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Sports facility management is about more than just the game day experience.
It’s a year round job that involves player registration, payment management, recruiting volunteers, game scheduling, social media management… and the list goes on.
How do you decide what’s most important to help your facility succeed?
Learn more about what it takes to run a successful sports facility in this post.
What is sports facility management?
Sports facility management involves the day-to-day operations, scheduling, and maintenance of sports facilities.
Different challenges are involved depending on the type of facility being managed:
- Professional sports stadiums and arenas
- College campuses and recreation facilities
- High school facilities
- Large tournament sites, like convention centers
- Municipal facilities and parks & recreation departments
- Youth and community facilities
This article will focus on managing youth, community, and recreational sports facilities.
Key tips for effective sports facility management
Managing a sports facility is a 12-month job. Regardless of whether you run a multi-sport facility that operates all year round, or a small community facility that's just open for one season, you should be completing different tasks throughout the year from marketing to registration to payment collection.
Register athletes and collect payments well in advance of the season
Player registration is the backbone of any successful sports league.
Sports registration software can help you build registration forms, collect payments, and manage player information. Based on the needs of your organization you can choose a sports registration system on different criteria:
- Ease of use for administrators - you need to make sure the system saves you time rather than creating more work and stress for your volunteers
- Simplicity for your registrants - you need to make it fast and easy for parents and players to register
- Functionality - some systems will have more features while others are faster and easier to use
- Integration with other tools like your website, scheduling, or communication
- Pricing
- Customer support
Some key features you should consider are:
- Custom form building - adding questions like uniform size, playing experience, school, and anything else you need to know about the player.
- Waivers and other acknowledgements
- Integrated payments - parents should be able to register their player and make a payment all at once.
- Discount codes and / or sibling discounts
- Registrant management and exporting
Registering athletes well in advance of your season allows you to budget for your facility, plan season start and end dates, and know how many coaches and volunteers you’ll need. Generally we recommend opening registration at least 6 months before your first game so you can get a head start on season planning.
Recruit volunteers and employees
You can’t run a successful community sports facility without volunteers. Before your season starts you should develop a plan to recruit volunteers. Also, assigning a person on your facility’s board to be in charge of volunteer recruitment will help make sure one person is responsible for making sure you have enough volunteers.
One of the best ways to get volunteers is to incentivize parents to volunteer when they register a player. You can include a small discount for parents who sign up to volunteer for the season. You should also explain why it is important to volunteer - for example, the organization could not provide opportunities for kids without the help of volunteers.
You should also publish coaching applications and other volunteer opportunities on your website and social media.
Using volunteer scheduling software like Shift or SignUp.com can also help coordinate schedules during your season.
🧠 Learn More: How to Start a Youth Sports League in 9 Steps
Use a sports schedule generator for games
Scheduling is one of the biggest challenges of managing a sports organization. You should plan to use a sports schedule generator to create season schedules.
Schedule generators can help you create round robin schedules for your league using different criteria like:
- Facility availability
- Age groups
- Number of teams
- Game length
- Time between games
Most schedule generators have built in features to track scores and standings throughout your season so everything can be managed in one place.
You can also use tournament management software to create brackets and track tournament standings.
🧠Learn More: How to Create a Sports Schedule (+ Templates)
Use your website and social media to generate awareness
Your sports website should be a central location for all of the information about your sports facility. You need people to be able to Google sports facilities in your area and quickly find your website at the top of results.
You should plan to publish any important information about the facility on your website. Here are a few ideas:
- Facility location and field or court map
- Game schedules
- How to reserve fields
- Board members and staff contact information
- Player registration information
- How to get involved (including how to volunteer, donate, or become a sponsor)
🧠 Learn More: How to Build a Youth Sports Website
Maximize revenue streams to raise money for your organization
Non-profit and for-profit sports facilities often operate on a tight budget. But rather than just trying to reduce unnecessary expenses, you should also try to maximize possible revenue streams for your facility.
The main revenue streams every sports facility should have are:
- Player or team registration
- Concessions
- Facility rentals
Here are some additional revenue streams to think about:
- Live streaming
- Tournaments
🧠 Learn More: How to Manage a Youth Sports Budget
Consider hosting extra events and tournaments
Most facilities also host tournaments throughout the year. If you don’t already host tournaments, you should consider starting post-season tournaments for your in-house leagues or involve neighboring communities.
Tournaments can be a great way to generate more interest in your sports organization and often are a great fundraiser for youth sports.
Here are a few types of tournaments you can host:
- Postseason tournaments for your league
- Holiday tournaments
- Travel team or all-star events
- One day events like 3-on-3 basketball tournaments or other fundraisers
🧠Learn More: How to Plan and Run a Youth Sports Tournament
Facility maintenance
Maintenance and improvements are an ongoing challenge at any sports facility. Each year during your annual planning with your board you can create short term and long term priorities for facility maintenance.
Research grants for your facility
Your facility may be eligible for grants. In your offseason, make sure to research different youth sports grants and apply for relevant programs. In many cases large companies or local governments are willing to invest in local sports facilities.
Constantly reinvest
Each year you should be reinvesting in your facility if possible. You should consider starting a capital campaign for your facility every few years to build momentum and keep people excited about upcoming improvements.
Raise money through donations and sponsorships
Donations are often an underutilized resource for sports organizations. Make sure you are active in your community and educate businesses and individuals on how your sports organization makes a difference.
Find creative ways to get people to help!
Make sure people know they can contribute more than just money. Volunteer hours, such as field cleanup, and non-monetary donations, like used equipment, can be just as impactful as writing a check.
Choosing a Sports Facility Management Software
Choosing software products to help you save time and grow your facility is a critical step each year. Here’s a few options that can help you manage your facility.
Jersey Watch
Jersey Watch is an all-in-one system to build a website, register athletes, manage payments, and schedule events. You can create a free account to get started and launch your website and registration all in the same day.
Jersey Watch also includes a schedule generator to help you automatically create complex schedules for your league in just a few steps.
🏅Best for: Youth and community sports organizations run by volunteers.
EZFacility
EZFacility is one of the leading providers of facility and club management software for gyms, fitness centers, and health clubs.
One of the main features of EZFacility is the ability to consolidate all of your schedules into one central color-coded calendar. Users can sign up for classes or events easily or reserve facility time.
EZFacility also has marketing tools to help you promote your business, and league management for sports leagues that need to create complex schedules.
🏅Best for: Gyms, fitness centers, and health clubs with dozens of venues.
DaySmart Recreation
DaySmart Recreation facility management software provides you with the tools you need to successfully manage operations and streamline registration for a large sports facility.
Customers often include ice rinks, soccer complexes, parks and recreation departments, and baseball facilities.
🏅Best for: Nonprofit and for profit sports facilities with complex scheduling needs, like parks and rec departments.
Upper Hand
Upper Hand can help you manage scheduling, payment collection, and marketing for a large sports facility. You can also process recurring membership payments, manage facility staff members, and operate your retail business.
🏅Best for: For profit sports facilities.
Conclusion
Running a community sports facility is often a year round job. You should plan ahead for your year with volunteers and employees to prepare for fundraising efforts, facility improvements, registration, and event scheduling.
Do you best to maximize revenue throughout the year. Registration fees, concessions, and facility rentals are the core revenue streams for most facilities. But you should get creative and find additional opportunities through donations, sponsorships, live streaming, and apparel sales.
Finally, you should research software tools that can help make your job easier, increase awareness in your community, and register more athletes.
