The Leisure Leagues Franchise Scheme has helped thousands of people worldwide share in the success of the world’s leading leagues network, now one man who has done just that is doing the same for someone else.

Richard Scott, who started with a Franchise on the Isle of Wight and now owns them across the UK, is ringing the changes for his latest venture.

A former Partner of the Year, Richard (pictured above with Ron Atkinson at the 2019 Seminar) works full time on his leagues, and  has just purchased the rights to start a league at Havant And Waterlooville FC, this one though, is not a solo venture, as he explains: “One of the players in one of my Isle Of Wight leagues is an old school friend and he began asking me if there was a way he could get involved in the work I was doing, one thing led to another and after discussing it, we decided that we’d go in on the new Havant league together.”

All of which meant that Rob Hobbs was in the Leisure Leagues office for his training last week and to sign the contract that will see him become the latest Leisure Leagues Partner.

For Richard, though, it is merely another step down the road that has seen him thrive around the country. In addition to his Partner of the Year award, he also won the Achievement of the Year prize in 2018 at the Partner Seminar, for his astonishing growth of the leagues in Porchester and, he says that his geographical remoteness isn’t a barrier to success, as he suggests: “The way I run the leagues, remotely, has challenges and I like to go and visit them all, but it is made easier by the systems that are in place.”

One of these systems has undergone a major change recently, with the Pay for Games feature coming online to make the leagues Covid safe. Richard describes this as a “gamechanger” and elaborates. “Profits are up as a result of this improvement, it is brilliant that the competitions have switched to cashless ones. Not just for Covid security, which is of course important, but for the players and referees too.”

Richard, who has thousands of players playing in his leagues each week as far apart as Wales and Suffolk is already planning his next expansion, well I have some spare capacity in a few of them,” he says “and I want to utilise as much of that as I can.”

Franchise Sales Manager Sam Jones was delighted to welcome Rob to Leisure Leagues and added: “It was fantastic that Rob is on board, having seen the success that Richard has had, and it will also provide a blueprint for other partners, to understand know that there is scope to bring friends and business associates in to expand their portfolio. All our  network of partners have this opportunity.  This is a venture they can go into and still keep everything separate from their own solo business if required – it’s a really useful way to expand with our model. and we look forward guiding Rob on his journey with us.”

For now, though, the immediate focus is on Havant And Waterlooville where the community pitch is proving to be a real boost for the town. It is the brainchild of Paul Doswell, the Manager of the team, who saw the benefits of a 4G Surface when he was in his former role at Sutton United. For Richard, extending his portfolio with the league in Havant was an obvious choice. “Well, I run leagues in nearby Gosport,” he said, “So I have some experience in the area, and we know there are some leagues in the area that are not of the best quality, and Soccersixes in particular are awful – I’ve already seen them off in Wrexham where people couldn’t wait to join us – so we know our product stands up and we can’t wait to get going there.”

As for the partnership with Rob, Richard says he hopes it will extend: “We’ll see how this one goes,” he confirms. “But absolutely I’d like to carry it on. Of course, maybe Rob will want to strike out on his own, anything is possible, and that’s the beauty of this.”