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futsal courts can also be
reconfigured, which in turn
can help diversify a facility's
customer base. "With futsal,
you can also have basketball,
volleyball, and one of my
favorite sports to play now
as someone over 40 with bad
knees, pickleball."
Industry consultant Eric
Sullivan of The Sports
Facilities Advisory
agrees, saying another advantage of courts
is the "flexible space," something he
emphasizes with customers. "If we have
open, flexible court space, or if we have
open unboarded turf, and we think about
having portable flooring or temporary
flooring to put down over the turf to protect
it, there's a lot of things you can do at that
point to get more uses out of that expanded
space."
PISA isn't the only facility working on
expansion. Numerous USIndoor facility
members announced or completed expansions
in the last year. Some built additions to their
current buildings, while others expanded with
new locations. Many more expansions will likely
get underway in 2016.
Expansion can be a long process, and there
are several different strategies. Building an
addition on your current building might not
be your first step. "The first would really be
program enhancements, where you're looking
at new or different ways to use your space,"
says Sullivan.
"If you have a trouble spot in your week or in
your programming calendar, a season that
you can't fill, then, as an operator, you should
be specifically targeting expansion for those
underperforming times of the day, the week,
or the year so you can maximize what you
have at your disposal." Filling empty spots in
the schedule will add revenue with minimal
expense.
Once your schedule is full, it might be tempting
to start exploring building expansion, but
Sullivan suggests an intermediate step that
will continue to build revenue without physical
expansion–satellite locations.
With satellite locations, facilities can add
programming without physical expansion
by working with other properties that have
available space.
"For example," says Sullivan, "a lot of facilities
that run the Lil' Kickers program will have
satellite locations once they've grown their
home business. They'll run out of schools or
churches or club facilities where they have
