Marko Banušić for SportyPlus

Posted on Sep 13 Originally published at sporty.plus

How Far in Advance Should Members Be Allowed to Book Courts?

There is no correct booking window. There is only the window that matches how far ahead your
members actually plan, and most clubs have never chosen theirs deliberately — it is whatever
the software defaulted to.

It is worth choosing on purpose, because this one number decides who gets the best courts.

What the booking window actually controls

The booking window is the maximum number of days ahead a player can reserve. It looks like a
convenience setting. It is really an allocation policy.

Court time is not scarce in general — it is scarce between roughly 17:00 and 21:00 on
weekdays. Everything outside that band is usually available to anyone at any notice. So the
booking window does almost nothing for off-peak play, and almost everything for prime time.

Set it long and prime-time slots go to whoever plans furthest ahead, which in practice means
the same dozen well-organised members every week. Set it short and members struggle to
arrange a match with three other people's calendars.

The two failure modes

Window too long. A member opens the calendar on a Monday evening and every 19:00 court
for the next three weeks is taken. They are not competing on availability, they are
competing on diary discipline. Newer members conclude the club is full and stop looking.

Window too short. With a two-day window, organising doubles becomes a scramble. Members
cannot commit to a weekly game, coaches cannot plan, and everyone opens the app at the same
moment each morning — which produces a booking rush rather than fair distribution.

Both failures look like a capacity problem. Neither is.

Choosing your number

Start from how your members plan

Ask how a typical match gets arranged at your club. If members agree a game a few days ahead
by message, a 7-day window covers it. If your club revolves around fixed weekly groups, a
longer window matters less than you would think — those groups are better served by
recurring bookings than by racing to rebook every week.

A rough starting point:

Club type	Typical window
Members' club, social play	7 days
Commercial padel or pickleball centre	14 days
Club with strong coaching and league programme	7 days for members, longer for coaches
Facility with plentiful off-peak capacity	14–30 days

Treat these as somewhere to start, not as a recommendation. The measurable test comes later.

Differentiate by who is booking

A single window for everyone is rarely right, because members, guests and coaches are not
competing for the same thing.

User type	Window	Why
Members	7 days	The core allocation decision
Guests / non-members	3 days	Members get first claim on prime time
Coaches	30 days	Lessons are scheduled, not spontaneous
Club activities and leagues	unrestricted	Fixtures are set a season ahead
Administrators	unrestricted	Maintenance, events, exceptions

Giving guests a shorter window is the cleanest way to protect member value without banning
guest play — which clubs often do instead, losing the revenue and the recruitment channel
along with it.

If you sell membership tiers, the window is also one of the few benefits that costs the club
nothing to grant and that members genuinely feel. A premium tier booking 10 days out while
standard members book 7 is a real, visible difference.

Decide how the window opens

Two clubs with a 7-day window can behave completely differently depending on how it rolls.

Rolling by time — at 19:00 today, next Tuesday 19:00 becomes bookable. Availability
trickles out through the day, which spreads demand.

Rolling by day — at midnight, the whole of next Tuesday opens at once. Simpler to
explain, but it creates a rush at a fixed moment, and it rewards whoever is awake.

Rolling by time is usually fairer. Rolling by day is easier to communicate. If you choose
rolling by day, at least avoid opening at midnight; a mid-morning release is kinder and just
as fair.

Protect prime time separately if you need to

If prime time is the only real contention, consider a shorter window for those hours only —
members book 14 days ahead generally, but 5 days ahead for 18:00–21:00 slots. It keeps
planning flexibility for the quiet hours where nobody is competing, and tightens the rule
exactly where it matters.

This is more complex to explain, so reach for it only if a single window is not working.

A worked example

A club with six courts moves from a 21-day window to 7 days for members and 3 for guests.

Before, the 19:00 and 20:00 courts were fully booked about two weeks out. The same members
appeared in those slots most weeks, not through any unfairness but because they booked the
moment the window allowed.

After the change, prime-time courts fill roughly two to three days ahead instead. The same
number of courts is sold — the window does not create capacity — but a different and larger
set of members gets into them, and the club stops receiving "there is never anything
available" messages from people who were looking three days out.

The complaints the club does receive come from the members who lost their standing 19:00
slot. That is the real cost of the change, and it is worth answering directly: those groups
should be moved onto recurring bookings, which is the right tool for a fixed weekly game.

How SportyPlus can help

In SportyPlus the booking window is part of the club's court booking
rules rather than a single global number: it can differ by user type, so members, guests and
coaches each get their own, and it works together with the other rules that decide access to
prime time — booking limits, included hours from
membership plans, and prices that vary by time of day.

Because the rules are checked when the player picks a slot, members simply do not see times
they are not yet allowed to book, rather than being refused after choosing one.

Practical recommendations

Write down what problem you are solving before changing the number. "Prime time is gone too early" and "members cannot plan" need opposite adjustments.
Change one thing at a time. If you shorten the window and add booking limits in the same week, you will not know which one worked.
Always give guests a shorter window than members. It is the least contentious rule in this entire article.
Announce the change at least two weeks ahead, and explain it in terms of access for more members rather than as a restriction.
Move standing weekly games to recurring bookings before you shorten the window, or you will convert your most loyal members into your loudest critics.
Re-check after a month: how many days ahead do prime-time slots now fill, and how many distinct members played in them compared to before?

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