Tennis club finance for courts, floodlights and covered courts

Most tennis clubs earn from membership subscriptions, often collected at an annual renewal, alongside coaching, court hire and pay-and-play, leagues and tournaments, social events and a clubhouse bar. At many clubs coaching is run by a head coach as a separate business that pays the club for court time. Commercial centres rely more on court bookings, memberships and coaching programmes, and indoor centres can trade all year.

The big costs come in lumps. Court surfaces wear and need resurfacing, floodlights need replacing, fencing and nets wear out, and a clubhouse needs periodic refurbishment. Outdoor clubs lose playing hours to rain and dark evenings, which is why many look at floodlights or covered courts. A well-run club builds a sinking fund for these costs, and finance fills the gap when the bill arrives before the fund is large enough.

• Resurfacing or rebuilding courts, or changing surface type
• New or replacement floodlights, often switching to LED
• Covering courts with an air dome or framed structure
• Converting a court or spare land to padel
• Fencing, gates, access control and booking systems
• Refurbishing or extending the clubhouse and changing rooms
• Buying the club's land or freehold, or refinancing existing borrowing
• Opening a new commercial centre or adding a second site

Not-for-profit tennis venues may be able to use the LTA Facility Loan Scheme, which is aimed at properly constituted, not-for-profit venues and gives priority to covered courts, with floodlit courts and wider community access also considered. Sport England and the other national sports councils run grant programmes for community facilities. These routes are competitive and usually come with conditions about community access, so many clubs combine them with commercial finance or their own reserves. Commercial centres and companies limited by shares are generally not eligible for the LTA scheme.

Many tennis clubs are unincorporated members' clubs, with the land held by trustees. An unincorporated club cannot borrow in its own name, so commercial lenders usually need trustees, a club company or a community benefit society to be the borrower, and fewer lenders will consider it. Clubs registered as a community amateur sports club (CASC) also have rules on how they use their income and assets; see HMRC's CASC guidance. Commercial centres owned by a limited company borrow like any other business.

A loan for resurfacing should be repaid well before the surface needs replacing again, or the club ends up paying for two surfaces at once. Members' clubs should be clear about who carries the liability if the club cannot pay, and proprietors should expect personal guarantees; see our guide to personal guarantees. Test repayments against a cautious membership forecast, and remember that floodlights and domes add running costs as well as income.