What Belongs in a Feasibility Study Before You Launch

Start with the decision, not the sector

The first page should name the decision the study exists to inform, in one sentence, with the amount at stake and the date by which it must be made. "Should we sign a five-year lease on this unit at this rent by March?" is a decision. "An assessment of the Saudi padel market" is a topic.

This single discipline shrinks studies dramatically and makes them useful. A study aimed at a decision knows what it can leave out. A study aimed at a sector fills pages with context nobody will act on and still fails to answer the question you actually had.

If a provider will not write that sentence with you before quoting, they are scoping a document rather than a decision.

Demand evidence: the section that decides the rest

Everything downstream — revenue, break-even, headcount, funding need — is a multiplication of one estimate: how many people will buy, how often, at what price. Get that wrong and the rest of the study is arithmetic performed on fiction.

So read this section first and interrogate it hardest. Acceptable evidence looks like: interviews with named segments of real potential buyers, observed footfall or utilisation at comparable venues, pre-sales or waitlist conversion, competitor pricing and occupancy gathered directly. Unacceptable evidence looks like a national growth rate multiplied by a population figure and a capture rate someone chose.

A good study will tell you how confident it is and why. A study that presents its demand figure with the same certainty as its rent figure is telling you it does not know the difference between a measurement and an assumption.

Competition as it is, not as a list

Most studies include a competitor table and stop there. A table of names tells you nothing about whether you can win. What matters is what each competitor charges, how busy they are at the hours you would depend on, what they are visibly bad at, and what would actually make one of their customers switch to you.

In the Kingdom this is usually gettable in a week of legwork — visit at peak and off-peak, look at booking systems, read recent reviews for repeated complaints, note pricing and package structure. That effort separates a real competitive section from a directory listing.

Also name the substitute, not just the direct rival. People choosing whether to join your studio are often choosing between you and doing nothing, and "nothing" is the market leader in most categories.

Unit economics before the five-year model

Ask for the economics of one unit of the thing — one class, one cover, one booking, one member-month. What does it earn, what does it cost to deliver, and what is left? If a single unit does not work, no growth rate rescues it, and a five-year projection will hide that fact behind scale.

Then the capital picture: fit-out, equipment, deposits, licences, pre-opening salaries, working capital — and honest contingency. Under-stated contingency is a frequent quiet error in launch budgets, because fit-out timelines slip and rent starts before revenue does. Two Saudi-specific items belong here and are often missed. First, the labour stack: your Saudisation band under Nitaqat varies by activity and size and can make certain roles Saudi-only, and on top of salaries you carry the monthly levy per non-Saudi employee, iqama and work-permit costs, GOSI employer contributions and end-of-service accrual. Visas also depend on an established Qiwa file and a compliant band, so this gates your hiring timeline and not merely its cost. Second, VAT on fit-out is recoverable once you are registered — mandatory registration applies above SAR 375,000 of taxable turnover and voluntary registration from SAR 187,500 — so registering before you spend on a large fit-out can be a real cash decision rather than an afterthought.

Finally break-even expressed in the units you will actually manage. "We need 340 member-months a month" is operationally meaningful. "We need SAR 4.2m in year two" is not something anyone can act on.

The regulatory path, and the verdict with kill conditions

Name the licences and approvals the activity requires, the bodies that grant them, the realistic timeline, and anything that could refuse you outright. For a venue in the Kingdom the chain usually runs: Commercial Registration with the Ministry of Commerce, then the municipal licence through Balady — where the baladiya's zoning and unit requirements apply, including a minimum parking provision tied to your licensed area and activity — then the sector licence, which is the Ministry of Sport for sports and fitness facilities, the Ministry of Tourism for hospitality, the General Entertainment Authority for entertainment and events, and SFDA where food is handled. Civil Defence safety approval sits across it, and you will need VAT registration with ZATCA, a GOSI registration and a Qiwa file to employ anyone. In Jeddah, Civil Defence requirements and the baladiya's conditions on the unit itself are the two most common causes of fit-out rework and delay.

Treat all of that as the shape of the path rather than today's rulebook. Requirements change, so a study should state when it checked and recommend confirming current rules directly with each authority before you commit — a study that presents regulatory detail as permanent is overreaching.

Then the verdict. A usable verdict has three parts: the recommendation, the assumptions it depends on listed plainly, and the kill conditions — the specific findings that should stop the project. Writing kill conditions in advance is the single best protection against talking yourself into a bad launch, because it commits you while you are still objective.

What you can refuse to pay for: generic country overviews, Vision 2030 boilerplate, stock macroeconomic charts, and competitor logos. None of it changes a decision.