Sports readers want the score before the story. Then the table, then the key moments, then your opinion. A general blog theme gives them none of that up front, and most sports themes depend on paid data feeds or plugins to show scores at all.
Ghost suits independent football and sports writers well: fast pages for match-day traffic spikes, a newsletter for the weekly round-up and memberships for longer features. This guide covers what a sports site needs from a Ghost theme, and how our theme, Pitch, builds scores, tables and timelines from what you write.
What a football or sports site needs
Scores on everything
Every match report should show the score on its card, in a big scoreboard on the report, and in a strip of recent results across the site.
Club identity
Readers scan for their club. Consistent crests or colours for each team make that instant.
League tables
Position, played, won, drawn, lost, goals, points, recent form, with promotion and relegation zones marked.
Key moments
Goals, cards, substitutions and the whistle, as a timeline readers can scan in seconds.
Opinion
Columns from named writers are what make readers come back to your site instead of a scores app.
No dependency on a data provider
Data feeds are expensive and often cover only top leagues. Writers covering local, women's, youth or lower-league football need to show scores and tables without them.
How Pitch handles it
Pitch is a bold football and sports magazine theme for Ghost.
One tag per match report. Add #score Riverside Rovers 2-1 Ashford United in the post settings (team names can include spaces). The post gets a full-width scoreboard with both teams and the winner in colour, a score on its card, a result card on the homepage and a place in the results strip. Optional #comp and #venue tags add the competition and ground.
Crests from team names. Pitch draws each club's crest from its name: initials on a colour that stays the same for that club everywhere on the site. No logo files, and no trademarked badges.
A results strip under the header that scrolls by itself, and stops on hover or for readers who prefer reduced motion.
League tables from normal tables. Any table with a "Pts" column becomes a league table: crests before each team, green promotion rows and red relegation rows (you set how many), and a Form column like WDWLW turned into coloured pills. On phones, the W, D and L columns hide and the table scrolls sideways if needed.
Match timelines. A bulleted list where every item starts with a minute (27' Goal! Webb curls one in (1-0), 45+2' Half-time whistle) becomes a timeline with icons for goals, cards, substitutions and whistles.
Homepage. A lead story, a numbered Top stories list, Latest results cards and the latest posts.
Column template. For opinion pieces: the writer's portrait on pitch stripes, a Column badge, the title in quotes and the author's bio.
More. Sections and The team (writers) pages; membership page with tiers and a monthly/yearly switch; styled paywall; sign-in, sign-up and account pages; light by default with a floodlit dark mode; reading progress, lightbox, galleries, callouts and toggle cards; self-hosted Barlow Condensed and Barlow fonts; full translation support; 18 theme settings; no jQuery.
Check the tables on the Pitch live demo.
What Pitch does not do
- No live scores. Scores come from your tags, after you publish. Pitch is a magazine, not a live scores service.
- No automatic tables. Tables are what you paste; update them after each round.
- Not just for football in name. The scoreboard works for any "Team A score–score Team B" sport, but league table zones and timelines are designed around football.
Running a sports site on Ghost
- Publish match reports fast. The score tag takes seconds; post the report soon after the final whistle, then improve it.
- Paste the table after every round from your spreadsheet.
- Write timelines for big matches. They are the most scannable part of a report.
- Give your writers columns. Opinion builds loyalty that scores alone cannot.
- Send a weekly round-up newsletter with results, the table and the best column.
- Offer members longer features: tactical analysis, interviews, season previews. See Ghost memberships with Stripe.
Other themes to consider
- Arcade: for game reviews with score hexagons and release countdowns.
- Gazette: for general news with a live blog, useful for match-day live coverage across several sports.
- See them all on our Ghost themes page.
A match-day publishing workflow
Here is how a small team can cover a match with Pitch, from whistle to newsletter.
Before kick-off
- Publish a short preview with team news. Tag it with the competition.
- Prepare a draft match report with the teams, competition and venue tags already added.
During the match
- Note key moments with their minutes as they happen: goals, cards, substitutions, the half-time whistle. This becomes the timeline.
At full time
- Add the score tag, for example
#score Riverside Rovers 2-1 Ashford United, paste in the timeline, write three or four paragraphs, add a photo and publish. The scoreboard, result card and results strip update immediately.
Within an hour
- Paste the updated league table from your spreadsheet into the table post or the report.
- Publish a column with a writer's view of the match using the Column template.
Next morning
- Send a round-up newsletter with the result, the table and the column.
Covering leagues nobody else covers
Pitch is especially useful for leagues that big sports sites ignore: lower divisions, women's football, schools and youth competitions, local leagues and amateur clubs. These audiences are loyal, underserved and often willing to support coverage through memberships, but data providers rarely offer feeds for them. Because Pitch builds scoreboards, crests and tables from what you type, you can cover any competition properly from the first match.
Respecting clubs' brands
Pitch draws crests from team names rather than using clubs' official badges. That keeps the site consistent and avoids using trademarked logos without permission. If you have permission from a club to use its badge, you can still include it in your photos and posts.
Tables people trust
League tables are only useful if they are right. Keep one master spreadsheet per competition, update it after every round, and paste the whole table rather than editing cells in the post. Set the promotion and relegation places once in the theme settings so the colour zones always match the competition's rules.
Growing a sports audience
Sports readers are loyal to their team or league. Give them reasons to choose you: fast reports after every match, consistent tables, honest opinion and coverage of the stories bigger outlets skip. Share each report quickly with the club's supporters' groups, build a match-day newsletter list, and invite readers to submit their own photos and views with permission to publish them.
Photos and rights
Match photos bring reports to life, but professional match images are usually licensed. Use your own photos from the stands or the touchline where you are allowed to take them, photos supplied by clubs with permission, or licensed images from an agency. Credit the photographer in the caption. For lower leagues, many clubs are happy to share photos in exchange for coverage and a credit.
Bottom line
A sports site needs scores, tables, timelines and opinion, ideally without paying for a data feed. Pitch builds all of them from one internal tag, a normal table and a list, for $59.
See match day in Pitch: open the Pitch demo and get Pitch. Want it set up for your league? Our Ghost theme install and setup service does it.
Frequently asked questions
Add one internal tag in the post settings, for example #score Riverside Rovers 2-1 Ashford United. The post then gets a scoreboard, a score on its card, a result card on the homepage and a place in the results strip. Add #comp and #venue tags for the competition and the ground.
No. Add a normal table with a Pts column, or paste one from a spreadsheet. Pitch adds crests, promotion and relegation colours and W/D/L form pills.
Pitch draws them from the team name: the initials on a colour that is always the same for that club across the site. No logo files are needed, which also avoids using clubs' trademarked badges.
Write a bulleted list where every item starts with a minute, such as 27' Goal! or 81' Red card. Pitch turns it into a timeline with icons for goals, cards, substitutions and whistles.
