Terms of Service

1.1 Who we are

Startline is operated by Startline Pty Ltd (ABN 85 775 067 904) (“Startline”, “we”, “us”). These terms apply to the Startline website at startlineau.com, the organiser portal at organiser.startlineau.com and any other service we provide under the Startline name (together, the “platform”).

1.2 Who they apply to

These terms apply to everyone who uses the platform: visitors, athletes who enter events (including guests who enter without an account), and organisers who list and run events. Section 5 sets out extra terms that apply only to organisers.

1.3 Agreeing to these terms

You agree to these terms when you create an account, enter an event, set up an organisation or list an event. If you do not agree, please do not use the platform. Our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy explain how we handle personal information and cookies.

1.4 Changes

We may update these terms as the platform changes. If a change is significant, we will email you at least 14 days before it takes effect. If you do not agree with a change, you can close your account before then. A change never alters the terms of an entry you have already bought.

2.1 Who can have an account

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or set up an organisation. A parent or guardian can enter a child into an event on the child’s behalf (see 4.6).

2.2 Keeping it accurate and secure

An account is for one person. Give us accurate details and keep them up to date. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account. You are responsible for what happens under your account unless it was caused by our failure to keep the platform secure. We recommend turning on the authenticator app option in Login & security.

2.3 Your public profile

Your username, bio, profile photo and race history, including results organisers record for you, are shown on your public profile. You can make your profile private in Settings. Your full name, contact details, date of birth and other entry details are never shown on your profile.

2.4 Closing your account

You can delete your account at any time in Settings, under Login & security. If you are the only owner of an organisation, you will need to hand ownership to someone else or delete the organisation first. The entries you made stay with the organisers who ran those events, because they are part of the organiser’s records, but they are no longer linked to you.

3.1 What Startline does

Startline is a marketplace. Organisers use it to list events and take entries, and athletes use it to find and enter them. The organiser runs the event and is responsible for it. When you enter an event, your agreement to take part is with the organiser, not with Startline. Some listings send you to the organiser’s own website to enter; those entries are handled entirely by the organiser.

3.2 The Startline booking fee

Startline charges a booking fee of 3.95% of the ticket price plus A$1.45 on each paid ticket. Free tickets carry no fee. The organiser chooses whether the fee is added to the price you pay or taken from the ticket price. Either way, the total you will pay is shown before you pay. Prices are in Australian dollars.

3.3 How payment works

Payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details go directly to Stripe, and Startline never sees or stores them. Startline collects entry fees as the organiser’s limited payment collection agent. Once your payment to Startline goes through, you have paid the organiser for that entry.

3.4 Refunds under an event’s refund policy

Every paid event shows its refund policy before you pay. The policy says what percentage you get back depending on how many days before the event you cancel. That percentage applies to the full amount you paid, including the Startline booking fee. You can ask for a refund from your entry in your account. Startline processes approved refunds back to your original payment method, which usually takes 5 to 10 business days. A request outside the policy is up to the organiser.

3.5 Cancelled or changed events

If an organiser cancels an event, you are entitled to a full refund of everything you paid, including the Startline booking fee. If an organiser postpones an event or changes its date, location or distance in a significant way, you can choose to keep your entry or take a full refund.

3.6 Your rights under Australian Consumer Law

Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law, including a right to a refund or other remedy when a service has a major failure.

3.7 Payment disputes

If something has gone wrong with a payment, please contact us before raising a dispute with your bank, so we can try to fix it quickly. This does not affect your right to dispute a charge.

4.1 Giving accurate details

The details you give when you enter, including any medical or emergency contact information, must be accurate. Organisers rely on them to run the event safely. If you enter other people, you confirm that you have their permission and that you have told them how their details will be used, as described in our Privacy Policy.

4.2 Your health and safety

Fitness events are physically demanding and carry a risk of injury. You are responsible for deciding whether you are fit to take part and for getting medical advice if you are unsure. Follow the organiser’s rules and the instructions of event staff on the day.

4.3 The organiser’s rules

Organisers may have their own rules, entry conditions or waivers, and you agree to them when you enter. They are between you and the organiser. Startline does not write or check them.

4.4 Bibs, start waves, check-in and results

The organiser assigns bib numbers and start waves and records results. Results the organiser records may appear on the event page and on your profile.

4.5 Transfers

An entry is for the person named on it. It cannot be transferred or resold unless the organiser allows it.

4.6 Entering a child

A parent or guardian can enter a child under 18. By doing so, you accept the organiser’s rules and any waiver on the child’s behalf, and you are responsible for the child’s supervision as the event requires.

5.1 Your organisation

Give accurate details about your organisation and keep them up to date. Events from organisations Startline has not yet verified are reviewed before they are published. We may approve, reject or unpublish any event, and we will tell you why.

5.2 Your listings

You are responsible for your event and for what your listings say. You must:

• have the right to run the event, and hold every permit, approval and venue booking it needs;
• describe the event accurately, including its price, date, location, course and any entry requirements;
• have the rights to every image, logo and piece of text you upload;
• run the event safely and lawfully, with suitable first aid, risk management and staffing;
• keep the listing up to date and tell entrants promptly about any significant change.

5.3 Insurance

You must hold public liability insurance for each event you list, at the level required by the council, venue, landowner and any permit for that event, covering the full duration of the event. Many councils ask for cover of $20 million or more, so check what yours requires. Startline does not set its own minimum and does not collect or check certificates of insurance. You declare that you hold this cover, and you are responsible for that declaration being true.

5.4 Payments and payouts

To take paid entries you must connect a Stripe Express account and accept Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement. Stripe collects and holds your bank account and identity details; Startline stores only a reference to your Stripe account. The Startline booking fee (3.2) is deducted at the time of each sale. Once your event has finished, the ticket amounts from confirmed entries, less any refunds, are paid out to your nominated bank account.

5.5 Tax reporting

To take paid entries you must give us your legal name, date of birth and, if you have one, your ABN. Startline reports transactions made through the platform to the Australian Taxation Office under the Sharing Economy Reporting Regime where the law requires it. You are responsible for your own tax and GST obligations.

5.6 Refunds you owe

Every paid event must have a refund policy, and you must honour it. If you cancel an event, you must refund every entrant in full, including the Startline booking fee, and if you postpone it or change it significantly you must offer a full refund (3.5). Startline processes these refunds from the event’s takings. If a refund or a payment dispute arises after you have been paid out, we may recover the amount from your future payouts or ask you to repay it. If you do not repay an amount within 14 days of our request, we may suspend your organisation, unpublish its events or remove it from the platform (see section 8). You still owe the amount after removal.

5.7 Entrants’ personal information

You receive your entrants’ personal information, which can include health information and emergency contacts. You must:

• use it only to run the event, keep entrants safe and tell them about the event;
• not sell it, and not use it for marketing unless the entrant has separately agreed;
• keep it secure, share it only with people who need it to run the event, and delete it when you no longer need it;
• handle it in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) wherever it applies to you.

5.8 Your team

Owners can add other people to the organisation as owners or managers. Owners are responsible for what the people they add do on the organisation’s behalf.

5.9 Community standards and reviews

You must welcome all athletes, whatever their background, ability, age or experience, and run events that are free from discrimination. Athletes can review your organisation. You cannot remove a review, offer anything in return for one, or post reviews of your own events. If you think a review breaks these terms, report it and we will look at it.

6.1 Content you post

You keep ownership of what you post, such as photos, event listings and reviews. You give Startline a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, display, copy and format that content so we can run and promote the platform, for example by featuring a published event. The licence ends when you remove the content, except for copies we need to keep for legal reasons or that others have already shared.

6.2 Reviews

Reviews must be honest and based on your own experience of the event. We may remove a review that breaks these terms.

6.3 What you must not do

You must not use the platform to:

• break the law, or help anyone else to;
• harass, threaten, abuse or discriminate against anyone;
• post false, misleading, offensive or infringing content;
• pretend to be someone else, or enter someone without their permission;
• scrape, copy or harvest data from the platform, including other people’s details;
• upload malware, probe for weaknesses, get around security or rate limits, or interfere with how the platform runs;
• list events you do not have the right to run, or take entries for events that will not go ahead.

6.4 Startline’s own material

The Startline name, logo, design and software belong to us. You may not copy or use them except to use the platform as intended.

6.5 Feedback

If you send us ideas or suggestions, we can use them without owing you anything.

7.1 Consumer guarantees

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in this section excludes, restricts or changes those guarantees or any other right that the law says cannot be excluded.

7.2 The platform

We work to keep the platform available, accurate and secure, but we cannot promise it will always be uninterrupted or free of errors. Apart from the guarantees in 7.1, we give no other promises about the platform.

7.3 Events

Organisers run their events, and Startline does not. To the extent the law allows, Startline is not responsible for how an event is run, for what happens at it, or for anything an organiser says in a listing.

7.4 Limits on our liability

The limits in this clause apply only to the extent the law allows, and never reduce what you can recover for a failure to meet a consumer guarantee (7.1).

• Startline is not liable for loss that was not reasonably foreseeable, or that was caused by the organiser, by another user, or by something outside our reasonable control.
• For athletes, our total liability for all claims is limited to the total you paid through Startline in the 12 months before the claim, or A$500 if that is more.
• For organisers, who use the platform for business, our total liability is limited to the booking fees Startline earned on your events in the 12 months before the claim. For a failure to meet a consumer guarantee, our liability is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of that, where the law allows. We are not liable to organisers for lost profits or revenue.
• None of these limits apply to loss caused by our fraud, wilful misconduct or breach of our privacy obligations, or to death or personal injury caused by our negligence.

7.5 Organiser indemnity

Organisers agree to compensate Startline for any claim, loss or cost (including reasonable legal costs) arising from their events, their listings, their use of entrants’ information, or their breach of these terms or of the law, except to the extent Startline caused it.

8.1

We may suspend or close an account or organisation, or unpublish an event, if it breaks these terms, puts other people at risk, or if the law requires it. Where we reasonably can, we will tell you why first and give you a chance to fix the problem.

8.2

If we close an organisation, its obligations to refund entrants for events that will not go ahead, and any amount it owes Startline, still apply. Sections 3.4 to 3.7, 5.6, 5.7, 7 and 9 continue after an account or organisation closes.

9.1 Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of Victoria, Australia. You and Startline agree that the courts of Victoria, and the courts that hear appeals from them, can hear any dispute about these terms.

9.2 Disputes with Startline

If you have a complaint, contact us first and we will try to resolve it within 30 days. This does not stop you going to a consumer protection agency, tribunal or court.

9.3 Disputes with an organiser

Questions about an event are best raised with its organiser. If you cannot resolve a problem with an organiser, tell us and we will see whether we can help.

9.4 Other terms

If a court finds part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to a business that takes over the platform, and we will tell you if we do. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, are the whole agreement between you and Startline about the platform.

9.5 Notices

We will send notices to the email address on your account. You can send notices to us at [email protected].