Buying courts: what FIP approval does and does not tell you

Court procurement is where a lot of value is won or lost, and it is the stage clients most often hand over without a specification. A quote arrives, it says the courts are FIP approved, the price is competitive, and that is treated as the end of the analysis.

FIP approval is worth having. It confirms a court meets the international federation’s requirements, which matters if you intend to host sanctioned competition, and it gives you a baseline on dimensions and specification. What it does not do is tell you the court will last a decade in an Australian outdoor environment, that the glass will be installed to tolerance, or that the supplier will still be answering the phone when a panel needs replacing.

Approval is a floor. The specification is the thing.

Steel and coating

The structure is the part you cannot easily fix later, and it is where the difference between a cheap court and a durable one is most concentrated.

Ask about the steel section and thickness, the coating system and its process, and how the frame is joined and fixed. Coastal and high humidity sites are far more demanding than an enclosed inland shed, and a coating specification that is adequate in one is not automatically adequate in the other. Ask what warranty is offered specifically on corrosion, and what conditions void it.

Glass

Panel thickness, the type of toughened glass, edge treatment and how the panels are fixed all vary between suppliers at the same headline price.

Two practical questions matter more than the datasheet. First, what happens when a panel breaks, because one eventually will: what is the replacement cost, and what is the lead time to get a single panel to your site. Second, what installation tolerance is the installer working to, because a court assembled slightly out of alignment plays badly, wears unevenly and stresses the fixings.

Turf and the surface below it

Turf is the part of the court that visibly wears, and it is a consumable. Pile height, fibre type, weight, infill specification and expected life under your usage all differ, and a heavily used commercial venue is a much harder test than a private court.

Know the replacement cycle before you sign, and put it into the operating model as a recurring cost rather than a future shock. Also confirm what surface preparation the supplier requires underneath, and who is responsible for meeting it. The gap between the court supplier’s scope and the builder’s scope is a favourite place for cost to hide.

Installation, and who carries it

The largest variable in court quality is not the court, it is the installation.

Establish who is actually installing: the manufacturer, a local subcontractor, or your builder working from a manual. Establish who carries the risk if the court does not meet tolerance once assembled. Establish what happens if the slab is out and the court cannot be set correctly, because that argument between the builder and the court supplier is one you do not want to be standing in the middle of.

We keep court procurement and construction under the same roof largely to remove that seam.

Lead times, shipping and the opening date

Most courts are imported. That means production lead time, shipping, customs and inland transport, all of which sit on the critical path to opening.

Get lead times in writing, understand what they are measured from, and build float into the programme. An opening date announced before the courts have a confirmed shipping date is a marketing decision that will eventually become an operational problem.

Support after handover

The question that separates suppliers is what happens in year three. Are spare parts held in Australia. What is the cost of a replacement panel, a net, a door mechanism, a light fitting. Is there anyone local who can service the court, or does every issue become an international email chain.

For a commercial venue this is not a minor consideration. Every day a court is out of service is a day of lost court hours.

Why we do not run a single supplier

We work with multiple court manufacturers rather than representing one. That is deliberate.

Different projects want different answers. An indoor centre in a dry climate does not need the same corrosion specification as an exposed coastal site. A venue built around competition play has different priorities to one built around casual social play. A project with a hard opening date may be better served by a supplier with stock available than by the technically superior court with a longer lead time.

Being able to compare across manufacturers means the specification is chosen for the project, and it means the pricing is competitive because it is being tested. A client tied to one supplier gets one answer, and pays whatever that answer costs.

What to do before you go to market

Write the specification first: steel and coating, glass, turf, tolerances, warranty terms, spares, installation responsibility and required lead time. Then ask suppliers to price against it.

Quotes written to your specification can be compared. Quotes written to each supplier’s own specification cannot, and comparing them on price alone is how a centre ends up with courts that need replacing years earlier than the model assumed.