we can iterate a portal in days, not the quarters an app takes. The app isn't cancelled by this — it's earned by it.
01 · the reframe
Portal now, app later
Same destination — a personalised, owned experience — reached in the cheaper, faster order. The portal proves the feature set on the stack we're already building; the native app is the upgrade we add once there's an audience asking for it.
The native app · deferred
A big, slow, one-shot bet
- ✕~90-day build clock on React Native / Expo, resourced off the India bench
- ✕Event taxonomy + identity model must be locked before a line is written
- ✕App stores are a discovery desert — no SEO, no GEO, no organic top-of-funnel
- ✕Carries an install gate (25%) — a hurdle between reach and the audience
- ✕Every change ships through review; iteration is measured in weeks
The fan portal · now
A small, fast, provable step
- ✓Built on the Cloudflare site we're already standing up — no new platform
- ✓One passwordless sign-in we own — shared with the newsletter list, no heavy auth to build
- ✓Stays fully SEO / GEO-discoverable — the whole acquisition plan still works
- ✓No install gate — a fan is one magic link away, not one app-store trip
- ✓Ships continuously — we learn from real behaviour and iterate in place
The app becomes the earned upgrade. Once the portal proves fans will follow athletes, set reminders and come back, the native app is justified — and it adds only what the web genuinely can't: real push, offline, and a home-screen presence. We stop guessing at the app and start building it against evidence.
02 · the crux
What stays open — what the portal unlocks
The site stays thin and open where discovery lives, and gains depth behind a sign-in where loyalty lives. This is the feature-gating call we already made, drawn as a line: information is free and indexable; the personal layer is the reason to join.
◆ Stays open · no sign-in
Discoverable, indexable, the top of the funnel. Every open page teases what's waiting inside.
▤
News
The blog and breaking stories — the SEO / GEO surface that brings fans in.
▶
Videos
The YouTube library, embedded — the proven audience's front door.
▦
Fixtures
The owned widgets. Anyone can look; only members get reminders on them.
✦
About
The authority / GEO signal — who ShePlayz is, and why the coverage is trusted.
● Behind the portal · one free sign-in
The depth that was going to be app-only. This is the "You" layer — and the reason a fan makes an account.
★
Follow your athletes & teams
Pick who you care about. Everything else bends around that choice.
≋
Your feed
News and clips filtered to your follows — not the whole firehose.
◔
Reminders & alerts
Flag a fixture and get an email before it starts, with an add-to-calendar link.
❑
Saved
Keep a story or clip to come back to — a reason to return.
⚙
Preferences
Language, timezone, how often we're allowed to reach you.
The gate is an account, not a paywall. It's free. The only ask is the sign-in — and that sign-in is the newsletter.
03 · one identity
The newsletter is the key
No passwords, no separate account system. A fan enters their email, taps a magic link, and they're in — and that same email is a newsletter subscriber. The list and the portal are one account — a single passwordless sign-in, owned on your own stack and synced to the newsletter list.
Subscribe once. You're a member everywhere.
Today the newsletter and the site are strangers to each other. Here they become the same relationship: to read your feed you sign in; to sign in you're on the list; to be on the list you get The Rundown. One act, three jobs done.
Passwordless means there's nothing to build, nothing to leak, and a cleaner PDPL consent story — we ask for exactly what we use, at the moment we use it.
1Enter email — on a story, a fixture, or the join page
2Tap the magic link — subscribed and signed in, in one step
3Pick who you follow — the portal personalises from there
SHEPLAYZ
Join the front row
your@email.com
Send my magic link
Free forever · No password · Unsubscribe anytime
✓
Send me The Rundown and let me follow athletes across ShePlayz. I can change this in Preferences. (PDPL — stated, minimal, revocable.)
04 · first run
Pick your follows
Three levels, one hierarchy: sport → team or competition → player. Broad-to-narrow, so the feed is never empty — sports first give a fan a full feed on day one; teams, leagues and individual athletes sharpen it from there. And what a follow delivers depends on the data behind it — shown honestly, right on the card.
Sports›Teams›Players
1Choose your sports
Start broad. Your feed fills in from these — go deeper below, or later, whenever you like.
✓Football
✓Basketball
✓Golf
+ Tennis
+ Padel
+ Cricket
2Teams & competitions
Follow a whole league or a single club — in women's football right now, league identity often runs deeper than any one club.
Saudi Women's Premier League
Football · competition Editorial + clips
✓ Following
New York Liberty
Basketball · WNBA Live data
✓ Following
Women's Super League
Football · competition Live data
+ Follow
3Players
The highest-intent follow — and the one fans reach for most in women's sport. Follow an athlete and you inherit her team and sport too.
Ons Jabeur
Tennis · singles Editorial + clips
✓ Following
WSL forward
Football · Women's Super League Live data
+ Follow
Al-Nassr Women striker
Football · Saudi WPL Editorial + clips
+ Follow
Live dataFixtures, results and leaderboards off the feeds — WNBA, WSL, NWSL and the tours.
Editorial + clipsNews, video and her team's fixtures — the MENA-opportunity tier, no clean feed yet. The follow still works; it just doesn't promise stats that don't exist. This is exactly the "produce and own" opening.
↳Follows are linked, not flat. Player → team → competition → sport travel together — follow a striker and her league is in your feed; and when she transfers, her followers move with her, not with the club.
See my feed ›Skip — follow as you browse
05 · signed in
Inside the portal — "Your ShePlayz"
This is the app's Home and You tabs, on the web — fully responsive, so it works the same on a phone or a laptop. No download, no install: a fan arrives from a link, signs in once, and they're here.
Welcome back, Layla — 3 of your follows are in action this week.
You follow Manage
Your feed
Saudi WPL · Highlights
Al-Nassr edge the derby in stoppage time — every goal
Because you follow Al-Nassr Women
Tennis · News
Jabeur names her run-in schedule ahead of the Gulf swing
Because you follow Ons Jabeur
WNBA · Clip
Liberty's closing minute — the possession that decided it
Because you follow Liberty
Coming up · your follows
Al-Nassr Women vs Al-Hilal Women
Saudi Women's Premier League · your timezone
✉ Reminder set
KLPGA · Moving day
Golf · leaderboard follows your player
+ Remind me
Reminders arrive by email, with an add-to-calendar link — no app or notifications needed.
Same portal · phone
Your feed
HomeFixturesYou
Why the web, not an app — yet
Nothing to download
The portal is the whole product on the web — a fan is one link and one sign-in away, on any device, with nothing to install. The native app comes later for the things only native gives: real push, offline, and a home-screen icon. The web proves it; the app earns its place.
06 · one owned stack
Built on what we're already building
The portal isn't a new system — it's three pieces we're already standing up, wired together. Nothing critical sits on anyone else's infrastructure.
The surface
Cloudflare Pages
The custom front-end — the Signal4i pattern. Fast edge hosting, full technical-SEO / GEO control, the interactive pieces (fixtures, feed, portal) native instead of theme-injected.
The identity
Owned magic-link
One passwordless sign-in, issued on your own stack — no passwords stored. The same account syncs to Ghost, which stays the list + sending engine. The newsletter and the portal are one person, owned on your side.
The signal
Owned capture
Every follow, reminder, save and read writes to the ShePlayz-owned store — on ShePlayz credentials, exportable anytime. This is Track B, finally attached to a real identity.
◈
Everything is handed to ShePlayz. The front-end, the member list, the capture pipeline, the data and everything derived from it — all on ShePlayz accounts. Pegasus builds it and hands it over; nothing load-bearing lives on Pegasus infrastructure.
07 · why it matters
Anonymous reach becomes a known audience
This is where "the MENA audience we own" stops being a claim in a deck and starts being a table we can query. A portal turns visitors into members — and members generate the first-party signal the intelligence product is made of.
Today
Reach
112K YouTube subscribers and site traffic we can count but can't name. Real, monetisable — but rented and anonymous.
➜
With the portal
An audience
Named fans with follows, preferences and a behavioural trail — owned, addressable, and ours to understand.
Who they follow
What they watch
Which sports
Which leagues
Language
Region
When they're active
What they save
Every interaction is owned signal. A brand, federation or rights-holder doesn't buy view counts — it buys the answer to "who is this audience, and what do they care about?" The portal is where that answer gets written, one follow and one reminder at a time. It's the smallest build that makes the audience-intelligence product real.
Imagery is directional — real, licensed sports imagery (rights on the v1 critical path) replaces the textured placeholders in the design pass. No real athletes are depicted. Arabic / RTL copy is illustrative and pending native review. Names and fixtures are placeholders.