Sport is changing, and the traditional Sports club model will need to change. Here is an article from the UK about tennis club options that are available and used in NZ:
Innovative Club Membership Models Traditional tennis club memberships are typically annual subscriptions that members are required to pay in one lump sum at the start of the season. Increasingly more clubs are beginning to offer the opportunity for members to pay in monthly instalments to ease the financial outlay, particularly taking advantage of the functionality in ClubSpark https://clubspark.com/ to manage these payments so that it doesn’t become an additional challenge for the membership secretary and treasurer in tracking payments. But more progressive clubs are beginning to experiment with more flexible and fluid membership models based on feedback and comments not only from their members but also from the wider community who they are keen to attract into the club. Innovative club membership models are therefore not just providing an annual club membership but also a variety of other club membership options such as short-term memberships (e.g. 6 week membership) and pay and play options to meet the needs and appeal of the wider community.
How can this benefit a Tennis Club?
The LTA conducts significant research into the reasons why people choose not to join tennis clubs, and one of the major factors is that they are seasonal players and don’t want to commit to an annual club membership, with tennis club’s rarely offering flexible membership options that cater for their needs. 78% of tennis players who are non-club members would be interested in playing at their local tennis club if they provided short-term memberships or pay and play options. Subsequently, flexible club membership models can help clubs in becoming more appealing and accessible to the wider community. Priced appropriately, it can also help clubs generate additional income as outlined in some of the case studies below.
The examples from the clubs that have experimented with this approach have also found that for some players that initially joined as a short-term member for 6 weeks or who played as a pay-and-play participant have then decided to upgrade to a full club annual membership; these players needed the gradual introduction and trial period of playing at the club to decide whether it was worth committing to a full club membership.
Implementing a more flexible approach A common concern from clubs that consider this approach is “won’t it lead to many of our annual club members opting to take out one of the flexible membership options, leading to reduced income for the club?” Of course, this is a possibility, but there are ways of minimising this risk, and the realities from those clubs that have delivered this approach is that it has had a negligible impact on existing members deciding to downgrade their membership. When pricing the short-term trial membership options or pay & play, consider the cost in relation to the cost of membership. If they are too expensive, then it will not attract new players, but ideally, it should be priced so that pro-rata these flexible membership options are more expensive than an annual membership.
Another consideration is what is included with the flexible membership options versus full club membership. For example, whilst full club membership entitles members to access all aspects of club-life, the flexible members are perhaps permitted to attend club social events and intra-club competitions (ladders, box leagues etc) but are not able to play for the club teams whilst pay & play participants are unable to partake in any of the club social and competitive opportunities.
Creating differentiation between the different tiers of membership is important to retain the value of the full club membership, but be careful not to dilute the experience of the club too much for the flexible members and pay & play participants as it may detract them and potentially creates a ‘them and us’ feel within the club.
These flexible offers and pay & play opportunities can be set up on ClubSpark to improve the running and operation whilst also ensuring an improved customer experience for signing up. Managing pay & play on ClubSpark will also enable your club to determine the times that pay & play is available and which courts it’s available on.
You may only decide that pay & play is available at certain times during the week and that it’s only available on specific courts; ClubSpark enables you to determine and manage all of this. Once your club has decided to offer flexible membership offers and pay & play opportunities, it is important to then communicate and promote this to raise awareness in the wider community.
