Pay and play

Originally posted by H2 Originally posted by 423zero My club rents grant purchased boats, Bahia £25 per day, Topaz £5 per day, though individuals can only attend 6 times in any one 12 month period. Why would the club seek to limit the number of rentals per year? Its almost as if our clubs are run by morons.

If, as I suspect, the rental boats are being subsidised out of general club funds and volunteer labour, then it would be reasonable to encourage regular users to become club members.

A Bahia, is what, £7,500. So that's 300 rentals needed just to pay for the boat, am I right? 3 years if its out every Saturday and Sunday 12 months a year, which of course it won't be. And at the end of that its going to be utterly worn out if its usable at all. If you want true pay and play you have to add to that overheads for maintenance and safety boat cover. I'm not going to hazard a guess as to what a reasonable allowance for that is, but you can bet its significant.

Generally I think club boats are loss leaders to help get people into the sport and become boat owners, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to visualise a full pay to play option for racing dinghies, then I suspect the costs would put it way out of reach of the average current sailor, and firmly as a pursuit for the executive class in between their shooting, equestrian sports and skiing.

Edited by JimC - 30 May 18 at 12:35pm

This is centre I mainly use, very friendly people.

First and foremost I would suggest that Play and Pay would come in differing formats, with differing funding streams depending on the location, the history, the local demographic - there is probably an endless list of variables which could influence how positive the outcome maybe for a sailing facility leasing boats for racing.  It would greatly vary depending on the rationale - would such a facility be a purely profit orientated? Or does it serve a more community orientated goal - a modern day club where customers feel like members, or to put this on its head, where members feel their custom is valued.

It could also be that it’s just an interpretation of a where an existing club goes in keeping with time and trends of the early 21st Century.  Rupert rightly pointed out in the other thread that Pay and Play may well be part of the club offering - good clubs adapt to change and this is no bad thing.  I tend to agree with this.  If we are seeing a reduction in participation, it makes sense to think there will be a contraction in the number of clubs out there.  Some may fall by the wayside due to lack of critical mass or basic resourcing to keep them functioning - this isn’t doom mongering, it’s just a realistic outlook, even if there are several years where the tooth hangs by one stretched and fleshy thread, no one with the gumption to close the gate for the final time.  Pay and Play might well be one of the core offerings of those clubs who survive this inevitable process facing sailing, and other sports, as well documented elsewhere.

Jim points out a funding model that is set for failure - take the cost of a Bahia and divide it by the true running cost per session.  Yes, it doesn’t make sense.  Firstly as H2 states to, there’s no point comparing the traditional club boats for beginners with a Pay and Play model - they serve two very distinctly different functions within any organisation.  The Bahia as a training boat might well be a lost leader- probably best to disassociate it from income generation unless of course it’s just a tool for a profitable training arm to the club’s core membership business.  DavidYacht makes the point that any pay and play lease boat would need to be as good one we would choose to own.  I think most sailors would all accept a little compromise on that front, especially to get decent fleet racing, but his point is still sound.  I certainly don’t want to rent a knackered laser with donor parts from the club fleet, even if it does ‘get me on the water’... I’d rather go for a bike ride.   Back to Jim’s Bahia- this not a boat any of us would really choose to own for racing.  I probably wouldn’t even bother renting one off a beach on holiday - the $50 could be better spent on ice cream, or paddleboards.

Pay and Play would require a lot more investment than one £7,500 Bahia, and I’m afraid the tools of the Executive Class would come into play to make it work.  Competitive Tenders, Investment Funding, Marketing budget, hospitality management, resource management, lease financing, asset finance, secured loans are all just a scratch on the surface of what could be discussed to actually realise a successful project in pay and play sailing.    Jim’s Bahia just lacks a pretentious name to ensure it fails - can I recommend ‘Elephantis Alba’.  But Jim’s not stupid, hence his use of this example of how NOT to do something to ridicule something he doesn’t like the sound of anyway.   The sad truth is, I’m sure many of us have encountered people who really would be dumb enough  to think that they would make a ROI on one Bahia and assume you could roll out it to more boats if you generated the demand.

Let’s take another example - assume a club has reasonably large cash reserves sitting on their balance sheet.  I’d imagine it’s not that uncommon.  It’s a rainy day fund.  There for club maintenance and it’s there because it’s been built up over time without any real justifiable demand on suitable expenditure.   Why not invest some of that into a dozen new singlehanders?   These could then be leased out at £25 per race day, maybe to new members, maybe to former sailors looking to get back into the sport.  It’s not only encouraging a boost in numbers on the day providing a singlehanded option for lonely Bob and his crewless Merlin, but it could also be an exceptional tool as part of a wider recruitment and retention strategy. 

If the club already has a small but active fleet of say Supernovas, it makes sense to buy the same and push the number into critical mass territory.   Years of club sailing abuse lay at the door of the PY system - changing the game from proper racing into something entirely different and ultimately not very satisfactory for a lot of people I know who no longer race dinghies.  Dare I say it, but there must be Laser and Solo fleets around the country that could really use that kind of injection into offering proper fleet racing to get them out of the doldrums of the handicap fleet.  We hear all the time traveller numbers at open meetings are down - I can’t see this changing, so the future for active dinghy sailing lies in the local area.  It just needs to make the offer attractive and affordable enough.

Combine this new club-wide enthusiasm* for a specific class with a local recruitment drive - offering ‘free membership’ for new members sailing that specific class, drawing in from the local pool of active sailors too.  And well, you’d have the bones of an organisation that was truly future proofing itself against a potential competitor if club consolidation over the next couple of decades takes hold.    My point here is quite simple - if your club has a rainy day fund, I’d think about patching the roof now.

(*ha, yes club wide enthusiasm.... good luck)

So what if a club doesn’t have cash reserves or some rich philanthantropist about to peg it and offering something back in the form of GRP?  Well are there other assets that could be leveraged?  Does the club own its land and buildings?  A small commercial mortgage could be raised against this asset and the payments offset against the boat leasing charges.  £60k sould be easily financed for c.£350 per month depending on the time frame considered.     Given that £60k ought to be able to buy you a dozen single handers worth sailing, (nod to the Aero here), you’d only have to lease them once or twice per boat per month at £25 per session before you break even.  Any thing more than that start generating revenue from your club investment... not bad hey?  Obviously this assumes there are people willing to spend £25 for day’s sailing, or an evening’s sailing..... and it assumes you can encourage all 12 boats into active service at least once per month.  On the former,  I dunno, it’s what I spend to go to a snowdome for 3 hours and the race, class and gender diversity is far greater than any sailing club I’ve been to, so not something I’d pigeon hole as an ‘Executive Class’ endeavour.  As for the latter.... let’s stay positive, you should be able to get a bum on the deck at least once per month, otherwise why bother even discussing this?

I’ve got other ideas about a proper ‘commercial sailing centre’, but I’ll save them for another post.  This one was more UK specific anyway, given the context of how Pay and Play could work within a club structure.  There’s merit to it, and it might just be part of the overall offer that saves your club in the future.


Edited by turnturtle - 31 May 18 at 9:44am

I 100% agree with this TT, it needs to be part of making clubs work into the future and based on my experience in business I suspect that the model will look different depending on its proximity to major cities. Just because Mounts Bay (for example) is a great sailing venue that we all love to have nationals at will not mean it is a great P&P site. This means it may or may not work for the majority of existing clubs but it will certainly work for some in my view.