Wert-Berater, Inc. is an independent sports facility feasibility study consultant preparing lender- and agency-ready studies for indoor sports facilities, multi-sport complexes, recreation centers, racquet and pickleball clubs, tournament venues, and related sports developments. Our analysis evaluates sport-specific participation demand, competitive court and field supply, drive-time market capture, memberships, programming, daypart utilization, tournament demand, ancillary revenue, development costs, debt-service coverage, and downside sensitivity for SBA, USDA, conventional, public-sector, and institutional financing.
The firm prepares sports facilities feasibility studies for private developers, lenders, municipalities, recreation operators, and agency-financed projects, to SBA SOP 50 10 8, USDA 7 CFR Part 5001, and conventional underwriting standards. Fiduciary duty runs to the lender and the agency, never the borrower. Fixed fee quoted within one business day; standard delivery in ten to fifteen business days from a complete data room. 4,000+ engagements since 1998 covering $41.2 billion in evaluated project value. So far in 2026: 41 engagements and $1.54 billion evaluated — 17 SBA, 11 USDA.
Sports-facility feasibility converts participation rates into court-hours, memberships, and league revenue. The study quantifies the participating population by sport within the drive-time market, maps existing court and field supply both commercial and municipal, and models utilization by daypart — because prime-time demand does not fill weekday mornings, and pro formas that assume it do not survive review. Food-and-beverage, programming, and event revenue are modeled on their own economics, and the management plan behind programming receives explicit evaluation.
Methodology combines sport-governing-body participation data, demographic screens, a physical census of competing facilities including municipal supply, and daypart utilization modeling benchmarked against operating clubs. The financial model tests membership and court-fee revenue under conservative utilization against the program's coverage minimum.
Every Wert-Berater financial model is fully linked with no hardcoded values, so any reviewer can stress any input. Deliverables comprise a complete narrative report and the linked Excel model, with ten-year pro forma, sensitivity analysis at ±5, 10, and 15 percent, interest-rate stress from +0.5 to +3.0 percent, and ratio analysis benchmarked against RMA and IBISWorld data.
SBA engagements are prepared to SOP 50 10 8, including its debt-service-coverage minimums of 1.15x operating and 1.00x global. USDA engagements follow RD Staff Instruction 5001 across the Business & Industry, Community Facilities, REAP, and Value-Added Producer Grant programs. Conventional engagements are built to the lender's stated coverage standard, typically 1.20x. Projects arrive under SBA 7(a) and 504 for owner-operators — with startup equity-injection rules addressed directly — and conventional lending for larger facilities; dome and indoor-sports projects are evaluated under the same discipline.
Published sports and recreation engagements, largest first: a $115,000,000 regional sports complex in Anthony, New Mexico; an indoor pickleball and padel complex of 20 courts in Middletown, Connecticut at approximately $18,040,063; and a $4,840,000 six-court recreation and taproom venue in Buda, Texas, in the Austin MSA. Further sports and recreation work, including indoor sports dome analysis, is not published as public case studies. Independence is non-negotiable: determinations follow the evidence and are not revised under pressure, and studies are built to pass lender, agency, and third-party review without exception items.
A sports & recreation facility feasibility study is not a market overview stapled to a pro forma. For this asset class, the scope must resolve questions that are specific to how courts, fields, and programming generate revenue: whether the participating population within the drive-time catchment is large enough to sustain the proposed mix of uses, whether existing commercial and municipal supply leaves an addressable gap, and whether the proposed fee structure and utilization schedule can produce coverage under conservative assumptions. The narrative and model are built together so that every revenue line traces back to a documented demand input.
A sports facility feasibility study consultant begins with the market area rather than the building. The primary drive-time catchment is defined by how far households actually travel for weekly league play and practice, which is a shorter radius than most sponsors assume; a secondary ring is added for weekend and higher-commitment use, and a regional draw is recognised only where the programme or tournament calendar genuinely pulls from it. Destination demand is treated as a separate question, never as an extension of local demand.
Participation is then resolved sport by sport rather than as one aggregate. Age cohort, skill level, and the split between youth and adult play determine which hours of the week a sport actually consumes, and organised demand — leagues, clubs, school programmes, and governing-body affiliates — is counted separately from casual drop-in play because it books differently and pays differently. Competitive supply is inventoried on the same footing: commercial operators, municipal parks and recreation assets, school-district gymnasiums and fields with community-access arrangements, nonprofit and faith-based recreation centres, and private clubs. Existing courts, fields, and turf are counted, and credible planned expansion is added to supply rather than ignored.
Utilization is where sports facility pro formas most often fail. Prime time, off-peak, weekday daytime, evenings, weekends, and seasonal variation each carry a different realistic sell-through, and the model builds court-hours and field-hours by daypart instead of applying one blended occupancy. Revenue is then assembled from the streams the facility will actually operate — memberships, court and field rental, leagues, clinics, lessons, camps, tournaments and events, sponsorship where it is contracted, food and beverage, and merchandise where it applies — with each stream carrying its own volume, price, and capacity constraint.
Operations are modelled at the same resolution: front-desk and management staffing, coaches and instructors and how they are compensated, maintenance and surface replacement, utilities, programming overhead, sales and marketing, and insurance. The financial section then carries development cost, sport surfaces and equipment, FF&E, preopening and startup, working capital, the ramp to stabilization, break-even utilization, debt service and coverage, and sensitivity across the inputs that move the answer. The scope of that work, in the form it is delivered, is set out below.
Facility type changes the economics more than facility size does. The same trade area can support one format and reject another, so the analysis is framed around how the specific format earns its hours.
Indoor facilities trade weather risk for fixed cost. Year-round operation removes the seasonality that limits outdoor play, but HVAC, lighting, and dehumidification run against a court schedule whose demand is concentrated into evenings and weekends. Court and turf scheduling therefore governs the revenue line, and the high fixed-cost base means an indoor facility is far more sensitive to prime-time sell-through than to total hours open. Memberships and league blocks are valuable primarily because they pre-commit those prime hours.
A multi-sport complex adds cross-sport demand but also internal competition for the same hours. Basketball, volleyball, futsal, and court sports frequently want the identical evening blocks, so a larger court count does not proportionally increase sellable prime-time inventory. Programming mix, convertibility between sports, and tournament capability are tested against the schedule rather than assumed, because scheduling conflicts — not floor area — usually set the practical ceiling.
Racquet formats turn on court count, membership structure, and how drop-in play, leagues, and lessons share the same courts. Social and food-and-beverage economics are frequently material here in a way they are not for turf facilities, and court utilization must be modelled per court rather than per building. The pickleball and indoor sports facility feasibility methodology is set out in more detail in the supporting analysis.
Soccer, lacrosse, football, and baseball or softball complexes are driven by league rentals and tournament weekends rather than by daily individual use. Turf utilization is constrained by daylight, field maintenance and rest cycles where natural grass is involved, and the concentration of league play into defined seasons. Revenue tends to be lumpy, which makes working capital and off-season carrying cost a central part of the analysis.
Community recreation centres often operate under a public or nonprofit model where the objective is access and community need rather than return on investment. Memberships and programme fees may be set below market by policy, and an operating subsidy may be intended from the outset. The study states plainly whether the facility is expected to cover its own operating cost and debt service, or whether a subsidy is structurally required.
Demand is built in a defined sequence, and each step is documented so a reviewer can retrace it. The trade area is defined first, by realistic drive time rather than by radius. Population is then resolved by age cohort, because participation and willingness to pay differ sharply between youth, adult recreational, and older adult players. Sport-specific participation rates are applied to those cohorts, and where the evidence supports it, participation is segmented further into paid or commercial participation — play that occurs at a fee-charging facility — rather than all play including free public courts. Existing competitive courts and fields are inventoried, and public and school supply genuinely available to the same users is added to that inventory. Credible future supply, meaning permitted or announced projects, is included rather than deferred. The practical capacity of the subject facility is then estimated, the required market capture implied by the pro forma is calculated, and projected utilization is finally validated against the proposed price point and programme.
The step that most often exposes an unsupportable projection is the second one. Total population is not paying sports-facility demand. A trade area of half a million residents may contain a modest number of households that will actually purchase court time at the proposed rate, and the distance between those two figures is where optimistic studies hide. The firm does not apply a single national capture-rate benchmark to substitute for that work; capture is derived for the specific market, sport mix, and price point.
Demand for a sports and recreation facility is not a single number drawn from a population table. It is assembled sport by sport, age group by age group, using sources that reflect actual participation behavior rather than general demographic proxies. The analysis begins with sport-governing-body registration data — national and state associations for tennis, pickleball, volleyball, basketball, soccer, and other disciplines publish participation counts that can be screened against the trade area population. Those figures are cross-referenced against household demographic profiles, including age distribution and income thresholds that correlate with paid participation, drawn from census and licensed demographic databases.
Competitive-supply analysis goes beyond a list of nearby gyms. The census includes municipal parks-and-recreation inventories, school-district facilities with community-access agreements, faith-based recreation centers, and commercial operators. Each competing facility is evaluated for court or field count, posted hours, fee schedules where publicly available, and any announced capacity expansions. Drive-time isochrones define the primary and secondary trade areas, and supply is mapped against demand by sport to identify whether an addressable gap exists at the proposed price point. Where a facility includes an events or tournament component, regional tournament-circuit schedules and venue-availability patterns are reviewed to assess incremental demand that does not compete directly with membership or drop-in revenue.
A sports facility cannot assume every open hour carries the same demand, and daypart modelling is the single most reliable way to separate a defensible projection from an inflated one. The week is segmented into weekday morning, weekday afternoon, the after-school block, evening, Friday, weekend, and where relevant discrete tournament blocks. Each segment is assigned its own realistic sell-through, its own pricing, and in most cases its own user group.
The distinction that matters to an underwriter is this: ninety percent prime-time utilization does not mean ninety percent whole-day utilization. Prime time in most court sports is a narrow band of weekday evenings plus weekend daytime. A facility can sell essentially all of that inventory and still be empty for a large share of its operating hours. Revenue is therefore built from actual sellable court-hours and field-hours by daypart, summed, rather than from a single occupancy percentage applied to total hours.
Several programmes can genuinely support off-peak demand: senior play, homeschool programmes, corporate and league daytime use, camps, school partnerships, training academies, and clinics. Each is evaluated on its own evidence — whether the population exists in the trade area, whether comparable facilities actually fill those hours, and at what rate. None of them is assumed to fill off-peak capacity automatically, because an unearned off-peak assumption is one of the most common ways a sports pro forma overstates revenue.
Three different capacity figures are frequently confused, and keeping them separate is essential to a credible projection. Theoretical capacity is every hour the facility is open multiplied by every court or field — a number that no operating facility achieves. Practical capacity subtracts the hours lost to maintenance and surface care, programme changeover, scheduling friction, staffing limits, and the blocks reserved for leagues or academies that cannot be resold. Supportable demand is smaller still: the hours the market is realistically expected to purchase at the proposed price.
The gap between practical capacity and supportable demand is the real finding. A facility may be capable of selling far more hours than its trade area will buy, and in that case the constraint is demand, not design. This is why facility size is tested against demand rather than fixed first and justified afterward. A programme that is designed and then retrofitted with a demand narrative will usually survive a casual read and fail a lender review, because the required capture implied by the pro forma will not reconcile with the participating population.
Required market capture expresses what the pro forma is actually assuming about the market, stated as a share rather than as a revenue total. It is calculated two ways. The first compares projected subject participants or members against the addressable participating population in the trade area. The second compares projected sold court-hours and field-hours against total addressable paid demand for those hours. The two views frequently disagree, and the disagreement is informative — a facility can look reasonable on membership count while implying an implausible share of the market’s available paid court time.
Capture is never assessed in isolation from the competitive field. It must account for existing commercial competitors and their current utilization, municipal and school supply available at low or no cost, the subject’s price relative to those alternatives, travel distance and convenience, facility quality and amenity, the specific sport mix offered, and the loyalty that established clubs and leagues command. Announced new supply is included, because a capture rate that is achievable today may not be achievable at opening. The firm does not publish one universally acceptable capture percentage; what is reasonable depends on the market, the format, and the price point, and the study states the figure the subject requires and whether the evidence supports it.
Feasibility tests the proposed programme rather than accepting it as fixed. Sponsors usually arrive with a court or field count already chosen, and one of the more valuable functions of the study is to check that number against demand before it is built into a construction budget.
The count can be wrong in either direction. Too few courts may forfeit tournament capability, since sanctioning bodies and event operators often require a minimum number of playable surfaces to run a bracket on schedule. Too many courts create fixed cost — construction, HVAC, lighting, maintenance, and staffing — against hours the market will not buy, and surplus capacity is far harder to remediate than a shortfall. An incorrect sport mix produces a subtler failure: courts configured for a sport whose local demand is concentrated in the same evening block as another sport already in the building, generating unused off-peak capacity while prime time remains oversubscribed. Different configurations may also compete for the same demand rather than adding to it.
Each major facility component is therefore tested for its own support: the incremental courts, the turf area, the fitness or training space, the food-and-beverage footprint, and any event or spectator capacity. The firm does not recommend specific quantities without market evidence, and where the evidence is thin the study says so rather than supplying a number.
Where a facility sells memberships, the membership line usually carries the debt service, which makes it the most heavily tested assumption in the model. Founding or pre-sale memberships, standard memberships, family plans, and youth memberships are modelled separately because they carry different prices, different utilization intensity, and different retention. Monthly and annual pricing are modelled with their actual discount structure rather than at list price, and the blended yield per active member is what flows into revenue.
Churn is modelled explicitly rather than netted into a growth rate. A facility adding members steadily while losing a meaningful share of its base each month has a very different cash-flow profile from one with the same net count and low attrition, and the difference shows up precisely during the ramp when coverage is tightest. Member utilization is also tracked against capacity, because members who use the facility heavily consume the same prime-time hours the facility would otherwise sell at retail rates — the member and non-member mix is a capacity question, not only a revenue question.
One distinction is treated as a hard line. Signed and paid memberships are evidence. Email list sign-ups, survey interest, petition support, and social-media following are not. Soft interest is reported as interest and is not converted into contracted revenue in the pro forma, because the conversion rate from expressed enthusiasm to a recurring paid membership is both highly variable and, in most markets, well below what sponsors expect.
Programming is frequently the difference between a facility that covers debt service and one that does not, and it is modelled stream by stream rather than as a single line. Leagues, private and group lessons, clinics, camps, academies, and structured youth and adult programmes each have distinct economics.
For each relevant stream the analysis establishes participant count, session frequency, price per participant or per session, instructor and coach compensation, and the court or field hours the programme consumes. That last item matters as much as the revenue: programming occupies inventory that cannot be sold twice, so a programme that looks profitable in isolation may be displacing higher-yield rental hours. Seasonality is applied per stream, since camps concentrate in school holidays and league enrolment follows the sport’s calendar, and each stream is capped at the capacity the staff and surfaces can actually deliver. Programming revenue is not aggregated into an unsupported lump sum, because a single blended figure conceals both the capacity conflict and the instructor cost that determine whether the programme contributes margin at all.
These are two different demand engines, and conflating them is one of the most consequential errors in sports facility underwriting. Local demand is recurring and relationship-based: memberships, league play, lessons, team practices, drop-in play, and repeat users who live inside the drive-time catchment. It fills the weekly calendar, it responds to price and convenience, and it is the base the facility operates on fifty weeks a year.
Tournament and destination demand behaves differently in every respect. It comes from teams outside the market, is booked through tournament organisers and regional or national circuits, concentrates into weekend blocks, and is won or lost against venues across a much wider geography. It generates hotel room nights, food spending, event rental, and sponsorship interest, but it does so episodically and it can move to a competing venue between seasons.
The rule the firm applies is that tournament tourism does not justify day-to-day local facility economics unless the evidence supports both independently. A facility whose weekday calendar cannot be filled by local demand is not rescued by a tournament schedule, because tournaments occupy the weekend inventory that was already the easiest to sell. Where both engines are genuinely present, they are modelled separately and their demands on the same surfaces are reconciled against the calendar.
A sports complex feasibility study built around tournament capability examines a specific set of conditions. The regional tournament calendar is reviewed to establish what events exist, when they occur, and where they are currently held. Sanctioning organisations and their facility requirements are identified, since court or field count, surface specification, ceiling height, and spectator provision can determine eligibility outright. Competing regional venues are assessed on the same criteria, because tournament organisers select among facilities across a far larger geographic area than ordinary local users — a venue competes regionally for events while competing only locally for league play.
The physical analysis covers playable surface count and convertibility between sports, spectator capacity and seating, concessions capability under event-day load, parking sufficiency at tournament peak rather than at average use, lodging inventory within a reasonable radius, and highway and airport access. Relationships with event operators are documented where they exist, along with any letters of intent.
Evidence for tournament revenue is graded rather than accepted at face value. A statement that the sponsor expects tournaments is the weakest form and carries no weight in the model. Documented contact with named tournament organisers is better. Written expressions of interest are stronger. Signed agreements, letters of intent, or booking commitments are strongest, and only these support material tournament revenue in the early years. Informal discussions are never represented as contracts, and a full tournament calendar is not assumed from the opening year, since event operators typically require an operating track record before moving an established event. The sports complex and tournament facility methodology is developed further in the supporting analysis.
Food and beverage has become material at many racquet and social sports venues, and where it is present it is modelled as its own business rather than as a percentage uplift on sports revenue. Depending on the format this may include a café, a bar or taproom, event catering, or straightforward concessions.
The build is independent: facility traffic and user count by daypart, the attachment rate at which those users actually purchase, average transaction value, gross margin after cost of goods, and the incremental staffing the outlet requires during the hours it operates. Attachment rates differ sharply by format and by daypart — a social pickleball venue on a Friday evening and a youth turf complex on a weekday afternoon do not convert at remotely similar rates — so a single blended assumption is avoided. Licensing, hours, and staffing constraints are reflected where they limit the opportunity. Assigning ancillary revenue as a flat percentage of sports revenue without evidence is precisely the shortcut that produces an unachievable food-and-beverage line, and it is not used.
Sponsorship, court and field signage, scoreboard and digital advertising, and naming rights can be real revenue at sports facilities, particularly where a local corporate base has an interest in youth sports visibility. The analysis distinguishes two categories and treats them very differently. Contracted sponsorship is supported by a documented agreement with a named counterparty, a term, and a stated amount. Speculative sponsorship is an expectation of future interest, however reasonable.
Signed commitments are carried in the model at their contracted value and term. Speculative sponsorship is disclosed and, where it is included at all, is modelled conservatively and outside the coverage test. Unsupported sponsorship assumptions are never permitted to carry debt service, because sponsorship is among the first line items to disappear when a local economy softens and it is rarely secured on the timeline a pre-opening projection assumes.
Site characteristics decide whether modelled demand can physically reach the facility. The analysis reviews drive-time access from the population centres that generate demand, proximity to interstate and arterial routes for regional and tournament users, and the practical route quality at the hours users actually travel. Parking is assessed against tournament and league peak rather than average demand, since peak conditions determine user experience and event eligibility. Traffic circulation, ingress and egress, and the ability to accommodate team buses where the programme requires it are considered alongside visibility from the primary approach.
Zoning and permitted use, noise exposure and neighbourhood compatibility, utility availability and capacity for a high-load indoor facility, and physical site constraints are all reviewed for their effect on feasibility and cost. These are evaluated as feasibility inputs only. Wert-Berater does not provide traffic engineering, civil engineering, architectural, or zoning legal services, and the study neither offers nor substitutes for those opinions; where a site issue could be material, the study identifies it and recommends the appropriate licensed professional.
The ramp is modelled month by month, or in appropriately phased periods, rather than jumping to a stabilized year. Founding and pre-sale memberships are tracked into opening, followed by monthly member additions net of churn, league enrolment as it builds season by season, tournament bookings as they are secured, programme development as instructors and formats come online, staff buildup against that schedule, and the marketing spend required to drive it. The operating deficit accumulated across those months is quantified explicitly, and the working capital required to fund it is stated as a capital requirement rather than assumed away.
This is where a great many sports facility projects fail, and they fail in a specific and avoidable way. A project can be entirely sound at Year 3 stabilization and still not survive Years 1 and 2, because memberships ramp more slowly than projected, leagues take a full season cycle to establish, tournament operators wait for a track record, and fixed costs — debt service, utilities, and core staffing — begin at full rate on the day the doors open. A study that reports only stabilized coverage conceals that risk. The firm reports coverage at each stage of the ramp, and identifies the month at which cumulative cash requirement peaks.
There is no single utilization percentage that answers this question, and any figure offered without reference to a specific cost structure should be treated with suspicion. Break-even is calculated from the subject’s own inputs: court and field pricing by daypart, membership revenue and yield, programming contribution, labour including instructors, occupancy cost whether rent or ownership, utilities, maintenance and surface reserves, and ancillary contribution.
Two thresholds are reported separately because they answer different questions. Operating break-even is the utilization at which the facility covers its operating costs before debt service — the point at which the business sustains itself. Debt-service break-even is the utilization at which it also meets its loan obligations at the coverage standard the programme requires, and it is materially higher. A lender underwrites the second. Both are expressed in the terms the operator can act on: sellable court-hours by daypart and member count, not an abstract occupancy percentage, so the sponsor can see exactly which hours of the week must be sold for the project to work.
The financial section consolidates the demand work into a ten-year projection. Revenue carries memberships, court and field rental, leagues, lessons, clinics and camps, events and tournaments, food and beverage, and contracted sponsorship. Expenses carry labour and instructor compensation, occupancy, utilities, insurance, maintenance and surface reserves, programming cost, marketing, management, cost of goods on ancillary sales, and replacement reserves. Capital carries land and site work, construction, sport surfaces, equipment, FF&E, technology and booking systems, preopening, working capital, and contingency.
Underwriting output presents operating cash flow, debt-service coverage against the applicable programme standard, break-even, and the ramp profile. Sensitivity is run across the inputs that actually move the answer: interest rate, utilization, membership count and yield, pricing, and development and operating cost. Every Wert-Berater model is a fully linked Excel workbook with no hardcoded values, delivered alongside the narrative report, so a credit officer can change any assumption and watch coverage respond rather than taking the conclusion on trust. That is the differentiator the firm holds to, and it is the reason the models survive third-party review.
A small number of inputs drive most of the variance in a sports and recreation facility pro forma. Identifying those inputs and stress-testing each one is the analytical work that separates a study built to survive lender review from one built to support a predetermined answer. Because every Wert-Berater model is a fully linked Excel workbook with no hardcoded values, a reviewer can move any of the following inputs and observe the coverage effect immediately.
These two studies answer different questions and are not interchangeable. A feasibility study asks whether the project can generate enough supportable revenue and cash flow to operate, meet its obligations, and service its debt. An economic impact study asks what broader visitor spending, employment, tax receipts, and secondary economic effects the project could produce for the surrounding community.
The distinction has practical consequences. A sports complex can generate substantial and genuine economic impact — hotel room nights, restaurant spending, retail activity, and employment — while still failing financially as a standalone business, because most of that spending accrues to third parties rather than to the facility’s own revenue lines. Municipal and public-sector projects frequently require both analyses, and a public sponsor may reasonably accept an operating subsidy in exchange for community benefit. What the firm will not do is blend the two: visitor spending captured by hotels and restaurants is never introduced into the facility’s operating revenue to improve its coverage ratio.
Ownership structure changes what feasibility means. A private sports facility is underwritten on memberships, court and field fees, programming, profitability, and the owner-operator’s capacity to absorb startup risk. The test is whether the business services its debt at the required coverage and compensates the equity for the risk taken.
A municipal or nonprofit recreation project is evaluated against community need, access and equity, the operating subsidy the sponsor is prepared to fund, tax or public participation in the capital structure, the economic impact anticipated, and any public-private partnership arrangement. These projects may be entirely appropriate while running a structural operating deficit, provided that deficit is understood and budgeted.
The firm’s obligation in either case is to state the position accurately. A publicly subsidised project is not presented as commercially self-supporting, and where a public sponsor intends to fund operations, the required annual subsidy is quantified and disclosed rather than absorbed into optimistic revenue assumptions. Where legitimately relevant, USDA Community Facilities financing is discussed for public and nonprofit sponsors, with the qualification that eligibility depends on the applicant, the location, the project type, and current programme requirements — not every sports or recreation facility qualifies, and the study does not assume that it does.
SBA, USDA, and conventional lenders each bring a distinct lens to a sports and recreation facility, but they share a common concern: whether the revenue model is disciplined enough to hold up when utilization falls short of the base case. Under SBA SOP 50 10 8, the study must demonstrate 1.15x operating coverage and 1.00x global coverage, and for startup facilities the equity-injection requirement and the absence of historical operating data both receive explicit treatment. The study documents how the proposed equity position and the owner’s liquidity address the startup risk that the pro forma cannot eliminate.
USDA Business & Industry and Community Facilities engagements require the feasibility study to confirm that the project serves an eligible rural area and that the proposed operation is financially viable on a standalone basis. The analysis addresses community need alongside financial coverage, because both criteria appear in 7 CFR Part 5001 review.
Conventional lenders typically require 1.20x coverage and place particular weight on the operator’s track record, the management plan, and the stability of the membership revenue base relative to transactional court-fee income. A facility that depends heavily on drop-in traffic rather than contracted memberships will face closer scrutiny of its utilization assumptions. The study addresses this directly by separating recurring from non-recurring revenue and demonstrating coverage on the recurring base alone where the lender’s credit policy requires it.
Each of the following is a published engagement with its own case-study page. Figures are the evaluated project values recorded at the time of the engagement.
Additional sports and recreation engagements, including indoor sports dome analysis, are not published as public case studies and are described here only in general terms.
The fee for a sports and recreation facility feasibility study is fixed and quoted in writing within one business day of receiving a project summary. No fee is contingent on the finding, and the determination is not revised under pressure. That structure is not a policy statement; it is the condition that allows the study to function as an independent credit document rather than a borrower advocacy piece.
Standard delivery is ten to fifteen business days from a complete data room. A complete data room for this asset class includes the site or lease information, the proposed program and fee schedule, any existing membership or booking data for an operating facility, the management plan, and the construction or equipment budget. Incomplete submissions extend the timeline; the engagement clock starts when the data room is complete, not when the engagement is opened.
Rush delivery is available and is quoted at the time of engagement. Every engagement is published to a secure client portal where the linked Excel model stays live and recalculates when inputs change. A lender or agency reviewer who wants to run a stress scenario does not need to request a revised report; the model is available directly. The standard deliverable set — bound narrative, ten-year pro forma, sensitivity tables, interest-rate stress, ratio analysis, and an explicit statement of conditions — is the same regardless of loan program, project size, or delivery speed.
A sports facility feasibility study is an independent analysis of whether a proposed sports or recreation facility can generate enough supportable demand and cash flow to operate, meet its obligations, and service its debt. It quantifies participation demand by sport within the trade area, inventories competing commercial, municipal, and school supply, models utilization by daypart, builds each revenue stream on its own volume and price, and tests the result against the debt-service coverage standard the lender or agency requires. It is prepared for the lender and the agency, not to support a conclusion the sponsor has already reached.
The consultant defines the realistic drive-time trade area, resolves participation by sport and age cohort, counts existing and announced competitive supply including public and school facilities, estimates the practical capacity of the proposed facility, calculates the market capture the pro forma requires, and validates projected utilization against the proposed price point and programme. That work is then carried into a fully linked ten-year financial model with coverage, break-even, ramp, and sensitivity analysis. The consultant is also responsible for saying plainly when the evidence does not support the project.
SBA requires an independent feasibility study for start-up and certain change-of-ownership and expansion projects, and sports and recreation facilities frequently fall into that category because they are specialised-use properties with limited alternative use. Engagements are prepared to SOP 50 10 8, including its debt-service-coverage minimums of 1.15x operating and 1.00x global. Whether a specific transaction requires a study is determined by the lender and by current SOP requirements, so the requirement should be confirmed with the lender rather than assumed either way.
USDA engagements follow RD Staff Instruction 5001 and 7 CFR Part 5001 across the Business & Industry, Community Facilities, REAP, and Value-Added Producer Grant programmes, and a feasibility study prepared by an independent qualified consultant is commonly required. Community Facilities financing can be relevant for public and nonprofit recreation sponsors, but eligibility depends on the applicant, the location, the project type, and current programme requirements. Not every sports or recreation facility qualifies, and the study does not assume that it does.
It depends on the programme. SBA engagements are prepared to the SOP 50 10 8 minimums of 1.15x operating and 1.00x global. Conventional lenders typically state their own standard, commonly around 1.20x, and some require more for specialised-use assets. USDA programmes apply the standards set out in their own regulations. The study models coverage against the standard that actually applies to the transaction, reports it at each stage of the ramp rather than at stabilization only, and stress-tests it against interest-rate and utilization scenarios.
Demand is built in sequence: define the trade area by realistic drive time, resolve population by age cohort, apply sport-specific participation rates, narrow to paid or commercial participation where the evidence supports it, inventory existing competitive courts and fields including public and school supply, add credible announced supply, estimate the subject facility’s practical capacity, calculate the capture the pro forma implies, and validate utilization against price and programme. The step that most often exposes an unsupportable projection is the second one, because total population is not paying demand.
There is no single defensible national figure, and any consultant offering one without reference to your market should be questioned. Reasonable capture depends on the competitive field, the amount of low-cost municipal and school supply available to the same users, the subject’s price relative to those alternatives, travel convenience, facility quality, sport mix, and the loyalty established clubs and leagues command. The study calculates the capture the subject’s own pro forma requires, compares it against those conditions, and states whether the evidence supports it.
That is a question the feasibility study tests rather than accepts. Too few surfaces can forfeit tournament eligibility, since sanctioning bodies often require a minimum count to run a bracket on schedule. Too many create construction, HVAC, lighting, maintenance, and staffing cost against hours the market will not buy. An incorrect sport mix can also produce surfaces that compete for the same evening block rather than adding demand. Each incremental component is tested for its own market support, and where evidence is thin the study says so rather than supplying a number.
No fixed percentage answers this, because break-even is a function of the subject’s own cost structure and pricing. The study calculates two separate thresholds. Operating break-even is the utilization at which the facility covers operating costs before debt service. Debt-service break-even is the utilization at which it also meets loan obligations at the required coverage standard, and it is materially higher. Both are expressed as sellable court-hours or field-hours by daypart and as member count, so the operator can see which specific hours must be sold.
Prime time is the narrow band of hours — typically weekday evenings plus weekend daytime — when most court and field demand actually occurs. It matters because ninety percent prime-time utilization does not mean ninety percent whole-day utilization. A facility can sell essentially all of its prime inventory and still be empty for much of the week. Modelling a single blended occupancy across all operating hours is one of the most common ways a sports pro forma overstates revenue, which is why the model builds court-hours by daypart and sums them.
Sometimes, and where they can it materially improves coverage. Senior play, homeschool programmes, daytime corporate and adult leagues, camps, school partnerships, training academies, and clinics can all generate genuine weekday daytime demand. Each is evaluated on evidence: whether that population exists in the trade area, whether comparable facilities actually fill those hours, and at what rate. What the study will not do is assume off-peak demand appears because capacity is available, since unearned off-peak revenue is a frequent and material source of projection error.
Membership categories — founding or pre-sale, standard, family, and youth — are modelled separately because they carry different prices, utilization intensity, and retention. Pricing is modelled with its actual discount structure rather than at list, and blended yield per active member drives revenue. Churn is modelled explicitly rather than netted into a growth rate, because a facility adding members steadily while losing a meaningful share each month has a very different cash profile during the ramp, which is exactly when coverage is tightest.
No, and this distinction is treated as a hard line. Signed and paid memberships are evidence. Email sign-ups, survey responses, petition signatures, and social-media following are expressions of interest. The conversion rate from expressed enthusiasm to a recurring paid membership is highly variable and, in most markets, well below what sponsors expect. Soft interest is reported honestly as interest and is not converted into contracted revenue in the pro forma.
Evidence for tournament revenue is graded. A sponsor’s expectation of tournaments is the weakest form and carries no weight in the model. Documented contact with named organisers is better, written expressions of interest are stronger, and signed agreements, letters of intent, or booking commitments are strongest — only these support material tournament revenue in early years. A full tournament calendar is not assumed from opening, because event operators typically require an operating track record before relocating an established event.
Generally no, and treating it as though it can is a serious underwriting error. Tournament demand concentrates into weekend blocks — the inventory that was already easiest to sell — and it does nothing for a weekday calendar that local demand cannot fill. It is also mobile, and can move to a competing regional venue between seasons. Local recurring demand and destination demand are modelled as two separate engines, and each must stand on its own evidence.
No. A feasibility study asks whether the project can generate enough supportable revenue and cash flow to operate and service its debt. An economic impact study asks what visitor spending, employment, and tax receipts the project could generate for the surrounding community. A sports complex can produce substantial genuine economic impact while still failing as a standalone business, because most of that spending accrues to hotels, restaurants, and retailers rather than to the facility. The two analyses are never blended to improve a coverage ratio.
Yes. Public and nonprofit projects are evaluated against community need, access, the operating subsidy the sponsor is prepared to fund, tax or public participation in the capital structure, anticipated economic impact, and any public-private partnership structure. Such a project may be entirely appropriate while running a structural operating deficit, provided that deficit is quantified and budgeted. What the firm will not do is present a subsidised project as commercially self-supporting.
As its own business, not as a percentage uplift on sports revenue. The build uses facility traffic by daypart, the attachment rate at which users actually purchase, average transaction value, gross margin after cost of goods, and the incremental staffing the outlet requires. Attachment rates differ sharply by format and daypart — a social racquet venue on a Friday evening and a youth turf complex on a weekday afternoon do not convert at similar rates — so a single blended assumption is avoided.
Only where it is contracted. Signed sponsorship with a named counterparty, a term, and a stated amount is carried at its contracted value. Speculative sponsorship, however plausible, is disclosed and, if included at all, is modelled conservatively and outside the coverage test. Sponsorship is never permitted to carry debt service on an unsupported basis, because it is among the first line items to disappear when a local economy softens and it is rarely secured on a pre-opening timeline.
It varies by format, market, and pre-opening sales, so the study models the ramp month by month rather than applying a standard period. Memberships build net of churn, leagues establish over full season cycles, tournament operators typically wait for a track record, and programming develops as instructors and formats come online. Meanwhile debt service, utilities, and core staffing begin at full rate on opening day. The study quantifies the cumulative operating deficit across the ramp and states the working capital required to fund it.
Because a project can be entirely sound at Year 3 and still not survive Years 1 and 2. Fixed costs start immediately while revenue builds slowly, and a study reporting only stabilized coverage conceals that gap. This is the single most common structural failure in sports facility underwriting. Coverage is therefore reported at each stage of the ramp, and the month at which cumulative cash requirement peaks is identified explicitly so the sponsor and lender can size working capital against it.
The study reports that conclusion. The fee is fixed and is not contingent on the outcome, and determinations are not revised under pressure — fiduciary duty runs to the lender and the agency, never to the borrower. In many cases an unfavourable finding is not the end of the project: the analysis usually identifies what would need to change, whether that is facility size, sport mix, pricing, capital structure, working capital, or site. A study that tells a sponsor what they want to hear has no value to a credit committee.
Both. Every engagement delivers a complete narrative report together with the linked Excel model. The model is fully linked with no hardcoded values, which means a credit officer or third-party reviewer can change any input — utilization, membership yield, pricing, interest rate, development cost — and observe the effect on coverage immediately. It includes a ten-year pro forma, sensitivity analysis at plus or minus 5, 10, and 15 percent, and interest-rate stress from +0.5 to +3.0 percent.
A business plan is prepared for the sponsor and sets out how the sponsor intends to build and operate the business. A feasibility study is prepared independently and tests whether the market will support it, at what level, and under what conditions. A lender or agency requires the second precisely because it is not written by the party seeking the loan. The two documents are complementary, and a feasibility study is not a substitute for the operating and management plan a sponsor is expected to provide.
Site characteristics are evaluated as feasibility inputs: drive-time access from the population centres generating demand, highway access for regional and tournament users, parking measured against tournament and league peak rather than average demand, circulation and team-bus access where the programme requires it, visibility, zoning and permitted use, noise and neighbourhood compatibility, and utility capacity for a high-load indoor facility. Wert-Berater does not provide traffic engineering, civil engineering, architectural, or zoning legal opinions, and recommends the appropriate licensed professional where a site issue could be material.
The fee is fixed and quoted in writing within one business day of receiving a project summary. Because project scope, loan program, and data complexity vary, the firm does not publish a rate schedule; the quote reflects the actual engagement. No fee is contingent on the outcome, and the determination is not revised under pressure.
Standard delivery is ten to fifteen business days from a complete data room. Rush delivery is available and quoted at the time of engagement. The clock starts when all required project information is received — site data, proposed fee schedule, management plan, and construction or equipment budget — not when the engagement opens.
Revenue is highly daypart-dependent: prime-time demand does not fill off-peak hours, and a pro forma that blends utilization across all hours overstates income. Startup facilities carry no operating history, so coverage rests entirely on modeled assumptions. Municipal and school-district supply is often overlooked in competitive analysis, understating the effective competition a new facility faces.
A complete data room for this asset class includes the site or lease information, the proposed program and court or field fee schedule, any existing membership or booking records for an operating facility, the management plan identifying the operator and key personnel, and the construction or equipment budget. Incomplete submissions extend the delivery timeline.
Yes. Mixed-use sports and recreation facilities — those combining courts or fields with a taproom, restaurant, or event hall — are evaluated with each revenue stream modeled on its own economics. Ancillary revenue is not blended into court utilization; it is stress-tested separately and held to the same coverage standard as the primary sports revenue.
No. A feasibility study is an independent analytical document prepared to the applicable program standard. It supports the lender’s credit decision; it does not determine it. No agency has approved, endorsed, or accepted any particular study in advance, and no finding by the firm constitutes a commitment to lend.
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Wert-Berater, Inc. is an independent provider of feasibility studies and other related services. The firm does not provide financing or equity investment advice, and does not arrange, broker, or place debt or equity capital of any kind.
All appraisal assignments are performed by Bruce E. Jones, MAI, ASA-GC, BCA, CMEA, a member of the Appraisal Institute since 2006, a staff member of Wert-Berater, Inc. and owner of Special Purpose Realty Valuation.