Overview of Sports Facility Management
Sports facility management is a lengthy and tedious work, which also requires deep attention to details of various aspects. It is extremely crucial to understand the intricate details. For this, a sports organization or committee needs to conduct appropriate and effective activities, which include designing, planning, space planning, learning, capital management, product management, property management, construction management, and many others. It should be noted that sports facility management extends way beyond the “game day” activities. In addition to this, for performing these different activities an organization has to develop an environment that functions in a disciplined manner. It is due to these wide ranges of activities that have to be conducted for sports facility management that the approach of a sports organization varies from each other. In this assignment, the sports activities of two organization that are BH Live Portsmouth & Portsmouth City Council has been analyzed to gain a deeper understanding of sports management and the different concept associated with it.
Portsmouth is a popular port city in England in the region of Hampshire. At this place, the Portsmouth City Council plays a humongous role in the administration of the city, which requires analyzing different aspects in-depth for offering the people of Portsmouth with effective services. The organization BH Live Portsmouth, on the other hand, is responsible for offering sports activities to the people that help in encouraging young people to become good sportsmen (BH Live, 2019).
The organization BH Live Portsmouth is a leading event operator organization. It is a social enterprise which means that the organization offers services to better the lives of people and the profits earned from these services are reinvested for other social objectives. Therefore, BH Live Portsmouth organizes events, with the main aim to enrich the lives of people that are conducted with the approach of profit for purpose. The events of this organization are built around this prime objective. In the year 2018, the organization was involved in creating more than 500 events. The event’s organization by BH Live Portsmouth is mostly associated with sports, culture, and entertainment. The organization makes a massive contribution to cultural tourism and also in the local economy (Glückler, 2010).
The vision of the organization BH Live Portsmouth is – “to work for the people and improve their quality of life by encouraging and promoting well-being and health in the complete community.” In addition to this, the mission of the organization is – “to inspire, encourage, and promote wellbeing in the communities with market-leading events that offer people with a positive experience.” The organization has three main objectives that can be termed as social objectives, which are, encourage maximum people to participate in physical activity, attracting large number of entertaining audiences, and finally, delivering economic benefits. In the city of Portsmouth, there are seven centers of BH Live Portsmouth, which include Mountbatten, Gymnastics Centre, Tennis Centre, Wimbledon Park, Charter, Pyramids, and Eastney. BH Live Portsmouth is a private organization that is jointly owned by various organizations, which include BCP Council, Portsmouth City Council, CROYDON, and GLL. Therefore, the relationship which BH Live Portsmouth and Portsmouth City Council are of partners. The organization BH Live Portsmouth targets community people and for this, it is important for them to build a relationship with the local administrating body, which also explains its association with Portsmouth City Council. The schemes in which BH Live Portsmouth is involved are BH Live Portsmouth Experience cards, BH Live Portsmouth Tickets, and BH Live Portsmouth Pay as you go. These are the three main schemes which BH Live Portsmouth work on in collaboration with Portsmouth City Council.
BH Live Portsmouth
On the other hand, Portsmouth City Council is a local and unitary authority that has the power of district council and Non-metropolitan County. It is responsible for offering various services to the people of Portsmouth, which include libraries, tax billing, waste collection and disposal, planning applications, and also social services (Ferreira, Storopoli & Serra, 2014). The Portsmouth City Council is the local education authority too. The activities of the city council are governed by the mayor and currently, the council is in the hands of Cllr David Fuller (Portsmouth City Council, 2019). The city council has five main objectives which are built for the betterment of the people of Portsmouth, which are, building a collaborative working environment in Portsmouth, building an environment that is safe, healthy, and diverse, promote regeneration that is built around the culture of the city, building an environment for people that is perfect to live, work and visit, and finally, a cleaner, greener, and safer city (Hammond, Lee, Juravich & Kornspan, 2018). All these different objectives of the city council highlight that the main vision of the council is to improve the quality of life of the people of Portsmouth in all aspects. For accomplishing, its objectives the city council offers people with services that are built on their policies and strategies (Elmose-Østerlund & Iversen, 2019). For instance, the city council is involved with policies or schemes like health & wellbeing strategy, regeneration strategy, sustainability in Portsmouth, and many others. Under these strategies the city council works for the betterment of people.
With this, it can be stated that the BH Live Portsmouth and Portsmouth City Council have a similar vision that is improving the lives of people, by increasing their quality of life. In the year 2013, the Portsmouth City Council collaborated with the BH Live Portsmouth, with the main aim to make the city more active. This collaboration was initially done for managing Pyramids, but later the collaboration increased and now both the organization work together for various different locations in Portsmouth to increase the activity of the people of Portsmouth (Daugeliene, Apanaviciene & Kuneviciute, 2013). With this, it can also be stated that the sports management theory that has been utilized here is strategic alliance and network theory. The amalgamation of both these aspects has helped in fulfilling the common objectives of both these organizations (Russo & Cesarani, 2017).
According to the latest reports, the collaboration between BH Live Portsmouth and Portsmouth City Council is for ten years, under which the main aim is to make the city of Portsmouth active by increasing the physical activities of the local people, along with the visitors (Cunningham, 2013). The first scheme which made this collaboration happen was the Pyramids. With the initiative of Pyramids, both the organizations have provided the people of Portsmouth with the largest leisure center that offers various different activities, which include, spa, gym, fitness studio, water play for complete family, an adventure world which is three-level and has various mazes, ball pits, and climbing nets. There is also a café and bar, along with the facility of free Wi-Fi. There are professionals who teach people different activities and the dangerous activities are performed with necessary safety harnesses. On the other hand, with the new scheme of BH Live Portsmouth, the organization was able to increase the activity level massively. The pay as you go scheme has helped in attaining more than 4,000 memberships, which is a major step towards fulfilling the common objective of BH Live Portsmouth and Portsmouth City Council. The contract between both the organizations was to increase the creativity and activity level of the people of Portsmouth and according to the latest ten-year plan of BH Live Portsmouth, the organization will successfully achieve it, which is to transfer “inactivity to activity” (Wright, 2012). With the scheme “pay as you go”, the activity level of children and adults both have increased massively, with children regularly participating in swimming and adventurous activities, whereas the adults are now regular to the gym and other exercising facilities (BH Live, 2019).
Portsmouth City Council
With this, it can be stated that the strategic alliance and the network theory has been extremely beneficial for Portsmouth as it has helped in increasing the activity of people (Bill, 2009). Though it should be noted that Portsmouth City Council for its health and wellbeing strategy requires support from a prominent organization that helps in building an environment that promotes healthy lifestyle, therefore, the Portsmouth City Council required support from BH Live Portsmouth. In the same way, the BH Live is expanding and thus, a collaboration with the Portsmouth City Council will strengthen its image in the market. Therefore, both the organization was in need of each other.
Conclusion
With this, it can be concluded that for effective sports management, there is a need for collaborating with prominent entities that can help in conducting the various activities effectively. It is crucial that the collaborating entities should share a common vision and objectives, so as to work appropriately for the common goals. The organization BH Live Portsmouth and Portsmouth City Council have a common objective that is to replace inactivity with activity. Also, BH Live Portsmouth all the policies and schemes are designed around these prime goals, while the Portsmouth City Council is responsible for the health and well-being of the people of Portsmouth, thus, they both were successfully able to perform effective sports facility management.
References
BH Live. (2019). Getting Portsmouth’s community more active – BH Live. Retrieved 30 October 2019, from https://www.bhlive.org.uk/plans-to-get-portsmouths-community-more-active-revealed/
BH Live. (2019). New schemes get thousands of Portsmouth residents active – BH Live. Retrieved 30 October 2019, from https://www.bhlive.org.uk/new-schemes-get-thousands-of-portsmouth-residents-active/
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Portsmouth City Council. (2019). Policies and strategies. Retrieved 30 October 2019, from https://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/ext/your-council/policies-and-strategies/policies-and-strategies
Russo, M., & Cesarani, M. (2017). Strategic Alliance Success Factors: A Literature Review on Alliance Lifecycle. International Journal Of Business Administration, 8(3), 1-7.
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