EDDIE IZZARD

UNIVERSITY SPORT
BY RHIANON HOWELLS
UNIVERSITY
SPORT SPECIAL
PART 2
COMMUNITY
BENEFITS
In part two of our series on university sports centres, we look at two universities which have
made commercial community usage of their facilities the bedrock of their business models
In part one of our series on university
sports centres (see Sports Management,
Issue 3, 2015), we looked at how three
universities – Loughborough, Durham
and Sheffield Hallam – were balancing
the needs of their students with those of
elite athletes and the wider community
while also meeting commercial goals.
All of these centres work for and within
their communities in meaningful and varied
ways, whether through outreach to schools,
partnerships with local clubs or by offering
limited memberships and pay-and-play
options to community users. For a growing
number of university sports operations,
however, community usage is not only part
of the offering – it is absolutely integral to
their commercial model.
As more universities fund new sports
facilities with NGB and/or Lottery grants,
many are signing up to Community Use
Agreements (CUAs) which require them
to place community usage, not at the
sidelines, but front and centre of what
A community use agreement prioritises general public over university use at the UEA
they do. But how do these models work in
practice? And what benefits do they bring?
UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
Opened in 2000 and still the largest
Lottery-funded indoor university sports
centre in the country, the University of
East Anglia’s Sportspark was one of the
first to prove the potential of this kind of
community-focused model.
As a predominately Lottery-funded
facility, Sportspark is bound by a CUA until
August 2018, which requires it to prioritise
community over university usage – the
rule of thumb is 80:20 – albeit that for the
purposes of memberships and pay-andplay
access, UEA students are counted as
part of the community.
Membership numbers also reveal the
emphasis on community, with 8,800
community adult members, 2,800 junior
members and 1,900 student members.
While community members pay monthly,
from £5 for a pay-and-play discount card
to £40 for peak all-access membership,
students pay a one-off annual fee ranging
from £135 to £300, depending on usage.
In addition, pay-and-play visits will
exceed 1.4 million visits this year and
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