Most sports clubs renew their insurance every year without giving it much thought. The renewal notice arrives, the premium gets paid, and everyone gets back to the important business of running the club.
It’s understandable. Club committees and treasurers are volunteers giving up their time. Insurance isn’t the most exciting item on the agenda.
But there’s a difference between renewing your insurance and actually reviewing it. And for clubs that have grown, changed, or expanded their activities, that difference can matter a great deal.
How clubs evolve – and why insurance needs to keep up
Sports clubs rarely stay the same for long. A football club adds a 3G pitch. A cricket club builds a new pavilion. A tennis club launches a junior academy. A padel club opens its doors for the first time and starts hiring courts to the public.
Each of those changes affects the risk profile of the club. New facilities, new activities, more people on site, more events – all of these things have insurance implications.
The problem is that when a policy is simply renewed rather than reviewed, those changes often don’t get captured. The cover reflects how the club looked when the policy was first written, not how it looks today.
We reviewed a football club’s insurance recently and found that an entire section of their expanded stadium had never been added to the policy. The club had grown significantly over the years. The insurance hadn’t kept pace.
Nobody had done anything wrong. It was simply a case of the club evolving faster than the paperwork.
The questions that make the difference
When we speak with a sports club, we don’t just ask what sport they play. We want to understand how the club actually operates today.
Some of the things we ask about:
- Facilities – What do you have on site? Has anything been added or changed recently? Do you hire any facilities out to other clubs or the public?
- Coaching and staff – Who coaches at the club? Are they paid employees, self-employed contractors, or volunteers? Do you have DBS-checked coaches working with children?
- Events and tournaments – Do you run events outside of regular fixtures? Tournaments, fundraisers, social events? Are these covered under your current policy?
- Equipment – What equipment does the club own? Is it all declared on the policy? Is it covered when it’s off-site or in transit?
- Volunteers – How many volunteers are involved in running the club? What activities do they carry out? The question of how volunteers are covered is one that comes up regularly and isn’t always straightforward.
- Membership – Has your membership grown? A larger membership can affect your liability cover.
These aren’t difficult questions. But they’re the ones that reveal whether a policy genuinely fits the club or whether it’s simply been rolled over from the previous year.
A note on padel clubs specifically
Padel has grown remarkably quickly in the UK and it’s a sector we’ve really enjoyed getting to know. What we’ve found is that padel clubs have some specific insurance considerations that a generic sports club policy doesn’t always address well.
Court liability – particularly when hiring courts to the public, coaching sessions, equipment, and events all need to be considered carefully. A club that runs a full coaching programme has different needs to one that purely hires courts. Getting that right requires a broker who understands how padel clubs actually work, not just how to categorise them.
What a proper review looks like
A proper insurance review for a sports club isn’t a lengthy or complicated process. It’s a conversation – one that covers how the club operates today, what’s changed since the last review, and whether the current cover still fits.
Most of the time, the existing cover is broadly right and just needs updating in a few areas. Occasionally we find something more significant. Either way, the club comes away with a clearer picture of where they stand.
That clarity is worth having before something goes wrong, rather than after.
When did someone last properly review your club’s insurance?
If the honest answer is “I’m not sure” or “it just renews automatically,” it might be worth a conversation.
We work with sports clubs across a range of sports – football, rugby, cricket, tennis, padel, and more. We’d be happy to take a look at your current cover and talk through whether it still reflects how your club operates today.
📞 01829 706 436
✉️ info@portalinsurance.co.uk
🌐 portalbrokinggroup.co.uk