Return to main Advice page

Legal Eagle

Licensing

Q: Sports Licences

As a council officer, I am in charge of a multi-purpose venue which has a public entertainment licence, a Sunday entertainment licence and a theatre licence. Why am I told I now need an indoor sports licence to stage a wrestling event there, when I have organised many bouts at various of our venues without this requirement?

A: Probably because there are different types of public entertainment licence, depending on the nature of the entertainment concerned. The one you have probably does not extend to cover a wrestling or other sports event, and may well be confined to entertainments involving music and/or dancing. The rules are slightly different, depending on whether the event is to take place inside or outside Greater London, although their broad thrust is much the same in both cases. A special kind of entertainment licence (indoor sports licence) is required specifically for what is described as an indoor sports event, defined as meaning a contest, exhibition or display of any sport at an event to which the public are invited, and which takes place in a permanent or temporary building, tent or inflatable structure.

There is an exception to the licensing requirement, which applies where the sporting event is not the principal purpose for which the premises are used on the occasion concerned, but this exception does not apply to a sports complex (defined) such as, presumably, your multi-purpose venue. There is another exception relating to a pleasure fair, which also hardly applies to your case. Within Greater London (London boroughs and the City of London), there are certain other limited exceptions for entertainments provided by the Boy Scouts Association, a school, or a bona fide association, club, hospital or society not carried on for profit.

In all such cases, a licence may be granted for one particular occasion only, a series of specified occasions or generally. Where granted for one or more particular occasions, such a licence is known as an occasional indoor sports licence. All such licences, whether occasional or not, may be granted on whatever terms and conditions and subject to whatever restrictions the local council as licensing authority thinks fit.

Applicants for such a licence need to give a specified period of advance notice of application, both to the council and to the police and, in some cases, the local fire authority. There are different regulations and licensing requirements for outdoor sporting events (and specifically boxing and wrestling) which are beyond the scope of your question.

It is an offence to hold such an event without the appropriate licence, and it would seem from what you say that you have probably unintentionally committed such an offence in the past, and perhaps got away with it because it has not come to the attention of the local council or the police unless, of course, the events concerned have fallen within one or other of the exceptions referred to above. As a council officer any prosecuting authority may consider you should have known better, since the information was readily available to you.

You mention a theatre licence, but such a licence only covers plays, meaning dramatic pieces which, whether by way of speech, singing or acting, involve the playing of a role. You also mention a Sunday entertainment licence but, as the name implies, this only relates (where it applies at all) to entertainments on a Sunday.

You may be puzzled at the reason for requiring so many different kinds of licence. The answer probably lies in the fact that, as you say, yours is a multi-purpose venue, and understandably there are different health and safety requirements for different types of event. For example, unlike a theatrical or musical or dancing event, a boxing or wrestling event may require a doctor to be in attendance throughout the contest, and the ring where the contest takes place is likely to be a temporary removable structure with special safety requirements, rather than a permanent stage.

In case of doubt in future, a telephone enquiry to the licensing department of your local authority should elicit the required information.

First published June 2000