INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
Traditionally, this has involved a large fitness provision that generates income from fitness memberships; many leisure operators still rely on these cash cows. However, the growth of the private low-cost sector has affected many public sector facilities’ ability to generate the same income they previously enjoyed from fitness memberships. Diversification may be the answer and is something we’ve done for a long time within our facilities, incorporating soft play, tenpin bowling, interactive family activity centres, spas and so on. Every inch of a building must pay for itself and attract more usage, so we drop pockets of revenue throughout every centre and create ‘dwell opportunities’ across the generations. That’s essential to creating commercially sustainable facilities. We’re now incorporating this thinking into our regeneration projects, too, not only within the facilities but also in the surrounding spaces. In one of our south coast projects, for example, we’re looking not just at the leisure centre but at the whole plot of land through
master-planning work. We’ll knock down and move the centre within the plot, rebuilding it smarter and creating space to also build residential properties. We’ll activate the whole area, too, designing in opportunities to be active in the environment. It’s more challenging in inner-city locations such as London, where landlocked sites sit tightly up against adjacent buildings, but there are still ways to generate a capital receipt from this – including building smarter and/or building upwards to include residential or commercial opportunities. The short version: at Alliance Leisure, we don’t build boring. We build facilities that engage a wider market and bring in volumes of people to deliver social value and build resilient communities. We do all of that within budget, so projects actually get delivered. And we incorporate pockets of revenue to ensure facilities are commercially sustainable. It’s a win-win for all concerned.
Delivering a facility within budget is better than the project that spirals out of control and can’t ever be built
Station Leisure & Learning Centre, Mablethorpe
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STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2025
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