Five numbers that tell you if your courts make money

Most venue owners can tell you if last week felt busy. Very few can tell you what Court 2 earned on Tuesday, or whether mornings are growing or dying.

The venue numbers that close that gap are just five, checked weekly, same day every week: utilization by hour, revenue per court, online share of bookings, cancellations and no shows, and your peak slot. Here is what each one tells you.

1. What is your utilization by hour?

Of the court hours you could have sold, what share did you sell, per hour of the day? Not the overall average; the average is a comfort number, the hourly breakdown is a decision number.

It tells you which hours to raise, which need a promo or a product like morning open play, and whether that dead Wednesday afternoon is a pattern. It is also the raw material for pricing your courts from data instead of gut feel. Watch the shape week over week: peaks that widen mean demand is growing, peaks that flatten mean a competitor is eating your prime time.

2. What does each court actually earn?

Total revenue split across courts, weekly. Courts are rarely equal: the one nearest the entrance, the one with the best lighting, the one the coaches favor. If Court 4 consistently earns 30 percent less than Court 1, that gap is telling you something about lighting, surface or how staff assign walk-ins.

Revenue per court is also the honest way to judge any change. New rates, new sessions, new hours: did the peso number per court move or not?

3. How many bookings arrive online?

What fraction of bookings came through your booking system versus walk-ins and chat? You want this rising, because online bookings create data, lock slots against double booking, and happen while you sleep.

A low or falling share means friction: players find it easier to message you than to book, which puts your staff right back in the human calendar business, with all its hidden costs. Find the friction, remove it.

4. Cancellations and no shows, counted separately

A cancellation with notice is recoverable inventory; a no show at peak is pure loss. If no shows cluster on Friday nights, your deposit and waitlist policy is too soft for peak. If cancellations spike inside 24 hours, your window needs teeth.

This number is also your early warning on regulars. A reliable weekly group that starts cancelling is often a group about to switch venues, and one message this week is cheaper than a promo next month.

5. How fast does your peak slot sell?

Know your single most contested slot, how far ahead it sells out, and its price. Selling out five days ahead at ₱400, every week? The price is low.

Suddenly taking until game day to fill? Something changed: a new venue, a season shift, a league that moved. Your peak slot reacts to the market faster than any other part of your business, so read it weekly.

One catch, and it is the whole catch: your booking method decides whether these numbers exist at all. In Messenger threads and a notebook, none of the five exist without hours of tallying, so they will not be checked, so decisions stay guesses. Dula, the booking platform we built and run in Cebu, collects all five as a side effect of simply taking bookings; fifteen minutes every Monday will change more decisions than any amount of standing at the counter watching the courts.