I am fascinated (some might say sadly?) by pricing policy for leisure activities, and made the mistake of mentioning it to John Eady - hence this article.

We've had a few years of income growth in leisure fuelled mainly by fitness, sadly used more to pay rising utility bill than to invest in facilities. As the economy moves into recession we will face some different challenges - more people entitled to concessionary prices, potentially declining income from customers, and more pressure on Council and therefore leisure budgets. And free swimming has just started on a much larger scale. So I believe pricing policy deserves more attention, both in term of social policy and income generation.

I often come across a perception that leisure prices are a barrier to participation, and the government clearly shares that hence the multi million pound investment in free swimming. But is it true? The government's own research (Taking Part Survey 2006/07) lists the five main reasons for non-participation in active sport. The top one (at 46.6%) is "health isn't good enough". Trailing in at number 5 comes "it costs too much" with just 2.1%. The free swimming programme is a great opportunity to try and get to the truth. I hope it is properly and honestly researched, including looking at data from authorities which are continuing to charge as well as those which are not. For what it's worth, and early days I know, we work in both charging and non-charging Council areas and we've had an extremely busy Easter everywhere!

Most Councils have some sort of concessionary pricing, including one interesting one I came across in a rural Council which charges less to people who live further away from their leisure centre, to mitigate the extra transport costs. And why should I agonise over whether my son has to pay £1.40 or £1.50 for his swim when it costs him £3.90 for the 4 mile return trip to the pool on the bus? I have endless debates with my managers about whether our concessionary pricing system simply gives cheaper prices to people who would pay anyway, or whether it genuinely attracts people who would not otherwise be able to afford to come. We've been trying to get to the bottom of that recently. Anybody out there feel confident to answer that question?

Turning to income generation, a quick look at APSE figures shows huge variations in customer spend per head (excluding secondary spend) at sites even within "family groups" of similar facilities - from £1.46 to £2.82 for the group our "standard" pool is in, for example. I know there are programme and facility and socio economic differences, but do we really understand why some facilities attract double the income per head? And are those charging lower prices attracting more people and/or a wider cross section of people?

Much of the growth of sports activity connected with schools has been free or very low cost - and it is a bit irritating when a school puts on free after school classes in trampolining and we have to charge £3.00 a time. I've never seen much debate about this other than at very local level.

A bit of random googling using words like leisure, sport and pricing yields a few articles from largely American universities, and Council reports by leisure managers. When you use the words charges and sport together you get more of interest to the criminologist than the leisure manager. I have never seen much research or advice about pricing policy. It doesn't seem to feature in academic course in leisure management (or does it?) . I can't remember an article on pricing in the leisure press, although I'm sure there will have been some. The Audit Commission's "The Price is Right?" is now 10 years old - still worth a read though.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who've worked out pricing strategically and have the answers to all the questions I've raised. But for those of us who haven't I hope we can see more of a debate, more research, and more understanding of the financial and social impacts of pricing.

John Maude, Chief Executive, North Country Leisure (John.Maude@northcountryleisure.org.uk)  

April 2009