Sporting business advice needed!!!

[thughes]

Hi,

I am starting a local sporting business that will provide members of the club (all ages) the ability to join sports teams and enter local leagues (which I will also own).

There is going to be a wide range of sports to choose from:

Golf
Football
Paintball
Bowling
Tennis
Dodgeball
Basketball
Pool
Snooker
Running
Squash
and others but you get the idea

Members of the club will be given a personal website that will offer the ability to track there progress with stats. The teams in the club will also get a website and will also be able to track there stats as well as advertise positions in the team to the rest of their sports community.
As another incentive to join the club I will be offering a £50 joining gift to the first 10 or so that join each sport, the gift will be a couple of things specific to the sport they are joining e.g. for golf they will get a glove some golf balls and new generation tees along with a cheap carry bag. When joining the club they will have to sign a contract that states a minimum commitment requirement, so that I can be sure that my members are not going to join the club, take the gift and I never see them again.

The club will be maintained by myself and local volunteers.

When tournaments are run there will be things like live bands and other entertainment to try and attract the rest of the community and they could also be used as a fund raising event


What do you think I should charge for member ship, if any and what would you pay?

Do you think there is something I could do to improve the clubs concept?

I have drawn a blank on the business name, all i have so far is

The Sport Focus
Sporting Community

Do you have any ideas for business names?

All advice welcome

Thanks in advanced
T Hughes

[JustinP1]

Is this a hobby or a main source of finance for you?

Its a nice idea, but if it is the latter I must say my gut instinct is that you will find it difficult unless the scope of the business is huge.

Ill explain: To have say a basketball league you need a lot of things. For a start you are going to need about say 10 people per team and at least 5 teams to make the league.

So here are the pertinent things to think about:

Where are you going to get 50 basketball players from?

Who will organise the teams etc?

Where exactly will your money come from?

What will you do if you don't get the response that you hoped for and the whole thing fizzles out? There will be a number of people with membership fees who will want them back.

[shadowninja]

Can you make it sound as if it's related to the Olympics in 2012, even if it isn't? Seems to be a lot of hype about it so might as well make use of it.

[Eric Mc]

If people were interested in engaging in these sports, would they not just join a local club anyway.? Why would they need to go through your website?

[jacobyte]

thughes said:

what would you pay?

£0

It has to be free, as most sportsmen (and women ) are totally skint and only do their sport because they love it. You can get advertising for the relevant disciplines from local specialists, or if time commitment is short just use Google Adsense or similar. If the site is good and gets the traffic, it will more than pay for itself.

thughes said:

Do you think there is something I could do to improve the clubs concept?

Almost certainly, but it will need something to captivate your audience and keep them returning for a tangible and beneficial reason. Focus on one sport initially - possibly with its own domain name, then build on it with other domains - all under a consistent brand. E.G. myfootballsite, mygolfsite, mycricketsite, al under the banner of mysportingsite. You will have to check domain name availability of course.

Detatch yourself from it as a human and look at it objectively. You must identify a real and sustainable USP to bring it all together (with a view to making your own ends meet!). Best of luck with it - it's not easy, and much of it will be down to your own vision and attitude.

[jacobyte]

Eric Mc said:

If people were interested in engaging in these sports, would they not just join a local club anyway.?

Yes, but the local clubs themselves could be linked through this system to other clubs. Not just for the sporting purposes of arranging events and gathering statistics, but also for legal and governmental issues, such as premises, duty of care, etc.

Eric Mc said:

Why would they need to go through your website?

That's something special that the OP needs to create !

Incidentally, I ran a national sporting club website for some years until the main man retired in 2007. There is an opportunity here, but the OP will need to be well connected (CCPR, Sports Council, etc).

[thughes]

Thank You for all of your comments I really appreciate it.

JustinP1 said:

Is this a hobby or a main source of finance for you?

This is me trying to gain experience

JustinP1 said:

Where are you going to get 50 basketball players from?

There is a vast amount of player for all sports I am going to venture into, but if I didn't get the minimum requirement of players i needed then there is still the personal website they can use and they could do something like street basketball (1-on-1, 2-on-2, or 3-on-3). This will be planned for in advanced and can be used with other sports.

JustinP1 said:

Who will organise the teams etc?

Volunteers, there is a large presences of volunteering organisations in my area and i have already made contact.

JustinP1 said:

Where exactly will your money come from?

My own financing and grants

JustinP1 said:

What will you do if you don't get the response that you hoped for and the whole thing fizzles out? There will be a number of people with membership fees who will want them back.

I will make sure the club has a reasonably amount of interest before I start accepting memberships

shadowninja said:

Can you make it sound as if it's related to the Olympics in 2012, even if it isn't? Seems to be a lot of hype about it so might as well make use of it.

This is an excellent idea, I will defiantly do some research on that one. Thanks.

Eric Mc said:

If people were interested in engaging in these sports, would they not just join a local club anyway.? Why would they need to go through your website?

In my immediate area there are few clubs running some of the popular sports and no clubs running thins like paintball and dodgeball, and I know there is a interest in these sports from people I have talked to. So in some cases the reason they will go through me is that I am the only person they can go through and in the other cases where there are sports clubs running I am hoping that mu incentives and reward schemes will convince them that my club is the better one to join. I am going to continue thinking about this one though.

jacobyte said:

It has to be free, as most sportsmen (and women wink) are totally skint and only do their sport because they love it.

Your right, free it is. This will also give me another advantage over the competitors.



Thanks again for your comments everyone.

[UpTheIron]

I can't see how this will work, unless you have very deep pockets and are willing to commit years before seeing any payback. Even then, I don't see it ever being profitable.

For example, to get a football league off the ground you are going to need 8 - 12 teams, each with 15 - 25 players. The chances are 90% of people interested in playing Saturday / Sunday league will already be playing in a different league. One that offers promotion/relegation - i.e. something to play for. So you need say 30 teams / 600 players to make it a 3 division league.

You will need to take on established leagues and tempt the teams away. How?