At Kjøbenhavns Boldklub, a Senior Membership during daytime hours reduced idle facility time and also brought generations back together.
Most sports clubs are built around peak hours — and they pay the price for it the rest of the day. Facilities sit idle, energy keeps running, and pressure grows to expand or rebuild rather than make better use of what’s already there. Meanwhile, participation has become increasingly individualised and car-dependent, disconnected from the neighbourhood life that once made sports clubs matter.
The underlying driver is status quo bias: clubs default to a service-provider model, members default to consumption, and sharing rarely happens. The result is fragmented communities and facilities used in extractive ways that consume resources while offering little social return and undermining environmental sustainability.
Kjøbenhavns Boldklub introduced a Senior Membership that does something deceptively simple: it opens underused daytime hours to older members, shifting the default from isolation to shared movement. The communal sauna acts as a behavioural anchor: an informal space where spontaneous interaction replaces programmed activity and social distance gives way to dialogue.
The nudge works on two levels at once. Seniors get back into active community life. The club gets better utilisation of infrastructure that was already there and already running. No new build required.
Together, these create a self-reinforcing loop where longevity, wellbeing, and efficient resource use become the daily default rather than the exception.
The results: Idle facilities have become active social spaces. Seniors previously at risk of inactivity have re-entered daily club life, increasing daytime utilisation without additional infrastructure or energy demand. Intergenerational contact has deepened local attachment to the club extending both the functional and social lifespan of its existing assets.
The Business Case: The Senior Membership doesn’t require new infrastructure, expanded capacity, or higher energy use. The same facilities deliver more social value across more hours of the day, lowering the cost per member served and reducing the pressure to expand or rebuild.
Do you know of any other nudges that unlock more value from existing infrastructure?
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From Mikkel Sølbeck, infrastructure project manager at Denmark’s national rail authority and volunteer sustainability lead at Kjøbenhavns Boldklub. Through his newsletter Unlocking The Future Game, Mikkel explores how regenerative thinking can transform sports clubs into resilient community ecosystems.
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