Terms of Use

1. About these terms

These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your use of the website at unitedsportinginstitute.com, all subdomains, and any service or feature provided through that site (together, "USI" or "the Service"). The Service is operated by OMS, an Australian partnership, ABN 76 838 394 349 ("we", "us", "our"). United Sporting Institute is a trading name and brand of OMS. Our service address for legal notices is PO Box 526, Caringbah NSW 2229, Australia. By accessing or using the Service, creating an account, paying for a subscription, or otherwise interacting with the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. These Terms are a legally binding agreement between you and OMS.

2. Definitions

"Account" means a member account on the Service. "Content" means any text, image, audio, video, data, structure, taxonomy, layout, code, or other material made available on or through the Service, including articles, guides, Ask USI answers, AI assistant responses, podcast audio, page structure, and editorial selection. "Member" means a person who has created an Account. "Visitor" means a person who uses the Service without an Account. "We", "us", and "our" refer to OMS trading as United Sporting Institute. "You" and "your" refer to the person reading these Terms and to any Account-holder, Visitor, or other user of the Service.

3. What USI is

USI is an independent Australian information service for parents and guardians of children playing football. It publishes articles, guides, and answers covering topics relevant to parents of football-playing children in Australia. USI is not affiliated with Football Australia, Football NSW, Northern NSW Football, Football Victoria, Football Queensland, Football West, Football SA, Capital Football, Football NT, Football Tasmania, any other state or regional body, any association, or any club. USI does not represent and has no authority to act on behalf of any football organisation.

4. Eligibility

You must be 18 years of age or older to create an Account. The Service is intended for adults responsible for football-playing children, including parents, guardians, coaches, club administrators, and similar adult roles. You must have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract. By creating an Account, you represent that you meet these requirements.

5. Your account

You must provide accurate and current information when you create an Account and must keep that information up to date. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for all activity that occurs under your Account. You must not share your login credentials with any other person and must not allow any other person to access your Account. If you suspect that your Account has been compromised, you must notify us through the contact form at unitedsportinginstitute.com/contact as soon as practicable. We may require you to verify your identity before actioning Account-related requests.

6. Visitor, free, and paid access

Some parts of the Service are accessible to Visitors without an Account. Some parts are accessible only to Members on the free tier. The complete library, the AI assistant, the audio podcast feed, the Ask USI feature, and other premium features are accessible only to Members on a paid subscription in good standing. We may change the access boundary between Visitor, free, and paid tiers at any time. We may add, remove, or change features at any time. Where a paid feature is materially removed during a billing period you have already paid for, we will pro-rata refund the unused portion of that billing period if you cancel as a result of the removal.

7. Pricing, GST, and auto-renewal

Paid membership is offered on two billing options: a monthly plan at AUD $4.95 per month, or an annual plan at AUD $49 per year. All prices are in Australian dollars and include GST where applicable. Payment is processed by Stripe Payments Australia Pty Ltd. By subscribing, you authorise us to charge your nominated payment method the applicable amount on a recurring basis until you cancel. Each renewal will be charged at the price and frequency shown at checkout, on the same day of each billing cycle. You will receive an emailed receipt at each successful renewal. If a payment fails, we will notify you by email and allow a grace period of 7 days before access is suspended. If payment is not received within the grace period, your Account will revert to free membership until you re-subscribe.

8. Price changes

If we change the price of a paid plan, we will notify Members on that plan by email at least 30 days before the new price takes effect. If you do not wish to continue at the new price, you may cancel before the change takes effect and you will not be charged the new amount.

9. Cancellation, refunds, and consumer guarantees

You may cancel a paid subscription at any time from your Account page. When you cancel, your paid access continues until the end of the billing period you have already paid for. You will not be charged again after cancellation. We do not provide refunds for partial billing periods on change-of-mind cancellations. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law, including the consumer guarantees that apply to services. Where there is a major failure with the Service, you may be entitled to a refund, replacement, or termination, in addition to compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. If you believe a major failure has occurred, contact us through the form at unitedsportinginstitute.com/contact and we will work with you to determine the appropriate remedy.

10. Suspension and termination by us

We may suspend or terminate your Account, with or without prior notice, if you breach these Terms, if we reasonably suspect that you have shared Account credentials, used automated tools to access the Service, copied or redistributed Content in breach of section 12, submitted abusive or harassing content, attempted to defraud or interfere with our systems, or otherwise misused the Service. For minor breaches we will normally issue a warning first. For serious breaches we may terminate the Account immediately without prior notice. When an Account is terminated for breach, access ceases immediately and no refund is provided. If we permanently close the Service for any reason, we will give Members at least 30 days notice by email and will pro-rata refund any prepaid subscription amounts for the unused portion of the current billing period.

11. Acceptable use

You must not use the Service in any way that is unlawful, that infringes the rights of any other person, or that interferes with the operation of the Service or with any other person's use of the Service. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to any Account, system, or data; use the Service to send spam, harassment, threats, or unlawful content; submit content that is defamatory, deceptive, or designed to mislead other Members; misrepresent your relationship to any other person; impersonate any other person; or use the Service in any way that may bring us into disrepute.

12. Content ownership

All Content on the Service is owned by OMS or by our licensors. This includes the written articles, guides, Ask USI answers, AI assistant responses, audio podcast files, images, page layouts, library structure, taxonomy of sections, editorial selection, and underlying code. All copyright, database rights, trade mark rights, moral rights, and other intellectual property rights in the Content are reserved. Nothing in these Terms transfers any right, title, or interest in any Content to you. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for your personal, non-commercial use, in accordance with these Terms and your subscription status. That licence ends automatically when you cease to be a Member or when we terminate it under these Terms.

13. Restrictions on use of Content

You may read, listen to, save, and print Content for your own personal, non-commercial use, and you may share links to publicly accessible articles. Beyond that, you must not, without our express prior written permission, do any of the following with any Content (in whole or in part): reproduce, copy, republish, distribute, transmit, display, perform, broadcast, publish, sell, licence, sublicense, or otherwise make available the Content to any other person or platform; post or paste Content into any forum, social network, group chat, mailing list, newsletter, presentation, training material, course, book, paid product, or any other channel; reformat, summarise, translate, or paraphrase Content in a way that operates as a substantial substitute for the original; submit any Content to any artificial intelligence system, model, agent, or service for the purpose of training, fine-tuning, indexing, retrieval-augmented generation, summarisation, classification, or any other automated use; use any robot, spider, crawler, scraper, headless browser, automated agent, scripted account, or similar tool to access, extract, mirror, or replicate any part of the Service or its Content; bulk-download Content by any means; circumvent any access control, paywall, rate limit, or authentication mechanism; or attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, replicate, scrape-and-rebuild, or build a competing service from the structure, taxonomy, editorial decisions, or Content of the Service. We may seek injunctive relief, damages, account of profits, statutory remedies, and any other relief available at law or in equity for any breach of this section, and we may recover our reasonable legal costs from you in doing so. A breach of this section is also grounds for immediate termination of your Account without refund.

14. AI features

The Service includes AI-powered features. The USI AI assistant uses an underlying large language model operated by Anthropic, PBC, with USI Content as its primary knowledge source. The audio podcast feed is generated using AI text-to-speech. Both features are labelled within the Service as "AI". AI output can be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, even when it sounds confident. The AI assistant is not a person, not a coach, and not a qualified professional of any kind. It does not provide medical, legal, financial, or coaching advice, and must not be used to assess child safety or safeguarding concerns. You should not rely on AI output as your sole source of information for any decision about your child, your club, your registration, your health, or your finances. We are not liable, to the extent permitted by law, for any decision you take in reliance on AI output. Every AI assistant response carries a standard reminder that the information comes from the USI library and is not personal advice.

15. Not professional advice

All Content on the Service is general information only. It is not medical advice, legal advice, financial advice, psychological advice, coaching advice, or any other form of professional advice, and it is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional in your specific situation. Football involves physical activity and carries inherent risk of injury. Nothing on the Service should be taken as advice that any activity is safe for any particular child. You are responsible for assessing the suitability of any activity for your child and for obtaining professional advice where required. If a child is in immediate danger, contact police on 000. The full disclaimer at unitedsportinginstitute.com/disclaimer forms part of these Terms.

16. Service availability

We will use reasonable efforts to keep the Service available at all times. We do not guarantee uninterrupted access. The Service may be unavailable from time to time due to scheduled maintenance, unscheduled technical issues, third-party outages, or circumstances outside our reasonable control. We are not liable, to the extent permitted by law, for any loss or inconvenience caused by temporary unavailability of the Service.

17. Communications

We send two kinds of email: transactional emails (receipts, password resets, security notices, account-related notifications) which are part of operating the Service and cannot be opted out of while you have an active Account; and marketing emails (notifications of new articles, library updates, upgrade offers, and related promotional content) which we send only to Members who have given express consent at signup or have later opted in. Every marketing email includes a functional unsubscribe link. We action unsubscribe requests within 5 business days as required by the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). Our handling of personal information, including email addresses, is governed by our Privacy Policy at unitedsportinginstitute.com/privacy.

18. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by Australian law, our total aggregate liability to you for all claims arising from or in connection with the Service, these Terms, or any Content (whether in contract, tort including negligence, statute, or otherwise) is limited to the total fees you paid to us in the 12 months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim. We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, punitive, or exemplary loss or damage, including but not limited to lost profits, lost revenue, lost opportunity, lost data, loss of goodwill, or loss of reputation. We are not liable for any decision you or anyone else takes in relation to a child's football participation, club selection, pathway choice, coaching, registration, health, safety, or any other matter, including any decision taken in reliance on Content (whether human-written or AI-generated). Nothing in this section excludes any liability that cannot be excluded under Australian law, including liability for fraud, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any non-excludable consumer guarantee under the Australian Consumer Law.

19. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against any loss, damage, cost, expense, or liability (including reasonable legal costs) that we suffer or incur as a result of your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Service, your infringement of any third party's rights through your use of the Service, or any content you submit to the Service. We will give you reasonable notice of any claim to which this indemnity applies, and you may participate in the defence of the claim at your own cost.

20. Force majeure

Neither party is liable for any failure or delay in performance of these Terms (other than payment obligations) caused by circumstances beyond that party's reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, pandemic, war, civil unrest, government action, internet or telecommunications outages, or failure of any third-party service provider.

21. Severability, waiver, entire agreement, and assignment

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, that provision is severed and the remaining provisions continue in full force and effect. A failure or delay by us to enforce any provision is not a waiver of that or any other provision. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Disclaimer, constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to the Service and supersede any prior agreement, representation, or understanding. We may assign these Terms in whole or in part, including in connection with a sale, transfer, restructure, or wind-up of the business, on notice to you. You may not assign these Terms.

22. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, and the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia in force there. Each party submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and the courts competent to hear appeals from those courts. Before commencing any court proceeding, each party agrees to attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute by direct discussion. This clause does not prevent either party from seeking urgent injunctive or equitable relief in any court.

23. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will update the version number and effective date at the top of this page. If a change is material, we will notify Members by email at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Continued use of the Service after the effective date of a change constitutes your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree to a change, you may cancel your subscription and close your Account before the change takes effect.

24. Contact

For any enquiry about these Terms, contact us through the web form at unitedsportinginstitute.com/contact. Where post is preferred, write to OMS, PO Box 526, Caringbah NSW 2229, Australia.