Club membership is a recurring-fee model where players pay monthly or annually in exchange for benefits — typically discounted bookings, longer advance booking windows, free guest passes, or a number of included court hours per month.
Why it's worth considering
- Predictable monthly revenue smooths out the seasonality of pay-as-you-play income.
- Members book ahead more reliably, making the calendar easier to manage.
- Members are more likely to participate in club programming and to bring guests.
- Membership creates a sense of belonging that improves retention.
The risk to manage
If the membership benefits are too generous, you cannibalise pay-as-you-play revenue without bringing in enough new players to offset it. The most common mistake is a flat-rate "unlimited" membership in a club where peak utilisation is already high — members crowd out higher-margin pay-as-you-play bookings on the slots they were always going to book anyway.
A safer starting point
Time-banded membership (e.g. discounted off-peak rates, full price at peak) lets you channel members into the slots you actually want to fill, rather than rewarding behaviour that was already going to happen.