Sports Management Issue 1 2012 - Leisure Opportunities

SPORTS HALLS
One size fits (h)all :
The new core space will
allow for indoor netball,
basketball, badminton,
volleyball and cricket
substantially greater than the old model,
offers potentially excellent value for
money and can bring significant community,
educational, programming and,
most importantly, sports development
and participation increase benefits.
However, if schools, local authorities
and other operators wishing to develop
new or replace existing halls are to get
the most out of their investment, consideration
must be given to how they (plus
clubs and NGBs themselves) look to innovate
to seek to attract new participants
and to make optimum use of the space
they will have at their disposal.
Development of 4+ halls will allow
(and should encourage) the smart club,
league or operator of the future to take
a market-led approach to promote positive,
proactive centre programming and
use with potentially valuable participation
outcomes. Lessons can be learnt
from the fact that five-a-side football
was not invented by the FA but the market
for it has expanded and developed in
a sport that was already widely played in
another format.
Turn up and play
The larger core sports hall offers the
imaginative venue manager ‘room for
The larger core sports hall
offers the imaginative
facility manager ‘room for
manoeuvre’. There is a real
opportunity to innovate
manoeuvre’. There is real opportunity to
innovate. For school-based users, it can
provide options to deliver new format
games as part of the curriculum and an
after-school offer. For those programming
for the community, the additional
space, some innovative court line markings
and hall sub-division means that
things can be done differently to break
away from the static space filling habits
that have led indoor football and more
recently ‘wall-to-wall aerobics’ to dominate
programming at the expense of
other sports, because they generate, in
relative terms, good levels of income and
are relatively easy to sell.
Successful examples of ‘turn up and
play’ volleyball are already filling various
venues, while new more flexible forms
of netball – suited to a small-sided format
are being televised. Due to their
adaptability these sports are becoming
increasingly popular among those entering
or ‘coming back’ to sport, while 2v2
and 3v3 basketball has been played for
decades – just rarely in regular participation,
structured drop-in and regular
league based formats.
What we haven’t yet seen is these
derivatives properly used to drive up participation
numbers (and venue income).
However, these correctly-sized facilities
better meet the needs of mainstream
sport and can accommodate safe and exciting
turn-up-and-play innovations.
These have the potential to bring people
into these sports (or keep them in) for
longer, while ensuring the operator gets
an appropriate return on investment.
This, in turn, validates the investment in
the extra space and the early stage effort
needed to do things differently.
Developing the Right Sports Hall is available
from the Sport England website:
www.sportengland.org
David McHendry is a principal consultant
at Knight, Kavanagh and Page.
Email: david.mchendry@kkp.co.uk
50 Read Sports Management online sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital
Issue 1 2012 © cybertrek 2012