Futsal facilities a challenge in Fiji

The Fiji Football Association is investing more in Futsal development as they believe it’s currently the fastest-growing sport in the country.

According to Zaitun Sahim from fbc.news, the Fiji Football competitions manager, Amitesh Pal believes futsal in Fiji is heading to greater heights.

However, he says futsal facilities are a major concern as there is only one standard indoor venue in the country and that is the Vodafone Arena (main picture – source Fiji FA).

“For us, facilities are a major problem but we are grateful we have facilities in all our three academies. Indoor facilities we have only one in Fiji and that is Vodafone Arena.”

Pal believes this issue will slowly but progressively, be addressed.

Facilities are a topic of serious discussion in relation to futsal development around the world due to the lack of suitable facilities or having to compete with other sports for court time. In the U.K. instead of building facilities the alternative could be converting a warehouse but price of renting the warehouse along with other utilities, facility equipment, staff, etc means the price to rent a court is normally very high. To build the market, outdoor futsal courts seem like the obvious development step, it is more cost-effective, and a lot faster to set up.  A way to do it would be to approach a local council concerning tennis courts that are not being used. A club could possibly do this if they had a substantial membership  and in 2021 the U.K government committed £22 million to refurbish 4,500 public tennis courts, many of which will start to crumble again and be a waste of taxpayers’ money as playing football or 5 aside is the most popular sport in deprived working-class areas and Futsal would appeal to them more: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/30-million-package-to-refurbish-4500-public-tennis-courts-in-deprived-parts-of-uk-announced

Futsal Focus