Events

Thurs 7th January 2027, 10am–12pm, Via Google Meet

Scale Beyond VAT & IR35 in your Tennis Coaching Business

Most sports coaching businesses hit an invisible brick wall around the £90,000 turnover mark: the VAT threshold. Under traditional models, crossing that line forces an agonising choice to either hike player prices by 20% or sacrifice 16.67% of your hard-earned coaching margins. At the same time, shifting HMRC guidance around IR35 and self-employment status (CEST) leaves academies exposed to major misclassification risks.

In April 2026, John Cavill’s coaching business completely dismantled our old principal/contractor setup and transitioned to a Disclosed Agency Model.

The result? We removed the VAT cliff-edge, eliminated employment status ambiguity, and reverse-engineered our coach commission splits so our team took home an immediate ~10% pay bump on their baseline hours while keeping 100% of their extra growth upside.

Join John Cavill, founder of Tennis Works and Head Coach at Stony Stratford Tennis Club, for a comprehensive, real-world blueprint on how he planned, launched, and automated the Disclosed Agency Model, and how you can replicate it in your coaching business.

Key Learning Outcomes

• The Legal & Contractual Tripartite Framework: How to correctly structure agreements between your Agency, your Agent Coaches, host sports clubs/venues, and the end players.

• Defeating the VAT & IR35 Bottlenecks: Why only your agency commission counts toward taxable turnover, and how genuine substitution rights and diary autonomy protect everyone under HMRC rules.

• Reverse-Engineering Coach Commission: The exact mathematical formula used to replace fixed hourly wages with commission tiers that guaranteed coaches an instant 10% pay rise on their normal hours.

• Disbursements & Accounting Ledgers: How to deduct court hire, equipment, merchant fees, and assistant coaches transparently without manual accounting headaches.

• The Operations & Tech Stack: Live walkthrough of booking workflows,  payment split and collection mechanics.

• The Step-by-Step Transition Roadmap: Pitfalls to avoid, how to consult your coaches, and how to negotiate court access with club committees.

On completion of the event, you can apply for 2 LTA Accreditation Points via Independent Learning