How to Maximize Profitability at Your Sports Facility

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Historically, sports facilities and athlete training centers have been able to generate the highest revenue by maximizing their capacity. This often meant filling up classes and time slots for lessons or renting out resources to as many customers as possible. However, there are alternative approaches to boosting profitability that don’t solely rely on maximizing capacity. If you’re looking for ways to improve your sports facility’s revenue, you don’t necessarily need to rely on the traditional methods of filling up every available spot. Instead, you can explore creative approaches that can help cut costs and increase revenue. In this article, we’ll explore three ways you can achieve greater profitability for your sports facility.  

Identify which programs, equipment or offerings can be eliminated or adjusted

  Start by identifying areas to cut costs in order to accommodate for reduced or lost revenue. You’ll want to see which low margin equipment or offerings can, and should, be eliminated. By eliminating the elements that see low returns, you can focus on what is working in your favor. Elements with low margins could be classes that never fill, or a treadmill that costs more to maintain than replace. Consider running an analysis to determine this.  Maximize your facility’s profit potential with our free Resource Profit Margins Calculator A great low-margin analysis should include the following per each resource, offering, or piece of equipment: 
  • The cost to customer (price/revenue)
  • Hard costs (sanitizer, cleaning supplies, etc.) 
  • Labor costs (cost to clean, manage, maintain)
  • Time costs (amount of time (in hours) to do the job, operate the resource or offering)
Do you have old equipment that is just collecting dust? Are your resources all crammed together in a small space, making it hard to use? By eliminating low gross profit margin equipment, you are able to make more room for the equipment and technology that you actually use. Long-term, this approach will improve how you see your business and give you new insights into how you can improve margins over time. Should you increase the price? Or should you decrease the costs? This can be a great indicator of whether it’s time to invest in technology to reduce the hours to complete a job, thereby improving your gross profit margin.  Interested in seeing how Upper Hand can help manage your sports facility? Schedule a personalized demo today. 
 

Create multiple uses for each large space in your sports facility

  Another way you can maximize profitability at your sports facility is to increase the amount of activities that can occur in each space.  One way to do this? Literally start from the bottom, up. Evaluate your flooring.  Sport Stable, a large multi-sport facility based in Superior, CO is in the process of renovating their fields and courts to allow any sport to train and practice in any area through the use of Sport Court.  Sport Court is a multi-use flooring option that is great for basketball, futsal, volleyball, and any number of other sports or activities. By moving to this alternative flooring option, the facility can keep courts and fields constantly booked without having to limit the number of uses. Another option to help you maximize your opportunities with a large space is to install retractable dividers, nets, and/or baskets. This will allow you to quickly transform your courts or fields to accommodate for various sports. Additionally, it will allow you to segment off your large space so you can run individual 1 on 1 training sessions, sports camps, and team practices simultaneously.   

Incorporate advanced technical training methods

  The third way you can maximize profitability is to offer high-tech training. Do you have a smaller space that’s currently not being utilized efficiently? Consider placing a golf or ski simulator, or another piece of sport-specific training equipment in there. This is typically a one-time machine cost that can bring in revenue without much additional overhead.  You can also offer video analysis training in addition to your typical training methods. Video analysis training is an awesome supplement to any sport or activity. It offers additional value to athletes and clients, and allows them to visualize areas of improvement in their techniques. Another piece of technology to incorporate isathlete progression tracking. Because of this extra value, you can increase session price and maximize profitability of your clinics, lessons, or camps without doing much more heavy lifting. 
 
Having worked with countless sports facilities over the years, the Upper Hand team is well versed in the methods of maximizing profitability. We’re happy to consult with your business and provide suggestions on how your specific business can drive revenue growth now and in the future.

Interested in seeing how Upper Hand can help manage your sports facility? Schedule a personalized demo today. 

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