I’m offering tennis lessons, at a big tennis facility. They cost $7271.93. I know that sounds like a lot, but, consider the following. The average incoming tennis student, based on prior demonstrated skills in tennis, is awarded a $1,000 admission bursary. This brings the cost of a package down to $6300, on average. For that, you get fifteen hours of tennis lessons per week with at least five established professionals in the field, and it’s a twenty-six week package! That’s 390 hours of tennis lessons for $6300, which works out to $16/hour for instruction!
Still not convinced? Well – and you’re not going to believe this – the cost of your lessons is tax deductible! This reduces the functional cost of your tuition, I mean, tennis lessons, by an average of 15%, or to about $5350, or about about $13.70 hour. I'll say that again – $13.70 an hour! That's about what Laser Tag costs! (You can even take out low-interest loans to cover the cost of your lessons, and the interest you pay on them is tax deductible, reducing the interest rate with inflation to about 1%).
In addition, I forgot to mention the other services we offer. You have free weekly opportunities for one-on-one consultation with your tennis instructors – some of whom are world class tennis champions – in addition to a wide array of free skill-set and personal related counselling by professionals that you can consult without limit. And your tennis instructors almost always can offer tips by e-mail.
Did I mention the tennis library, which has tens of thousands of works about tennis you can check out, staff you can consult with, and where you can work to study up on your game for no additional charge? Or the tennis libraries’ thousands of digital databases you have 24/7 access to in order to improve your playing?
Did I mention our recreational facilities? The gym? The pool? The fitness classes? The dozens of non-tennis related clubs? The vast number of social activities you can go to in order to meet other tennis students? That we even hold concerts and plays and have an art gallery and lovely grounds to walk? Nearly all of these services are available at no extra charge, and they’re available to you when tennis lessons aren’t in session. We even throw in a free year-round bus pass! Finally, we can demonstrate statistically that people who have taken tennis lessons have higher lifetime earnings than people who haven’t.
What’s that? No, I’m afraid we can’t offer tennis lesson for free. All those services cost money. I know it's a difficult concept. But the fact is, we’re literally going bankrupt offering the lessons at their current rates. The way it’s looking right now, we probably won’t be able to offer them for much longer, so I’d grab the lessons now if you could.
One thing, though…some people still complain that their tennis lessons are far too expensive. And yet our records show that they only show up for half their lessons! Maybe they shouldn’t have taken tennis lessons in the first place.
