Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
How tennis academies sell court hours and coaching together
A court hour and a coaching hour come out of the same calendar. Publish one calendar, price the quiet hours separately, and sell the pair to the same player.
The GullySales team · Updated 3 Oct 2026 · 8 min read
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A tennis academy sells two things out of one calendar: a coaching hour, where the coach is the product, and a court hour, where the surface is. Most academies run the first properly and give the second away by accident. Sell them together by publishing one calendar that shows what is free, pricing the daytime hours as their own product, and asking every coached player whether they want a court to practise on. The ratio question decides the coaching; availability and price decide the court.
Two products, one calendar
| Coaching hour | Court hour | |
|---|---|---|
| Who buys | A parent, for a child, for a term | A group of adults, for Saturday evening |
| What decides it | The coach, the ratio, the level plan | Whether the slot is free and what it costs |
| How long they decide for | A season | Ten minutes |
| Where it is lost | After a trial that nobody followed up | In the gap before anyone replies |
| What you should ask next | Does she want a practice court | Do they want the same hour again |
The two buyers are not strangers to each other. The father who books a court on Sunday has a daughter who could be in the Wednesday batch. The teenager in the development group needs somewhere to hit on a Saturday. Nobody asks, because the batch register and the court diary are kept by different people.
The ratio question decides the coaching sale
Parents ask how many children share a court before they ask anything else, and they ask it because four on a court is a different lesson from two. Answer with the number you run at each level, and say how many balls a child actually hits in an hour.
Then write a level plan to go with it. What a beginner is working on, what moves a child into the next group, and who decides. A parent comparing two academies on the phone will remember the one that described the Wednesday group in detail and forget the one that said we have very good coaching.
Who is free on a weekday morning
Weekday daytime is where the money is lost, and it will never be sold to the people who fill your evenings. Go after the groups whose day is already free.
Retired players and home-makers who want a morning hour and some company. Night-shift staff from the nearby offices who are awake at eleven. Schools without their own courts, which will take a block for a term. A coaching tie-up where another academy hires your court while its own is being relaid. Physiotherapists who want a flat surface for drills. One-to-one players who hate the evening queue.
For example, a two-court academy in Jayanagar, Bengaluru, paying rent whether anyone plays or not. Say the court costs ₹900 an hour to keep open, lights off. An empty eleven o'clock is ₹900 gone. Sold at ₹500 to four seniors, it has paid for itself and brought four new people through the gate. The figure is invented; the arithmetic is the one to do on your own costs.
Package the two, do not discount either
A practice-hour card for coached players: a set of court hours at a members' rate, bought in advance, used when they like. A morning rate that only exists before four o'clock. A corporate block for an office within two kilometres, sold as a proposal with a format and a date rather than as a post on Instagram.
What not to do is cut the evening price to look competitive. You will fill hours that were already full and lose the margin that pays for the mornings. Nor is a listing on every booking app worth it for a two-court academy, because the commission falls hardest on the slots you would have sold anyway.
What stops a booking that was ready to happen
Four things, in order of how often they happen. No price anywhere on the website or the profile, so the group rings the venue that published one. A number that nobody picks up between six and nine, which is exactly when groups decide. A booking taken on a notepad, so two groups turn up for the same hour and one of them writes a review about it. And no answer on what happens if it rains.
Write the rules once: advance, cancellation, rain, floodlights, how many players a court takes. Put them on the booking page. Disputes almost always come from a rule that existed only in the manager's head. Our page for tennis academies sets out the rest of the picture.
What to do next
- Put every batch, every court hour and every price on one page that a player can read without ringing.
- Write the ratio and the level plan for each coaching group.
- List your empty daytime hours for the past fortnight and work out what they cost you.
- Ask every coached family whether the child wants a practice court, and every casual group whether they want the same slot again.
- Write one corporate proposal and take it to three offices near the courts.
- Fix the rain and floodlight rules in writing.
Start with the empty hours, because they are the only part of this that is already paid for. If you want them counted and a plan built around your own calendar, book the free audit and we will go through the diary with you.
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