# Turn each week's football fixtures into a venue staffing plan

> Every Monday, rank the week's matches by expected demand, put the big ones on your venue calendar, and post a rota-ready summary to Slack.

- Workflow type: agent
- Services: API-Sports, Google Calendar, Slack
- Categories: Operations
- Published: 2026-08-10

## What it does

- Looks ahead at every fixture in the leagues you follow, Monday through Sunday, in your venue's local time
- Ranks each match as high, medium or low demand using league prestige, league table position, derby status and whether kickoff lands in a peak evening or weekend slot
- Adds every high and medium match to your shared venue calendar with the kickoff time, the demand tier, a suggested staffing level and one promo idea
- Posts a single Slack summary to your managers channel listing the week's match days in order with their tiers and total suggested cover, so the rota can be built straight from it

## What you'll need

- An API-Sports account for football fixtures and league tables. The free plan is enough for a single venue
- A Google Calendar that you share with your management team
- A Slack workspace and the channel your managers already use for rota talk
- The list of leagues your customers actually watch, plus your venue's time zone

## Prompt

Every Monday at 8am, look ahead at the coming week of football fixtures and turn them into a match day trading plan for my bar. Put the matches that matter on our shared venue calendar and finish with one Slack summary my managers can build the rota from.

Start by resolving the leagues I follow. Use the API-Sports "List Leagues and Cups" operation to look up my leagues by name and get back their league IDs and current season. Seasons are four digit years, and for a league that spans two calendar years the starting year is the one to use. Resolve all of my leagues in as few calls as possible and reuse the IDs for the rest of the run.

Then pull the week's fixtures with "List Fixtures (Live, By Date, League, or Team)", using a from and to date range that covers Monday through Sunday of the coming week, scoped to those league IDs and the current season. Always pass my venue time zone on the fixtures call. Without it the kickoff times come back in UTC and the peak slot judgement will be wrong.

Also pull "Get Standings" once per league for the current season, so you can judge which matches actually matter instead of treating every game the same.

Rank every fixture into a demand tier of high, medium or low. Weigh league prestige, whether it is a local derby or a long standing rivalry, whether it is a clash between two sides near the top of the table or a genuine relegation six pointer, and whether the kickoff lands in a peak slot. Treat a weekday evening kickoff and a weekend afternoon or evening kickoff as peak, and a weekday daytime kickoff as low regardless of who is playing, because the room will be empty. Keep a short reason for each rating so a manager can sanity check it.

Turn each tier into a suggested staffing level using my baseline cover for that day plus an uplift per tier, for example a high tier match adds several extra bar and floor staff and a medium tier match adds a couple. If two fixtures overlap on the same day, plan the cover for the day as a whole rather than double counting the same shift.

For every high and medium fixture, create a Google Calendar event on our shared venue calendar using "Create Event". Title it with the tier and the fixture, for example "HIGH: Arsenal vs Tottenham (Premier League)". Set the start to the local kickoff time and the end about two and a half hours later so the event covers the match and the trade either side of it. In the description put the demand tier and the one line reason for it, the suggested staffing level, and one promo idea that fits that specific match. Do not create events for low tier fixtures, they would only clutter the calendar.

Finish by posting a single Slack message to our managers channel. List the week's match days in chronological order, and under each day give the kickoff time, the fixture, the competition, the demand tier and the suggested cover for that day, then close with the total suggested cover across the week. It should read as something the rota can be built straight from, so keep it scannable and post it as one message rather than one message per match.

Keep the API-Sports calls tight, because the free plan allows only 100 requests per day. Aim for one leagues lookup, one fixtures pull per league for the whole date range, and one standings call per league. Do not fetch per fixture extras such as lineups, odds, head to head or match statistics, none of them change the staffing decision.

Handle API-Sports responses carefully. It returns errors inside the errors field of a normal HTTP 200 response with an empty response array, so inspect the errors field rather than trusting the status code, and surface a clear message in Slack if the key is invalid or the daily quota is spent. A result count of zero is a valid no data answer, not a failure. If the coming week genuinely has no fixtures in my leagues, skip the calendar entirely and post a short note saying it is a quiet week with no extra match day cover needed.

## How to customize

- Change which leagues you follow, and add cup competitions or a summer international tournament when they come around
- Adjust what counts as a peak kickoff slot and the staffing numbers behind each tier, so they match your venue size and typical covers
- Move the Monday 8am run to whichever morning you build the rota, or send the summary to a different channel

## FAQ

### Do I need a paid sports data plan for this?

No. The free API-Sports plan is enough. This runs once a week and is written to stay well inside the free daily allowance: one lookup to resolve your leagues, one pull of the week's fixtures, and one league table per competition. It deliberately avoids per match extras like lineups and odds.

### Which leagues and competitions can it cover?

Any football league or cup you follow, domestic or international. You name the competitions your customers care about and those are the only ones it looks at, so a venue that lives off the Premier League and Champions League will not get filled up with fixtures nobody will watch.

### Will the kickoff times be correct for my venue?

Yes. You set your local time zone once and every kickoff, calendar event and summary line uses it. That matters because the peak slot logic depends on real local kickoff times, not a shifted clock.

### What happens in a quiet week with no fixtures?

Nothing gets added to the calendar. You get a short Slack note saying it is a quiet week and no extra match day cover is needed, so the absence of a plan is never mistaken for a broken automation.

### Does it decide staffing numbers for me?

It suggests a level for each tier based on the baseline cover and uplifts you set, and it explains why a match was rated high, medium or low. A manager still signs off the rota. Think of it as the prep work done before you sit down, not a decision made for you.

### Can I use this for a restaurant or hotel bar rather than a sports bar?

Yes. Any venue where a big match changes how busy the room gets can use it. If matches only lift your trade a little, lower the staffing uplifts and treat the tiers as a heads up rather than a call to add a full extra shift.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/turn-each-weeks-football-fixtures-into-a-venue-staffing-plan