Why sport belongs at the centre of the school business case, where sports academy schools go wrong, and the questions investors should ask before building one.
The sandpit and the court
Some investors think schools are schools and sport is sport. In their model, sport is where children play between lessons, in the sandpits and on the courts, and it appears in the plan as a line in the capital budget.
It is an understandable view from outside the sector. A school is valued on enrolment, fees and margin, and sport looks like a cost that sits underneath all three. A sports programme, run separately, looks like a different business with different customers.
Both halves of that view miss how families choose schools and why they stay. In many markets, sport sits closer to the centre of the school business case than most investment papers allow for.
What sport does to a school’s numbers
The first effect is on enrolment. In a crowded premium market, most schools offer a recognised curriculum, qualified teachers and decent facilities, and parents struggle to tell them apart. A serious sports programme is one of the few things a family can see on a tour and remember afterwards. It gives the admissions team a reason for a family to choose this school over the one across the road.
Retention matters more, and it is where sport earns its keep. Families tend to move children between schools at transition points, most often in the early secondary years. A student who is in a squad, has a coach they trust and a fixture list they care about has a reason to stay that has nothing to do with exam results. Every student retained through the senior years is revenue the school does not have to replace through marketing.
Then there is the asset itself. A school uses its sports facilities for roughly half the days in a year, and for only part of each of those days. Evenings, weekends and holidays are idle capacity. Holiday camps, community memberships, club hire and specialist coaching can turn a cost centre into a modest revenue line, and the same programmes feed future enrolment.
None of this shows up if sport is modelled as a capital cost with no revenue attached. That is the gap in many investment papers.
Where sports academy schools go wrong
The opposite mistake is just as expensive. Some owners fall for the idea of a school built around one sport and size the whole project on it.
The arithmetic rarely supports a single-sport school. Only a small share of any year group will commit seriously to one sport, and fewer still will move country or change school for it. An elite golf or tennis cohort that looks healthy in a feasibility study can turn out to be a handful of students per year once the market is tested. Meanwhile the facilities have been built to the standard that cohort needs, and the cost sits on every family’s fee.
The promise is another weak point. Academies that market early, intensive specialisation as the route to a professional career are selling against the research. As Why the Best Rarely Peak First sets out, most adults who reach world-class level were not standouts as children, and most junior champions do not go on to adult success. A school that sells champions will eventually be measured on producing them.
Then there is the coach. Many academies are built around one exceptional person, with a method parents travel for. That is a real draw and a real exposure. If that coach leaves, a large part of the programme’s value walks out with them, and investors rarely price that in.
Owning the facilities or partnering for them
Most of the value sits in a broad programme run well, with a small number of sports taken seriously. That shapes what a school should own.
Core facilities used every day belong to the school: the pool, the courts, the fields and the sports hall. These carry the whole student body and support the community and holiday income described above. Specialist facilities that serve a narrow cohort are often better reached through a partner. A golf club, a tennis centre or an established youth programme already carries the cost of the asset and the coaching depth.
GSE is applying this split at Meridian International School, a British curriculum school with an integrated golf academy that GSE is developing in Vientiane, opening in September 2027. The school is being built on the grounds of Long Vien Golf Club, with its own coaching bays, driving range and simulator technology, and access to the club’s course.
Partnering brings its own risks. Youth sport is a business with its own sponsors, agents and commercial interests, and those interests do not always line up with a school’s duty to the child. Before signing, a school should know who funds the programme, who speaks to families about contracts and scholarships, and what happens to the arrangement if the lead coach moves on. Before You Partner With a Youth Sport Programme covers what to test.
The right answer varies by site and market. It is a decision to make early, in the feasibility stage, before the masterplan commits capital to facilities the cohort cannot fill.
Questions an investor should ask
- How does sport appear in the financial model? If it is only a capital line, the model is missing retention and secondary revenue, and probably undervaluing the project.
- How deep is the specialist cohort? Ask for evidence from the actual catchment, such as club membership and junior competition entries, before facilities are sized to it.
- What is being promised to families? Programmes framed around junior titles carry reputational risk when results do not follow. Programmes framed around development, university pathways and wellbeing are easier to deliver and defend.
- Who is the programme built around? If one coach carries the method, ask about contracts, succession and how the method is written down and taught to others.
- Who else is in the room? Where an outside programme is involved, understand its sponsors, its agents and how it earns money from the children it trains.
- How will the facilities earn outside school hours? Holiday, evening and community use should be modelled from the start, with the operational staffing to run it.
Sport inside the business case
The investor who sees sandpits and courts is looking at the facilities, while parents are looking at what their child will do in them and who will coach them. Schools that treat sport as part of the education, and model it that way, tend to fill places faster and keep families longer.
The opposite error, building a whole school around one sport and one coach, is harder to spot in a pitch deck and harder to fix once the concrete is poured. The investment case sits between the two, and it is worth working through before the masterplan is drawn.
Read next
- The Intelligent Performer. The kind of graduate a sports-led school should be designed to produce.
- Before You Partner With a Youth Sport Programme. Sponsors, agents, star coaches and what to put in writing.
- Why the Best Rarely Peak First. What the research says about early specialisation.