Should Indoor Sports Facilities Require Membership?
For facility planning and developing, one of the most important aspects of the process is determining a key demographic and client base. For each individual indoor sports facility, that base of people will be different.
However, there is one constant between all indoor sports facilities: you have to make money. Your facility must be profitable if you wish to keep your doors open, and one of the potential money makers is a paid membership. In today’s blog post, SFA will look at whether paid membership is the best option for your indoor sports facility.
How Does Paid Membership Work?
While indoor sports facilities often vary in the application of their paid membership plans, the overall premise is consistent. People must pay to use your facility regardless of membership status. With membership plans, people can pay more for extended access to your facility. This looks different for most facilities. For some, this means offering visit packages that include admission for a certain amount of visits each year. For others, it means offering unlimited access.
How Do I Know Paid Membership Will Work?
This is the big question that your indoor sports facility must answer. Hypothetically, the reasoning behind people paying for membership is quite simple. Memberships are always going to be cheaper per visit than a single visit. With admissions packages, this means that each trip will wind up costing less than it would with individual visits. With year-long membership packages, this means that customers can essentially pay their fee off if they visit enough times, making it worth their money.
What you need to know is whether your community will invest in such a membership. A membership is only worthwhile if you are going to visit several times throughout the year. When indoor sports facilities implement membership plans for activities that the community couldn’t care less about, you aren’t going to see a lot of profits from that membership plan.
Is Paid Membership Right For Indoor Sports Facilities?
Paid memberships make more sense for indoor sports facilities than they do for outdoor sports facilities because people are more likely to pay for a climate-controlled environment. Coaches whoi have to deal with harsh weather conditions such as extreme temperatures or rain and snow will need somewhere to take their players when those conditions pop up.
This is also true of individual athletes. Baseball players, for instance, need somewhere indoors to train in the offseason away from the cold weather. They are more likely to purchase a paid membership because those types of facilities aren’t as common as parks that they can use in the summer.
Contact SFA For Further Help
These types of decisions are important when it comes to the financial viability of indoor sports facilities. At SFA, we understand that those decisions aren’t easy and that they can be overwhelming and we would like to help. Contact us today at (727) 483-7910 or get in touch with us online for more information.
