Building your athlete roster

Why a roster helps

Your roster gives bib matching a runner record to compare against. Readable bib digits may produce likely matches, and matching uncertainty still applies. The roster also lets you send athletes the supported emails configured for each stage.

Importing a roster does not create public athlete profiles. The name, email, and bib stay private registration data until the athlete signs in with that email and verifies the exact event and bib. Public gallery bib search can still find already-public event photos before that verification.

Three ways to add athletes

Open your event and go to the Athletes tab, then choose how to build your roster:

• Sync from RunSignup: connect your RunSignup account and enter your race id. Leave the event id blank to bring in every distance, or set one to sync a single distance.
• Import a CSV: paste your athletes using the columns for display name, bib number, contact email, and phone. You will see how many rows were new, updated, or skipped.
• Add by hand: enter a name, bib number, and optional email or phone for a single athlete.

The Sync now button stays unavailable until RunSignup is connected for the event or PodiumBase has complete platform credentials. Saving a race id by itself does not start an unauthenticated sync.

Check your email coverage

The roster header tells you how many of your athletes have an email address on file, and warns you when that number is low. An athlete with no email cannot be sent a selfie prompt or a photos-ready campaign, so a roster without emails looks perfectly healthy while quietly making every campaign you send reach nobody.

A red warning means not one athlete on the roster has an address. That is almost always a CSV imported without a contact email column, and the fix is to re-upload with that column or connect a registration sync instead. An amber warning means some are missing rather than all of them.

The counts follow whatever filter you have applied, so a search that happens to select a couple of email-less athletes is not a roster-wide problem. Clear your filters to read the true number.

Turn on bib matching

To match photos by bib, enable bib search for the event. If your roster comes from an integration you can set the bib number ranges that route photos; if you are adding athletes yourself, turn on bib search from the roster tools. Once it is on, photos are matched to athletes as they upload.

Prepare the photo-ready send

Before race day, make sure each roster row has both a bib and an email. After photos publish, use the Photos are available campaign. PodiumBase gives each recipient a link narrowed to their bib when one is present, while still offering the event gallery when it is not. Preview the eligible count and send yourself a test before queuing the campaign.

For results, upload the timer's final file after the race. Results for roster rows that have not yet been claimed are held privately and attach after verified ownership; they are not discarded as unmatched.

Help a specific runner

The roster tools let you search for one runner and re-scan every photo for them, which is handy if someone says their photos are missing. A closed event becomes read-only, so make roster changes before your event wraps up.