User Roles Overview
SportsPress adds five custom user roles to WordPress: League Manager, Team Manager, Event Manager, Staff, and Player. These roles control what SportsPress content a user can create, edit, publish, or delete inside the WordPress admin.
How roles work
WordPress roles are collections of capabilities. SportsPress defines its own capabilities — such as publish_sp_events or edit_sp_players — and assigns different subsets of those capabilities to each role. The plugin registers roles during installation and removes them on uninstall.
Roles restrict what content a user can act on, not what content appears on the front end. A player assigned the Player role can, for example, edit their own player profile, but cannot publish new players or delete records.
The five SportsPress roles
Role | Internal name | Access level |
League Manager |
| Full SportsPress access, comparable to Administrator |
Team Manager |
| Full CRUD for players, staff, events, and player lists; cannot directly publish teams |
Event Manager |
| Full CRUD for events; limited (submit for review) access to teams, players, and staff |
Staff |
| Can submit staff, events, teams, and players for review; can edit own published records |
Player |
| Can submit players, events, and teams for review; can edit own published records |
These roles sit alongside standard WordPress roles (Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber). Standard WordPress roles do not receive SportsPress capabilities by default — only sp_league_manager and administrator are granted the full set of SportsPress capabilities at install time.
How to assign a role to a user
In the WordPress admin, go to Users > All Users.
Click the username to open the profile.
In the Role dropdown, select the desired SportsPress role.
Click Update User.
A user can hold only one role at a time. Changing a user's role immediately updates their capabilities.
When to use each role
League Manager — Use for competition organisers or administrators who need complete control over all SportsPress data. This role can also edit WordPress users, posts, and pages. It does not grant manage_options (site settings), so it is intentionally less powerful than Administrator.
Team Manager — Use for a club official who manages one or more teams. They can fully manage players, staff, events, and player lists. Creating new teams requires admin approval. Combine with the Team Access module (Pro) to restrict a team manager to their specific team's data only.
Event Manager — Use for someone responsible for scheduling and entering match results. They have full publish/delete access for events and can edit players and staff records for reference, but cannot publish new players, staff, or teams without admin approval.
Staff — Use for coaches, physios, or other support personnel who need to update their own staff profile and view event data. They cannot publish new records without admin approval.
Player — Use for registered players who need to maintain their own player profile. They can view and edit their published player, event, and team records, but all new submissions require admin approval before going live.
Key principle
The Player and Staff roles are designed to give individuals a restricted dashboard login. They can maintain their own profile without the ability to publish or permanently change other records. The "submit for review" workflow means an administrator always has a chance to approve content before it is visible.
Team Access
SportsPress Pro includes a Team Access module that adds a second layer of restriction on top of roles. When enabled, users with the Team Manager, Event Manager, Staff, or Player role can be assigned to one or more teams, and the admin list screens will only show content belonging to those teams.