MADE Hoops
Building the Digital Infrastructure Behind Youth Basketball’s Biggest Stage
MADE Hoops is one of the premier youth basketball platforms in the country, connecting elite young athletes with college coaches and exposure opportunities through events, camps, and showcases held nationwide. As the organization scaled, the tools holding it together couldn’t keep up. Event management, player registration, team coordination, payments, and communications were spread across disconnected systems. MADE Hoops needed a unified digital platform that could handle the complexity behind the scenes while keeping the experience simple for every user on the front end. Wheelhouse partnered with the MADE Hoops team to design, architect, and build the entire ecosystem from the ground up.
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One-on-One Tournament
For Unrivaled’s marquee 1-on-1 tournament, we developed a visual identity that reflected the high-stakes, high-drama nature of the event. The design system combined bold typography, dynamic layouts, and premium textures to evoke a sense of intensity and prestige. We also built a flexible graphic toolkit that allowed the league to promote matchups, results, and highlights across platforms in real time.
Brand Identity
Marketing Website
The MADE Hoops marketing website isn’t a static brochure. It’s a living, breathing extension of the platform itself. Built on a custom CMS and connected to the admin platform through a custom API, the site dynamically pulls event data, schedules, and program information directly from the system the team manages daily. When an event is created or updated in the admin portal, the marketing site reflects it in real time. No duplicate entry. No outdated information. No disconnect between what the team knows and what the audience sees. The result is a site that stays current by design, not by maintenance, giving MADE Hoops a digital presence that moves as fast as the organization does.
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Brand Identity
Marketing Website
The MADE Hoops marketing website isn’t a static brochure. It’s a living, breathing extension of the platform itself. Built on a custom CMS and connected to the admin platform through a custom API, the site dynamically pulls event data, schedules, and program information directly from the system the team manages daily. When an event is created or updated in the admin portal, the marketing site reflects it in real time. No duplicate entry. No outdated information. No disconnect between what the team knows and what the audience sees. The result is a site that stays current by design, not by maintenance, giving MADE Hoops a digital presence that moves as fast as the organization does.
Brand Design & Launch Strategy
We started with a deep dive into the cycling community, identifying pain points, behavioral insights, and emotional triggers that drive trust and adoption in peer-to-peer marketplaces. The brand identity we created for PDL Club reflects both premium craftsmanship and a modern tech-forward edge. Bold typography, minimalist layouts, and a refined color palette communicate exclusivity and performance. For the launch strategy, we crafted a suite of materials from positioning and messaging to digital assets and social content designed to build early buzz and credibility within the cycling world.
Platform Consulting
We partnered with Sports Business Ventures to help define and architect a new community platform from the ground up. After a focused discovery session where the SBV team outlined their pain points and goals, we conducted a strategic assessment and recommended a tech stack tailored to their needs. Our consultation covered everything from platform features and user experience to long-term scalability, giving SBV a clear roadmap to bring their vision for a connected, career-focused sports community to life.
Brand Design
We created a refreshed visual identity for Blockworks that reflects their position as a trusted, sophisticated voice in the crypto and finance ecosystem. The new brand strikes a balance between sharp editorial authority and the innovative spirit of the digital asset world. With a modern typographic system, a clean monochromatic palette with subtle color cues, and a flexible modular grid, the visual identity supports both high-frequency publishing and long-form thought leadership. The result is a brand system that elevates the Blockworks experience without overshadowing its content.
Visual Language
Admin Platform
Behind every MADE Hoops event is a complex operation spanning event creation, registration management, user accounts, payment processing, and real-time communication. The admin platform we built is the central nervous system for all of it. Program directors can create and manage events, oversee registrations, and track payments from a single dashboard. The platform supports multi-role access with a detailed permissions matrix, ensuring that admins, program directors, and support staff each see only what they need to see and can do only what they’re authorized to do. We also built a full data warehouse that aggregates information across events, players, teams, and transactions, giving the MADE Hoops leadership a clear picture of the business at any point in time. This isn’t just a tool for managing events. It’s the operational backbone of the entire organization.
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Digital Experience
Product Design
Registration is the single most important user-facing interaction in the MADE Hoops ecosystem. It’s where parents commit, payments are processed, and rosters take shape. We designed and built a custom registration platform that handles the full journey: event discovery, team or individual registration, player profile creation, payment processing, and confirmation. On the event day side, the platform extends into a check-in system powered by QR scanning and NSID verification, ensuring that every athlete on site is accounted for quickly and accurately. The platform supports multiple user types, each with a distinct experience. Parents register players and manage profiles. Coaches manage rosters and access event details. Program directors oversee the full picture. Every interaction was designed to reduce friction and eliminate the manual processes that slow organizations down at scale. What looks simple on the surface is backed by an architecture built to handle thousands of registrations across dozens of events simultaneously.
Admin Dashboard
To support platform operations, we also designed a custom admin dashboard that allows the PDL Club team to manage listings, vet users, monitor rentals, and resolve issues in real time. The dashboard was built with flexibility and scalability in mind, giving internal teams the tools they need to maintain quality control and deliver a seamless user experience. Clear data visualization, search filters, and user management workflows all contribute to a back-end system that is as refined as the front-end experience.
Team Brand Guidelines
We created comprehensive brand guidelines for all six Unrivaled teams, including custom color palettes, typography, logo lockups, and jersey design references for home, away, and practice kits. These guidelines also extended into social media use, ensuring visual consistency across team accounts, player promotions, and league communications. Each team identity was crafted to be distinct, empowering them to build their own presence while aligning with the league’s unified brand system.
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FOS Advertising
We designed and developed a dedicated website experience to showcase the full range of premium advertising opportunities Front Office Sports offers. Built to inspire confidence and clarity, the site serves as a digital front door for brands and advertisers to explore custom packages, media solutions, and success stories. From high-impact takeovers to branded content and newsletter integrations, every offering is clearly articulated through an interactive and mobile-optimized experience. The platform also gives the FOS team a flexible way to feature new case studies and campaign examples, positioning them as a strategic partner in the sports business space.
Platform Design
As part of our engagement, we also designed the user interface for Delve, Shepherd’s AI platform that analyzes patient data to identify personalized treatment opportunities. Our goal was to make a complex tool intuitive and approachable—balancing the needs of scientific accuracy with clear, action-oriented UX. We worked closely with the product team to map the user journey, define key workflows, and design a modular interface system that supports both data analysis and user communication. The result is a platform that feels modern and trustworthy, supporting Shepherd’s mission to bring advanced cancer care to more people, more personally.
Made Brooklyn Facility
MADE Brooklyn is the physical home of MADE Hoops, a dedicated training and event facility designed to match the energy and ambition of the brand itself. Wheelhouse led the interior design across the entire space, from the lobby and common areas to the court environment and digital signage. Every surface, every sight line, and every branded touchpoint was designed to reinforce the MADE identity the moment you walk through the door. The court features custom floor graphics and branding that make it instantly recognizable, while the lobby and spectator areas balance a raw, industrial Brooklyn aesthetic with the polish of a professional sports venue. The goal was to create a space that feels like more than a gym. It’s a destination, a content backdrop, and a brand experience all in one.
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Product Design
In collaboration with Transmit’s product and engineering teams, we designed the platform interface to distill complex ad insertion workflows into an intuitive, user-friendly experience. Our work spanned information architecture, UX strategy, component systems, and interface design — ensuring that both technical operators and business users could easily manage campaigns, monitor performance, and optimize ad delivery in real-time. The result is a scalable SaaS product that simplifies operational complexity while elevating the platform’s market-leading capabilities.
Brand Partnership Experiences
We collaborated with Front Office Sports to concept, design, and build branded microsites that bring their brand partnerships to life. These immersive experiences were crafted to tell compelling, editorial-style stories around timely sports topics, seamlessly tied to sponsoring brands. From interactive timelines to custom layouts and data-driven visuals, each microsite was tailored to the campaign narrative while staying rooted in the FOS editorial voice. These projects not only elevated the advertiser’s message but also strengthened FOS’s reputation as a creative and strategic content partner for brands in the sports ecosystem.
