Simple Business Ideas for Starting and Growing Sports Leagues

Hey what's up coach welcome back to the blog

Today, I want to talk to you about something a little bit different and I'm going to be walking you through an idea that I've already helped multiple sports coaches with over the last 5 years. 

If you currently have a sports coaching business and you are thinking of starting a sports league I want you to read this whole blog as I'm going to be sharing some really valuable information with you that I know will help. 

SMALL SIDED SPORTS EVENT - 

A very common type of business model I'm currently seeing in the sports training industry is small sided events.  

In soccer, these could be 3v3 or 4v4 type formats where you have multiple teams who play against each other once a week and are placed in a league table. If you're a basketball coach, this type of business model can work really well too. 

PRICING AND PAYMENTS - 

I'm not going to say the pricing is going to be uniform for everyone but I've seen this happen multiple times in soccer and in basketball over the past couple of years and that's why I want to start with a very basic pricing point of $500 per team. 

If you're looking to start this type of service in your business I want you set up to where one parent from each team pays the entrance fee into your league upfront before the league starts.

It's not going to be cost per parent instead it's going to be cost per team so this way you have a registration form that collects the $500 upfront from the team and then that parent is responsible for getting other parents on their team to pay them back, this way you're not dealing with thousands of payments you're only dealing with one payment.

LENGTH OF SEASON & MEMBERSHIP MODEL -

The length of season will be 8-weeks and the reason why I like this is because you can run multiple seasons throughout the year and have a lot of those same teams participate throughout many of those seasons during the year this way you're not having to constantly find new teams. 

To participate in your sports league you could sell an annual membership and I can tell you more about this if you wanted to get on a call with me. 

NUMBER OF TEAMS PARTICIPATING & LOGISTICS - 

I want you to strive to have 40 teams so if we do the math we take $500x40 =$20,000
of revenue.

Once we have the total amount of revenue we must then break down the logistics of the league which is how to set it up so each game is 1 hour long which is going to be four games per hour so that means every 30 minutes there's two games being played. 

You can run through a lot of games doing it this way and you can have a lot of teams play every single hour. 

FACILITY COSTS & LEAGUE CALENDAR -

So, if we use the model above then we must do the simple math which is we have 40 teams and 8 teams that can play per hour so that means we need 5 hours of rent. 

If you currently lease your own facility you can simply run your sports league from that facility and this can happen on one day per week and I've seen this be very successful
with coaches out there who do it all on either a Sunday morning or all on a Friday evening.

It's really important at the start of the season that you have a set day when the season gets announced so every parent gets a schedule and they know what they're doing over the next 8-weeks and when games are so that it's all mapped out for them.

LOCATION & EXTRA COSTS - 

A problem many coaches have with starting their own sports leagues is finding a good location to run the league. 

Over the last 5 years I've seen some coaches do this at schools or at local parks and some do it without paying any rent but that's gonna be up to you. 

So, with this model above here and with the total overhead for 8-weeks plus ref fees I have came up with $4,000 for for rent. The way I came up with that number is we take the cost of rent which is $100/hr x 5 = $500 per day.

Now, we have to multiply $500 x 8 = $4,000 for rent which will be your overhead plus any extra insurance costs you may need. 

The model above is a very simple way of helping you to understand how to implement a sports league into your business and if you go along with this model you could even run multiple seasons throughout the year which will generate more revenue into your business.  

There's a lot of different things you can do but I wanted to share this because I've seen this work very well with coaches who already have an audience or they're really good at building an audience and if you're really organized this type of business can be very successful.

I want this to be very clear that your sports league may be small at the beginning with less teams but as you continue to offer a great experience to your clients I would expect this type of business model to grow very quickly.  

If you want to chat with me about this you can schedule a 15 minute phone call where I can guide you in the right direction in setting this up in your business 

I'll see you later, 

-Ben