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Hotel development near UK sports venues is expected to triple next eight years, according to a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

By 2016, sporting clubs and venues plan to add at least 28 hotels with approximately 3,500 rooms - an increase of 15 percent per year for both hotels and rooms. These new hotels will be developed near a wide variety of sporting venues including racecourses, cricket clubs, and rugby grounds, as well as football (soccer) stadiums.

Today, there are about 300 rooms open in 11 hotels at major sports venues, according to PwC, but in the early 1990s hotels at sports venues were almost non-existent. In fact, the number of hotels and rooms has grown at an average rate of 13 percent per year from the first hotel at Brands Hatch motor racing circuit in 1998 to the 147-room Holiday Inn Express, which opened at Norwich City's Carrow Road in summer 2008.

Football has seen the most activity to date, with eight hotels in seven venues (two at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge) and 990 rooms already open. There are plans for a further 12 hotels and 1,412 rooms in the pipeline.

The most important driver of hotel development has been the redevelopment of the sporting venues themselves. Many venues operators have invested in their facilities, partly in response to growing demand and partly to tap into new revenue streams. By including integrated hotels on site, sporting venues can develop and leverage corporate hospitality sales and conference business.

As sports venues are becoming bigger, better and more diversified so the opportunities to develop hotels in the future are likely to increase, PwC says, adding that sports venues could represent an interesting opportunity for developers who are competing for a scarcity of good sites.

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