To run a tennis coaching business in Australia, treat court hours as your stock. Build a term-based program around juniors by ball colour, squads, privates and adult sessions. Price by the term, plan for rain and heat before the season starts, keep coaches qualified and checked, and sell the court hours you can’t coach.
It’s 3.40pm on a Thursday in February and the radar is turning green. You have three Orange Ball groups, a squad and two privates booked from 4pm, and 31 families who all want to know the same thing. By the time you’ve answered them, the rain has passed, half the kids have gone home, and Court 4 sits empty for the night.
Key takeaways
- Courts are the scarce asset. Measure how many court hours you sell each week, not just how many students you have.
- Run juniors through Tennis Australia’s Hot Shots stages (Blue, Red, Orange, Green) so parents can see progress in ball colours.
- Charge by the term for groups and squads, and keep casual pricing for privates, clinics and court hire.
- Write your rain and heat rules down before the season, and make sure washouts never count against a family’s make-up limit.
- Empty court hours can still earn money: sell them as hire, holiday clinics or match play.
What does a tennis coaching business actually sell?
A tennis coaching business sells court time with a coach attached. Unlike a dance studio or tutoring centre, you can’t add a second room on a busy night. Most coaches work out of a club or council venue with a fixed number of courts, and the after-school window from about 3.30pm to 7pm is where most of your junior income is made.
There’s plenty of demand. AusPlay data from the Australian Sports Commission estimates 1,118,000 Australians aged 15 and over played tennis at least once in 2025, along with 187,000 children aged 0 to 14. The question for most coaches isn’t whether people want to play. It’s whether your timetable turns those people into full courts every week.
How should you structure your tennis program?
Structure it in layers, from beginners up, so every player has an obvious next step. A typical Australian program has six parts.
Juniors: Hot Shots stages
Tennis Hot Shots is Tennis Australia’s official starter program for kids. It runs in four stages: Blue (ages 3 to 5), Red (ages 5 to 8), Orange (ages 8 to 10) and Green (ages 10 and up), each with a different ball, court size and net. Players then graduate to the yellow ball on a full-size court.
Group these classes by stage, not just age. A seven-year-old who can rally is wasted in a Red group of first-timers, and a ten-year-old beginner will struggle in Green. Groups of six to eight per court work well for Red and Orange.
Squads by level
Once players are on the yellow ball, run squads by level: development, intermediate, and a competition or performance squad. Squads are usually longer (90 minutes to two hours) with four to six players per court. They’re where your keenest juniors stay for years, so treat squad places as something players earn.
Privates and semi-privates
Privates bring in the most per court hour but use one coach per player. Semi-privates (two to four players) are often the better use of a court, and they suit siblings and friends. Keep privates out of the after-school peak where you can, and fill the early morning, school-hours and late evening slots with them instead.
Adult and Cardio Tennis
Adults fill the courts that juniors can’t: early mornings, weekday mid-mornings and after 7pm. Beginner adult courses, social drills and Cardio Tennis (a fitness-style group session) all work here. Adults also bring their kids, and vice versa.
Holiday clinics
School holidays empty your weekly timetable but free up the daytime. Half-day or full-day clinics for juniors turn those quiet weeks into some of your best weeks of the year.
Match play
Players who only drill tend to drift off. Running regular match play, a ladder, or a pathway into local junior competition gives players a reason to keep coming and gives parents something to watch.
How full are your courts?
Court utilisation is the share of your available court hours that are actually booked, by coaching or by hire. It’s the single most useful number in a tennis coaching business, because it shows you where the money is hiding.
To work it out, count your courts, multiply by the hours each court is available per week, then divide your booked hours by that total. Do it from your timetable, not from memory. Most coaches find their peak hours are close to full and their off-peak hours are close to empty.
Worked example
Say you coach out of a four-court club. Courts are available to you 60 hours each per week, so 240 court hours in total. You use 80 hours for coaching, and the club hires out another 40.
- Booked hours: 80 + 40 = 120, so utilisation is 120 ÷ 240 = 50%.
- Empty court hours: 120 per week.
- If coaching earns an average of $90 per court hour and hire earns $24, a week brings in (80 × $90) + (40 × $24) = $8,160. Over 48 weeks, that’s $391,680.
- Filling just a quarter of the empty hours with coaching (30 hours a week) adds 30 × $90 × 48 = $129,600 a year, before coach wages.
Most of those empty hours will be off-peak, so don’t expect to fill them with the same junior groups. Adult sessions, school-hours privates, holiday clinics and school programs are what fill them. Try your own numbers below.
Court utilisation and revenue
Court utilisation: 50%
Empty court hours per week: 120
Current annual revenue: $391,680
Annual revenue if you filled 25% of the empty hours with coaching: $521,280 (+$129,600)
Assumes every court hour earns the same average coaching or hire rate across the year, and that booked hours can’t exceed available hours. Figures are revenue before coach wages, court costs and GST.
Should you charge by the term or casually?
Charge by the term for groups and squads, and keep casual or pack pricing for privates, clinics and hire. Term fees give you cash before the term starts, lock in a place each week, and make families less likely to skip a cold Tuesday because they’ve already paid.
For example, a 10-week Orange Ball term at $24 a lesson is $240 paid up front. A casual rate of $30 for the same lesson rewards families for committing and still gives you a fair price for drop-ins. Offer a sibling discount, prorate late joiners, and keep the casual option mainly for trial lessons and adults with unpredictable weeks.
Our guide on how to price coaching classes walks through cost per class and how to raise prices without losing families.
How do you handle rain and heat cancellations?
Decide your rules before the season starts, write them into your terms, and tell families at enrolment. The worst time to invent a wet weather policy is 3.40pm on a wet Thursday.
Rain
Set one decision time (say, 90 minutes before the first lesson) and one channel where families hear the call. Then pick what a washout earns: a make-up lesson, a credit, or a catch-up week at the end of term. Many coaches build one or two spare weeks into the term calendar so washouts can be made up without chasing individual families.
Whatever you choose, a lesson you cancel shouldn’t eat into a family’s own make-up allowance. If a child has already used their one make-up for being sick, they shouldn’t lose a rained-out lesson too. Our make-up class policy guide has a template you can adapt.
Heat
Australian summers need a heat rule as well. Tennis Australia’s extreme weather policy for competition uses the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature from the Bureau of Meteorology, with lower suspension thresholds for players aged 16 and under. You don’t have to copy it for coaching, but it’s a sensible reference point. Many coaches move hot-day junior lessons to early morning or shorten them, with water breaks between drills.
How do you roster and pay tennis coaches?
Roster coaches by stage and level, keep the same coach with the same group for the whole term, and pay according to how they’re engaged. Parents notice when their child has a different coach every week, and so do the kids.
Qualifications and checks
Tennis Australia runs a coach education pathway that starts with Participation and Trainee coaching courses, then Development (Level 1), Club Professional (Level 2) and Performance (Level 3). The Development course requires coaches to be at least 16, hold a state or territory screening clearance, be coaching at least five hours a week, and be supervised by a Club Professional coach. That makes it a good fit for your best assistant coaches.
Every coach working with juniors needs a current working with children check for your state. The Australian Institute of Family Studies explains that each state and territory runs its own scheme, under different names (Queensland’s is the blue card, for example), and that checks are not transferable between them. If you run clinics across a border, your coaches need a check for each state.
Pay
If your coaches are employees, the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Fitness Industry Award summary lists tennis coaching among the work it covers. Many coaches are engaged as contractors instead. The ATO’s guidance on employees and contractors explains how to tell the difference, because it changes your tax and super obligations. This is general information, so check with your accountant.
A common setup is an hourly rate for group coaching and a percentage of the fee for privates. Whatever you choose, pay coaches for washed-out sessions in a consistent way and put it in writing. Coaches who lose income every time it rains will start looking elsewhere.
How do you keep parents informed about progress?
Use the ball colours. Parents understand “Oliver is nearly ready for Green Ball” far better than “he’s working on his split step”. Set two or three clear benchmarks for each stage, check them a couple of times a term, and tell parents when their child moves up.
Benchmarks can be simple: rally a set number of balls cross-court, land a number of first serves out of ten, play a full game with correct scoring. Add one line of coach feedback each term and parents will rarely ask “is it worth it?” at re-enrolment time. Families who can see progress stay longer, which the student retention guide covers in more detail.
How can court hire and other programs add income?
Sell the hours you can’t coach. If you control the courts, casual hire at off-peak times is close to pure margin. Price peak hours higher, make hire bookable online, and keep coaching and hire on one calendar so nobody turns up to find Court 2 double-booked.
Two other programs fill quiet hours well:
- School programs. Coaches can deliver tennis in schools through the government’s Sporting Schools program. The Sporting Schools tennis page says coaches must be Tennis Australia coach members aged 18 or over, with a current working with children check, a national police check and adequate insurance. School sessions run during the day, when your courts are quiet, and every class is a chance to invite kids to your Red Ball group.
- Holiday clinics. Run them in every school holiday, open bookings at least three weeks before, and give clinic families a simple next step into term lessons.
For more ways to fill quiet sessions, see how to fill empty class spots.
A weekly operating checklist for tennis coaches
- Monday: check the week’s forecast, including heat, and flag any sessions that may be affected.
- Check court utilisation for last week. Note any court hours that sat empty two weeks in a row.
- Confirm the coach roster, including cover for any coach who is away.
- Follow up overdue term fees and court hire invoices.
- Rebook any make-ups owed from last week’s washouts or absences.
- Contact any family whose child missed two lessons in a row.
- Update benchmarks for at least one group, and tell parents of any player moving up a ball colour.
- Check every coach’s working with children check and first aid expiry dates.
- Post next school holiday clinic dates if bookings aren’t open yet.
- Friday: send families any changes for the weekend (match play, court changes, weather plans).
Where does software fit in a tennis coaching business?
Software helps once you have more courts, coaches and families than you can track in your head. You can run a small program on a spreadsheet and a group chat. It starts to break when you add a second coach, court hire and a few washouts in the same week.
Outcoach for tennis clubs is one option built for this. It runs private, semi-private, group and high-performance lessons side by side, and lets you group players by ball colour (Red, Orange, Green and Yellow) or your own levels. When it rains, you can move a class to an indoor court or cancel it and issue make-up credits, then tell every family by SMS and email at once. On the make-up classes side, “Weather Cancelled” is one of the statuses that can bypass a student’s credit limit, so washouts don’t use up a family’s allowance.
Members and the public can book and pay for courts online alongside your lessons, coaches mark attendance on court in their own app, and the tennis page lists revenue and court use reports. Goal tracking lets you set benchmarks like “land 6 of 10 first serves” and share progress with parents in the free family app. Features vary by plan, so check the pricing page for what each tier includes. If you’re comparing tools, our TennisBiz vs InTennis vs ClubSpark vs Outcoach comparison sets out the differences, and you can start a free trial to test it on one term.
Frequently asked questions
Tennis Australia runs a coach education pathway: Participation and Trainee courses, then Development (Level 1), Club Professional (Level 2) and Performance (Level 3). The Development course needs you to be at least 16, hold a state screening clearance, coach five hours a week and be supervised by a Club Professional coach.
Yes, anyone coaching juniors should hold a current check for the state or territory they coach in. Each state runs its own scheme, such as Queensland’s blue card, and checks don’t transfer between states. If you run clinics in two states, you need a check for each one.
Tennis Hot Shots is Tennis Australia’s official starter program for kids. It uses slower balls and smaller courts across three stages: Red (ages 5 to 8), Orange (ages 8 to 10) and Green (ages 10 and up). Players then move to the yellow ball on a full-size court.
Charge per term for group lessons and squads, because it secures a weekly spot, brings cash in before the term and reduces casual skipping. Keep per-lesson or pack pricing for privates, holiday clinics, trial lessons and court hire, where families’ schedules vary more.
Set a decision time and one channel for the call, then decide what a washout earns: a make-up lesson, a credit or a catch-up week at the end of term. Lessons you cancel for weather shouldn’t count against a family’s own make-up allowance.
There’s no single target, but measure it weekly: booked court hours divided by available court hours. Peak after-school hours are often close to full while mornings and late evenings sit empty. Filling even a quarter of those empty hours with adults, privates or clinics adds real income.
