What you need to know
An increase in facility numbers is expected to help leisure centre and swimming pool revenues recover from two years of successive decline in 2019, growing by around 3% to £1,585 million.
Visiting rates have also stabilised after falling in 2018, although the market has continued to lose female customers.
However, public leisure centres and swimming pools have a large target market of potential customers to sell to, with private studio fitness class participants and private health club members particularly open to using them.
Covered in this Report
This Report covers local authority-owned leisure centres and swimming pools, including facilities run on a ‘dual-use’ basis (eg facilities housed within schools, etc that are available for use by the public at certain times of the day or week). Market size is based on expenditure in publicly-owned leisure sites.
Private health and fitness clubs are excluded from the coverage of this Report, as are all other private leisure and swimming facilities that are not open to the general public, such as those reserved for employees, or association or trade union members.
Where reference is made to data on public sports centres sourced from The Leisure Database Company, the use of the term ‘Public Sports Centre’ relates to both availability and core facilities. In terms of availability, this definition has been refined to exclude those venues not available to the general public on a ‘pay-and-play’ basis or for club use only (usually applicable to educational-based sites). The Leisure Database Company definition also refers specifically to a venue with one or more of the following core facilities: health and fitness, swimming pool (indoor or outdoor) or sports hall.
