Terms of use

These terms are a contract between you and VB League (“we”, “us”). They cover the website at vbleague.com, every organization site served under it, and the VB League app for iPhone and Android (together, “the service”). By creating an account, entering an event, running an event, or otherwise using the service, you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

Two kinds of people use VB League: players, who find and enter events, and organizers, who create and run them. Sections 1 through 4 and 9 through 15 apply to everyone. Section 5 is for players and sections 6 through 8 are for organizers. One account may be both.

The Privacy policy explains what we collect and is part of this agreement.

VB League is a platform. It lists events from many organizers in one place, takes entries, forms teams, collects waivers, tracks payments and shows results. It does not run the events.

Every event on VB League is run by its organizer. The organizer chooses the venue, the dates, the divisions, the rules, the prices, the refund policy and who plays. The organizer is responsible for the safety of the venue, for supervision, for insurance, for referees and equipment, for any permits the venue or city requires, and for the conduct of the event. When you enter an event you enter into an arrangement with that organizer; VB League is not a party to it and is not the organizer’s agent or partner.

Money a player pays for an event goes to the organizer. Card payments are processed by Stripe directly into the organizer’s own Stripe account; payments by Venmo, Zelle or another method go to the organizer without touching VB League at all. VB League charges organizers a platform fee for the service, described in section 7.

• You must be at least 13 to have an account. If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms for you and must be the one who signs any event waiver on your behalf.
• The name and email address on the account must be yours and must be accurate. An account is for one person; do not share it or let anyone else sign in as you.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what is done with your account until you tell us it has been compromised.
• We will email you a notice when your account is used from a device we have not seen before. If that was not you, change your password at once and write to us.
• You may close your account at any time by writing to us. Closing it does not cancel an entry or refund a payment; settle those with the organizer first.

You agree not to:

• enter an event under a false name, a false age, or a false skill level, or enter someone else without their knowledge;
• claim to have paid an organizer when you have not;
• post content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, threatening, or that infringes anyone’s rights;
• harass, threaten or discriminate against another player, an organizer, or our staff;
• probe, scan, scrape or overload the service, evade a security check, or access data that is not yours;
• use the service from outside the United States and Canada, or through a VPN, proxy or hosting provider to disguise where you are;
• use the service for anything other than finding, entering and running recreational sports events.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, remove content, or refuse an entry, with or without notice depending on the seriousness of what happened. An organizer may likewise refuse or remove a player from their own event.

Entering

Starting an entry does not hold a spot. A team has a place in a division only once its entry is confirmed, which happens when every requirement the organizer set is met: the roster, the waiver and the payment. Two teams that finish at the same moment for the last spot are settled by whichever confirmation the system records first. A division that is full may offer a waitlist; a waitlisted team has no spot until the organizer promotes it.

Teams and consent

Nobody can be put on a team without agreeing. A captain invites a teammate; the teammate accepts. The one exception is entering as a free agent: by doing that you agree in advance to be placed by the organizer on a team formed from other free agents in that division. A team formed that way stays together for the event unless the organizer dissolves it.

Waivers

An organizer may require you to accept a waiver before your entry is confirmed. The waiver is the organizer’s document, between you and the organizer. Read it. Accepting it on VB League has the same effect as signing it on paper.

Prices and payment

• The price you are shown when you start an entry is the price you pay. An organizer changing a division’s price later does not change yours.
• A card payment goes through Stripe to the organizer’s account and is counted the moment Stripe confirms it. VB League does not hold your money and cannot refund it; refunds come from the organizer through Stripe.
• If the organizer accepts Venmo, Zelle or another method, you send the money to the organizer yourself and then tell us you did. That report is a claim, not a payment: your entry counts as paid only once the organizer verifies it.
• A free agent may keep a card on file instead of paying up front. Nothing is charged until the organizer places you on a team; at that moment the card is charged your entry fee through Stripe to the organizer’s account, and if the charge fails you are asked to pay another way. A card on file that was never charged needs no refund. A team or player entering a division’s waitlist may keep a card on file the same way: nothing is charged on the waitlist, and the card is charged only when the entry is moved onto the roster. An entry taking an open spot pays at the time of entry.
• An organizer may waive a fee at their discretion.

Refunds and cancellations

Refunds are the organizer’s decision under their own policy, which they should state on the event page. If an event is cancelled or you withdraw, ask the organizer. The one rule VB League sets: the platform fee on a card payment is not refunded, so a refunded card payment may come back a few dollars short of what was paid. A free agent whom no team is formed with is refunded by the organizer minus that non-refundable fee.

One entry at a time

You may not hold a live entry in two events that overlap in time. The service will refuse the second and tell you which event it clashes with.

What is public

Once your team is confirmed, its name and the names of its players appear on the event’s public page, together with results and standings as they are recorded. If you do not want your name shown, do not enter.

Your organization

When you create an organization you get a site of your own under vbleague.com, named after the organization. The name may be changed once, and its web address follows it; the old address forwards for 90 days and is then released. Some names are reserved. You may not name an organization to impersonate another person or club, and we may rename or remove one that does.

The people you add to your organization act for it. What they do on VB League binds the organization, and it is your job to remove anyone who should no longer have access.

Your events

• Everything on an event page — the description, the dates, the address, the prices, the rules, the waiver, the banner — is yours and must be accurate. You are responsible for it and for correcting it.
• You are solely responsible for running the event: the venue and its safety, insurance, permits, officials, equipment, supervision of minors, and compliance with every law that applies to holding a sporting event where you hold it.
• You decide who plays, and you must apply that decision without unlawful discrimination.
• You must honor the price a player was quoted, verify outside payments honestly and promptly, and state a refund policy and follow it.
• Once an event opens for entries, how players may pay is locked: you cannot withdraw a payment method a player may already have relied on.
• Cancelling or rescheduling an event is your decision and your responsibility to the players who entered.

Waivers and minors

If you use a waiver, it is your document. VB League provides the means to present it and records who accepted it and when; it does not advise on its wording or its enforceability. If you admit players under 18, obtaining a parent or guardian’s consent is your responsibility.

Stripe

To accept card payments you connect a Stripe account of your own and agree to Stripe’s terms, including the Stripe Connected Account Agreement. Card payments land in that account. Payouts, refunds, chargebacks and disputes are between you and Stripe, and you are responsible for the outcome of every dispute on a charge you received. You may disconnect the account at any time; doing so stops card payments and does not affect fees already owed.

Taxes

Money you collect from players is your revenue. Any tax on it, and any reporting, is yours to handle. VB League does not collect or remit tax on your behalf.

Players use VB League free. Organizers pay a flat fee per transaction for each entry the platform served. The current rates, with a worked example, are shown on your dashboard’s Fees page; this section describes how the fee works.

• Card payments. One card charge is one transaction. The fee is taken from the charge as it happens, alongside Stripe’s own processing fee, and both are shown to you on the event’s payments page as Stripe reports them.
• Payments outside VB League, and waived fees. Each player whose entry was settled by Venmo, Zelle, another outside method, or a waiver is one transaction, whoever actually sent the money. A waived entry fee is still a player the platform served and is still billed. Those fees are added up and collected from you in one charge on the day before the event begins; fees that arise later are collected on the next daily run.
• How outside fees are collected. You must keep a bank account or a card on file with us through Stripe before a priced event can be published. We charge the bank account first. If there is no bank account, or the bank account fails twice in a row or is refused, we charge the card, and the charge is increased by exactly what Stripe charges to process a card so that the fee we collect is the fee that was owed. After three failed attempts you must add a new method before publishing anything else.
• Waitlisted teams. A fee accrues on a settled payment from a waitlisted team just as on a confirmed one, and is kept even if the team is never promoted and you refund it.
• Refunds. The platform fee is not refunded when you refund a player, unless your organization has been set to refund it, in which case Stripe returns it with the charge.
• Changes. We may change the rates with at least 30 days’ notice by email. A fee already accrued is never recomputed at a new rate.

You authorize us to charge the payment method you keep on file for the fees described here, and you agree to keep it valid while you have events with entries.

You keep ownership of everything you post: event descriptions, banners, waiver text, team names, results. You give VB League a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display, reproduce and distribute it on the service and in listings, search results, share links and previews of the service, for as long as it is on the service and for a reasonable time afterwards in backups.

You promise that you have the right to post what you post — that a banner is yours or licensed to you, that a waiver is yours to use, and that nothing you post infringes anyone’s copyright, trademark, privacy or other rights. If we receive a credible complaint we may take content down and will tell you why.

The service itself — its code, design, name and logo — belongs to VB League. You may not copy it, build on it, or use the VB League name and logo without permission, except to say truthfully that your event is on VB League.

VB League serves players and organizers in the United States and Canada on home and mobile connections; requests from elsewhere, or from hosting providers, are refused. We try to keep the service up and correct, and we back it up, but we do not promise that it will be available at any given moment or free of errors. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of it. If we discontinue the service entirely we will give organizers with published events reasonable notice and a way to export their entries.

Volleyball is a physical sport. Playing it, and being at a venue where it is played, carries a risk of injury, from a sprained ankle to something serious. By entering an event through VB League you acknowledge that risk and accept it. VB League does not inspect venues, does not supervise play, does not vet organizers or players, and has no control over what happens at an event. Any claim arising from an injury or loss at an event lies against the people who ran it, not against VB League.

The service is provided as it is and as it is available. To the fullest extent the law allows, VB League disclaims every warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and any warranty that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, or that any event will take place as listed. Information about an event comes from its organizer and we do not verify it.

To the fullest extent the law allows, VB League and the people who work on it are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill, or for any injury, loss or damage arising out of an event listed on the service, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if we were told it was possible.

Our total liability to you for everything arising out of the service in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of one hundred United States dollars and the platform fees you paid us in that period. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these limitations; in those places they apply as far as they are allowed.

You will defend and indemnify VB League and the people who work on it against any claim, loss, liability and expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your use of the service in breach of these terms, from content you posted, or, if you are an organizer, from an event you ran, including any injury at it, any dispute with a player over money, and any failure to obtain a permit, insurance or consent you needed.

If you have a problem with the service, write to us first; most things are fixed by a conversation. These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state in which VB League is based, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and any claim that cannot be settled between us is brought in the state or federal courts there. You and VB League each waive any right to a jury trial and agree to bring claims only individually, not as part of a class or representative action. A claim must be brought within one year of the events giving rise to it.

A dispute between a player and an organizer — about a refund, a result, a placement, conduct at an event — is between them. We may pass a message along; we do not adjudicate.

We may change these terms. When we do, the date at the top changes, and for a change that affects your rights or the fees we will tell you by email or on the site at least 30 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that date is acceptance. If you do not accept a change, stop using the service and write to us to close your account.

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stands. These terms, with the Privacy policy, are the whole agreement between you and VB League about the service and replace anything said earlier. Our not enforcing a term on one occasion is not a waiver of it.

Write to info@vbleague.com, or use the contact form. Notices from us go to the email address on your account, so keep it current.