North-East Business

Snowfall affects half-year profits at five-a-side football centres

By Owen McAteer

10:05am Tuesday 7th September 2010

A FIRM which has enjoyed strong growth after tapping into the ever-increasing popularity of five-a-side football saw its first-half revenues hit by heavy snow.

Goals Soccer Centres, which is opening a North-East facility in Sunderland later this year, to add to the existing Tees Valley centre, reported a slight drop in half year profits to £3.8m, down from £3.9m for the same period last year.

But the company, which already has 37 UK centres, including in Stockton Road, Middlesbrough, and a 41 per cent share of the market, said that without the severe weather pre-tax profits would have been up 18 per cent to £4.6m.

The first half of the year ended up being seriously hampered by the heavy snowfalls in the first quarter, which on average saw 23 days of trading being lost per centre.

While the poor weather meant like-for-like sales were three per cent down in the six months to June 30, the figure has shown an improvement to three per cent higher since then.

The East Kilbride firm said that World Cup-themed products and promotions drove a rise in bookings for children’s parties and corporate events during the month-long competition – a trend which continued during July and August.

Goals managing director Keith Rogers said: “Goals has delivered a robust trading performance in spite of the abnormal weather and a challenging economic environment.

‘‘We took advantage of the opportunity that the World Cup presented to increase interest in our key product areas.”

He added: ‘‘While the UK consumer outlook remains uncertain, we are confident that results for the year to December 31, will show continued growth and will be within the range of current market expectations.’’ Goals has announced that it would be opening four centres in the second half of the year.

These will be in Liverpool, Sunderland, Ipswich and Norwich, as well as the Sunderland centre, and it planned to open a minimum of six centres next year.

The North-East facility is being run in partnership with Sunderland College to create a complex with ten all-weather pitches and a sports pavilion at its sixth form centre, in the city’s Durham Road.

The centre, which is due to be open by Christmas, will be used by the college’s Football Development Centre, whose teams are the current North- East Colleges cup winners and the regional league winners.

Goals has opened four centres already this year in Liverpool, Portsmouth, Eltham and London, as well as its first centre in the US, in Los Angeles, in June.

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