IMLeagues is a website used by over 1000 universities for managing intramural sports in North America. Despite its widespread use, IMLeagues gives a difficult user experience with confusing navigation, outdated design and questionable functionality. How did the IMLeagues website become so ineffective, and what can be done about it?
Drexel is one of the colleges that uses IMLeagues, allowing students to sign up and compete in intramural sports throughout the year. During the Spring 2025 quarter, students had the opportunity to sign up for sports such as soccer, softball, football and sand volleyball.
On its Google page, IMLeagues advertises itself as “by far the easiest, most interactive, and graphically appealing online intramural league registration program out there on the market.”
However, users of the website would likely disagree with this characterization. When attempting to log in, students are greeted with a list of every single organization that has ever used IMLeagues. The very first option is for the “2012 ASICS Flag Football team”, an event that took place 13 years ago. Other unique options include “Anderson’s Oozeball 2018,” “Extreme Toronto Sports Club” or the “Hotty Toddy Hoop Fest Regional Basketball Tournament.”
Drexel alone has three different organizations on IMLeagues: Drexel University, Drexel University Athletics and Drexel University College of Medicine. This could confuse students trying to register for leagues, as they may be members of two or more of these organizations.
Drexel’s internal systems do not make the situation better. To log in, students must find Drexel on the IMLeagues homepage, get redirected to reccenter.drexel.edu, enter their Drexel ID into the rec center website and then redirect themselves back to the IMLeagues website. This process makes signing up for an intramural team even more time-consuming and could potentially turn off some students from participating in intramural sports.
The confusion does not end once students are signed up for a team, however. For example, personal statistics from members of The Triangle Sports team, who played intramural sports, show data such as a 101 percent “Game Performance” in dodgeball, or a 66 percent IM Leagues “Performance Meter.” These statistics have no added value to a user, as there is no explanation as to what they represent or how they are calculated.
Visually, the IMLeagues website interface resembles a website that may have been used around the time the company was founded in 2007. There are numerous ads that take up the entire homepage, poor quality photos and inconsistent fonts and colors. All of these factors create an unappealing visual and a poor user experience.
Yet, as students are allowed to participate in intramural sports for free, Drexel does not necessarily make money from students’ participation and, therefore, does not have a reason to improve the systems or create an internal website for intramurals.
This begs the question: With so many colleges using IMLeagues, why isn’t the website better? The answer is most likely money. According to the IMLeagues FAQ, their website is free. “There are no hidden costs, nor will there ever be any costs.” By not charging colleges to use their site, they are cutting off a potentially large income source that could be used to help update the website. This has created a situation where IMLeagues is stuck on an ad-based model to continue to operate, and things will continue the way they are.
In theory, IMLeagues gets the job done. Students can sign up for intramural sports with their friends, and colleges have a way to manage it. However, in practice, there could be much better solutions. If the company charged money to universities, it might be able to afford to upgrade the site for a better user experience in 2025. IMLeagues has virtually no competition in college intramural scheduling and signups, and therefore no incentive to make its site better.
This leaves everyone in a lose-lose situation. The site continues to look more outdated as time goes on, students have to navigate a difficult website, and universities receive complaints from students. There is likely no solution to this problem in the short term, which means students will continue to use IMLeagues not out of choice, but out of necessity.