The List - The Services Business Network
General Manager
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General Manager – Sports and Leisure Centres
A Significant Sporting Estate and Commercial Opportunity in Berkshire.
An established independent schools group offers an exceptional sporting environment, with an extensive portfolio of indoor and outdoor facilities serving pupils, the schools, and the wider community.
Sport is a fundamental part of the schools’ co-curricular proposition and their commitment to an all-embracing, rounded education. Across the sites, the sporting estate encompasses a remarkable breadth of facilities and activities, supported by specialist expertise across the individual sports and disciplines.
This is therefore a substantial and diverse operation — but the opportunity for the new General Manager is not simply to manage it.
It is to make it work harder.
The schools group is looking for a commercially minded and entrepreneurial leader who can maximise the utilisation, income and overall return from its sports facilities, infrastructure, and assets, whilst maintaining the exceptional standards expected within the independent education environment.
The successful candidate will demonstrate the experience to identify opportunities, challenge established ways of working, develop new markets and partnerships, improve utilisation and customer engagement, and create sustainable growth across the operation.
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The role requires someone who instinctively sees the commercial opportunity in an asset — someone who can look at capacity, demand, pricing, programming, customer experience, partnerships and new income streams and ask:
“How can we do more with what we have?”
At the same time, this is an environment populated by highly capable specialists. The General Manager does not need to be the technical expert in every sport or facility. Instead, they will provide the strategic leadership, commercial focus and common direction that brings together the specialist teams responsible for individual sports and facilities.
They will need sufficient credibility and understanding of the sports, leisure, and development environment to engage confidently with those specialists, understand their priorities and ambitions, challenge constructively and ensure that their expertise is translated into outstanding customer experiences and a stronger overall business.
The result will be a role combining commercial leadership with a genuine sporting purpose: ensuring that an exceptional portfolio of facilities is fully utilised, financially sustainable and continually developed, whilst preserving its fundamental contribution to the education, wellbeing and development of pupils.
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For the right individual, this is an opportunity to take an already impressive sporting operation and unlock its next stage of commercial and organisational development — leading talented specialists, maximising significant assets and creating a sports-centre business that is both financially successful and integral to the distinctive experience offered by the schools.
The Opportunity
This is a role for an individual who combines commercial instinct, entrepreneurial energy and sporting credibility — someone who can see both the potential of the assets and the importance of the people who operate them.
You will have the autonomy and accountability to shape the future of the Sports Centres, working with specialist teams to turn a substantial sporting estate into an increasingly successful, sustainable, and customer-focused business.
Or put simply: A business leader who operates in a sporting/educational business environment, rather than a sports professional who happens to have some commercial responsibilities.
Immediate expressions of interest should be submitted with an up-to-date CV. Following an initial paper sift by The List – the retained search partner - client disclosure and a candidate brief will be forthcoming.
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