Goals eyes third US football centre as sales rise

Five-a-side football outfit Goals Soccer Centres is to start work on its third site in the US after reporting a return to sales growth.

East Kilbride-based Goals Soccer Centres is expanding in California. Picture: Contributed

The East Kilbride-based firm now has two centres in California, having launched in Pomona last month, and today said it will begin building its next base in Rancho Cucamonga during the first half of this year.

• READ MORE: Former casinos boss named chief executive at Goals

The update came as the Aim-quoted company, which has 46 centres across the UK, said it returned to sales growth in 2016, with takings up 1.6 per cent on a year earlier to £33.5 million.

That helped the firm move back into the black with a statutory pre-tax profit of £3.7m, compared with a loss of £6.2m a year earlier.

200 Voices: find out more about the people who have shaped Scotland

Chairman Nick Basing said: “2016 has been a huge period of transformational Change. It’s a good start to report profit growth and positive trend in like-for-like sales.

“These results are early but encouraging evidence of our new strategy starting well. The business is on its way to being fit for purpose.”

On a like-for-like basis, stripping out the effect of new openings, sales were up 0.5 per cent compared with 2015, when Goals suffered a 4.9 per cent decline, and the recovery accelerated in the second half of the year, with sales growing by 2.9 per cent.

Chief executive Mark Jones, the former Grosvenor Casinos managing director who succeeded previous Goals boss Keith Rogers in July, said: “We are delivering a better product which is already showing in the numbers and are confident that we can realise our ambitions.”

Click here to ‘Like’ The Scotsman Business on Facebook