Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Emerging Football ("we", "us") runs the website at emergingfootball.com: a football data hub for professional football and a talent discovery platform for grassroots teams. This policy explains what personal data we handle, why, and the choices you have. It applies to the website, team workspaces and our emails.

2. What we collect

Information you give us

• Account details: name, username, email address and password (stored only as a secure hash), the role you choose, and optionally your country and phone number.
• Contact messages: your name, email, optional phone number and organisation, and your message.
• Writer requests and articles: why you want to write, links to your work, and what you publish.
• Grassroots team records entered by a team administrator: player and staff names, dates of birth, positions, shirt numbers, photos, match events, and parent or guardian details and consent for players under 18.

Information collected automatically

• Usage data: pages visited, time on pages, referring site and campaign tags, browser, device type and operating system.
• IP address and approximate location: we look up the country, region and city of your IP address so pages open on your country's football. We also read your browser's time zone for the same purpose.
• Cookies: see our cookie policy.

Football data

Match results, line-ups, scorers and statistics about professional players come from public sources. This information relates to players' public professional activity.

3. How we use it and why

Purpose	Legal basis
Create and secure your account, confirm your email and sign you in	Performing our agreement with you
Run team workspaces, competitions and publish match records	Performing our agreement with the team; for players under 18, the consent of a parent or guardian
Reply to contact messages and writer requests	Our legitimate interest in responding to you
Show your country's football first and remember your country choice	Our legitimate interest in a relevant service
Understand how the site is used, keep it secure and prevent abuse	Our legitimate interests
Send service emails (confirmations, invitations, decisions, notifications)	Performing our agreement with you
Meet legal obligations	Legal obligation

We do not use personal data for advertising profiles and we do not send marketing emails without your consent.

4. Players under 18

• A team administrator registers a player under 18 only with a parent or guardian's consent, which is recorded.
• Public pages show a minor's first name and surname initial (for example "Kehinde O."), age group and football record. Full names, photos, dates of birth and contact details are not shown publicly.
• A parent or guardian can ask the team or us to correct or remove a player's record at any time.

5. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal data. We use a small number of service providers who process data for us under their terms:

• Amazon Web Services: hosting, database, secure configuration storage and email delivery (Amazon SES).
• ip-api.com: turns an IP address into an approximate location.
• Google Fonts and jsDelivr: deliver fonts and page components; your browser connects to them directly when pages load.

Public profile and match information (such as team pages, published articles and professional match records) is visible to everyone. We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the safety of players, users or the public.

6. Where data is stored

Our servers and database are hosted by Amazon Web Services in the United States. When data is transferred outside your country we rely on our providers' contractual and security safeguards.

7. How long we keep it

• Account data: while your account is open. If you ask us to delete it we remove or anonymise it, except where we must keep a record by law.
• Accounts that are never confirmed may be removed.
• Contact messages and writer requests: as long as needed to deal with them and keep a record of the decision.
• Match records: kept as part of the football record. Grassroots player records are removed or anonymised when the team or a parent or guardian asks.
• Usage data: kept for statistics and security, and reviewed periodically.

8. Security

Pages are served over HTTPS, passwords are stored only as secure hashes, credentials are kept in encrypted configuration storage, and access to personal data is limited to people who need it. No system is perfectly secure; if we become aware of a breach affecting you we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

9. Your rights

You can ask to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal data, object to or restrict how we use it, and withdraw consent where we rely on it. Send your request through our contact form and choose "Privacy & Data Request", or email info@touchlineafrica.com. We may ask you to confirm your identity. You can also complain to your data protection authority; in Nigeria this is the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

10. Changes

We will update this page when our practices change and show the date at the top. Significant changes will also be announced on the site or by email.