Gladstone Ltd – the leading suppliers of leisure management software in the UK & Ireland, serving over 500+ health and leisure operators encompassing 17+ million members managed, including hundreds of local authorities and leisure trusts – have today announced the launch of a new, proprietary intelligence operating platform for leisure, Nova.
Designed to help operators understand what is changing across their businesses, informing impactful decision making in real-time, Nova’s sector-first AI-powered intelligence will turn fragmented operational data into practical intelligence for commercial and operational decision-makers.
Built on Gladstone’s established industry position, Nova connects data from CRM, booking, finance and other operational systems with organisational context and external information, including, weather, demographics and local competitor activity. The platform is designed to learn how each organisation operates, including its strategy, sites, member base and historical trends, to deliver intelligence that is relevant to the individual business.
The launch comes as leisure operators continue to manage increasingly complex businesses across memberships, attendance, bookings, programming, staffing and commercial performance, with data often spread across multiple independent systems. While operators have access to more information than ever, meaningful analysis can remain locked inside specialist roles, leaving senior commercial and operational leaders chasing answers and relying on retrospective reports to make decisions.
Nova is designed to address this gap by connecting operational data, identifying patterns that would otherwise require specialist analysts and weeks of manual work to uncover, and translating those insights into clear, intelligent actions. Rather than simply showing what has happened, the platform helps operators understand why it matters and what they should do next.
Early adoption is already showing how Nova can translate intelligence into commercial action; the platform has been under private preview with five leisure customers, with many early users such as Glasgow Life and Newport Live already applying its insights to understand changes in their businesses and make more informed decisions. The early results demonstrate how turning previously fragmented data into timely, relevant intelligence can move operators from simply understanding what has happened, to taking action on what happens next.
Steve Scales, CEO of Gladstone, comments: “Leisure operators have more data than ever before, but having data and being able to use it to make better decisions are two very different things.
“Nova is designed to close that gap. It brings a new kind of intelligence to the sector, helping organisations understand what is happening across their business, why it matters and what they should do next.
“The opportunity is significant. By making intelligence available when it is needed, Nova can help teams spend less time chasing answers and more time acting on them, with greater confidence, accuracy and clarity.”
Beyond insight, Nova is designed to support action; its forward-facing capability includes the technical ability to write back into software and take action on an operator’s behalf, such as booking appointments, in essence, becoming an operational and commercial nervous system for leisure operators, not just a bookings software bolt-on. This marks a shift from technology that reports on performance, to technology that can help teams make and implement decisions, while keeping human judgement central to the way the sector operates.
Hattie Jones, Director at Nova, adds: “The leisure industry has spent years becoming data-driven, but data alone does not tell you what to do next.
“Operators are often data-rich but insight-poor. They know the questions they need answering, but finding those answers can take time, specialist expertise and multiple systems.
“Nova is about creating a new category of intelligence for leisure. It brings the data together, makes sense of it and helps people act with greater visibility , whether that means protecting revenue, improving productivity, responding to risk or identifying the next opportunity.
“Our ambition is to become the leisure intelligence platform organisations trust to understand, decide and act.”
By helping teams spend less time chasing answers and more time acting on them, Nova aims to give operators more capacity to focus on customers, frontline teams and commercial performance; representing the introduction of a new AI category for the sector, focused not simply on reporting the past, but on helping organisations understand, optimise and grow.
Nova is the Intelligence Platform for Leisure, a separate business unit within the Gladstone group. It connects operational data, organisational context and relevant external information to surface patterns, provide insights and translate them into clear actions. Nova is now available to purchase and is designed to help senior commercial and operational leaders understand what is changing, decide what matters and act with greater clarity and confidence.
Nova operates on a consumption-based model, meaning operators pay for what they use. The model is designed to align investment with usage and position Nova as a practical productivity and performance tool.
alex@action-group.co.uk
Action Group
