The High Cost of Playing the Game We Love

Sourced from the SBS World Game - http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/craig-foster/blog/1059837/The-high-cost-of-playing-the-game-we-love

It costs money to play Football. A bit too much of it.
For families, the costs associated with supporting thier children to play and more so for parents with a talented young player(s), the costs have become formidable. Say what you like, its now costing too much, even here in the ACT.
This Post on Craig Foster's Blog for the SBS World Game will make very, very interesting reading for those that have not caught up with it.
The cost of registration alone in the NSW Youth Premier League is outrageous - how do families support this?
The costs for many families in the ACT is big enough now (though not to the extent mentioned by Foster in this Post) and then its on to Futsal (or not, depending how much is left of a family's disposable income). Parents with children who they wish to see, become as good as they can be, must shell out a lot more money than the registration fee within the CF development processes.
Couple this with the leakage of valuable Club funds and sponsors' dollars to player payments for some in our Premier League and its no wonder the cost of playing Football continues to increase. It is also the reason that some big Junior Clubs are hesitant when it comes to joining and underwriting a senior club with a Premier League licence or aspirations of doing so - and with good reason!.
For Capital Football, registration fees and fees charged for the delvery of development programs constitute a primary source of revenue.

There is a lot to this subject and it affects Football in the ACT region.

I'm with Foster on this one.

The high cost of playing the game we love
07 Jun 2011
00:00-Craig Foster

Having spent a few nights at football presentations in the past week with St George FC, the famous former home of Johnny Warren, as well as St Joseph’s College in Brisbane, which is devoting great time and effort to developing a football program, there are many messages I was reminded of by those at the grass roots.

One stands out above all else. The punitive cost of playing football in Australia.

Speaking with NSW Minister of Sport and Recreation, the Hon. Graham Annesley MP, at the St George dinner, I made the point that football is such a magnificent game that has grown consistently at a participation level over the last few decades. Yet clubs continue to drastically overcharge for the privilege.

When the day comes that football is cheap or free for everyone, we will quadruple our numbers.

More participants mean more potential A-League fans, building a cycle of support for the game’s longterm success.

The excessive cost of playing must be a primary strategic area for Football Federation Australia to tackle, for both the recreational player and the elite youngster.

In some areas of the country, kids are paying registration fees of up to $400, which is ridiculous for a game that should always be available to all. Over 35 fees, by comparison, can be upwards of $350.

A family of four, who all want to play, are asked fork out upwards of $1,000 in registration fees, let alone the added costs of uniforms and boots. This simply has to stop. It’s counterproductive to football’s progress, as well as being far in excess of other codes and a huge ask for many who love the game, such as new migrants and refugees.

The irony of forking out big dollars for a game that is, by nature, accessible to all, is not lost on anybody.
A national study into the football economy is required to track where the registration fees go, assess how to streamline the system and cut the significant duplication of resources that perpetuates the current system.
We are still waiting for any progress in this regard from FFA.

While the cost of having a kick every weekend for your local club is growing, it is the charging of several thousand dollars for elite youth players that is particularly disgraceful and a common gripe among parents with a talented child.

In Sydney, a Premier Youth League player will pay anything from $1800 to more $2000, with some clubs mandating extra sessions with an external academy, so throw in a thousand on top for good measure.

Add to that the cost of trips and tournaments and the families of our brightest future stars are paying up to $5,000 per season.

The main reason for the fees is that Premier and State League clubs are paying their first team players hundreds of dollars a week and passing the cost onto the parents of their youth teams.

This is a disgraceful practice and must stop. The question is, how?

One way is to legislate a national salary cap of the senior teams. Alternatively, we could cap the amount payable by youth players, an option I favour.

Any cap on payments to senior players would be cumbersome to administer at State Federation level, with scope for a black economy in player payments without necessarily lifting the burden on parents below.
Whereas a national cap on registration fees would change the economic distribution of funds overnight.
The immediate effect would be that clubs would be financially unable to maintain current payments and the entire Premier and State League economies would collapse.

They should. It is no longer acceptable for first teams to be paid in excess of a hundred thousand dollars in player payments and for thie cost of this to simply be passed onto parents of the youth team.

Long term, the hundreds of thousands of dollars finding its way into the pockets of senior players would be redirected to training junior players, inverting the current system.

Australian football, in the medium term, cannot sustain payments to players at levels under the A-League, so those playing at lower levels must do so for love until the game grows commercially to the point where it can feed money down from the top level.

It would be preferable to legislate an age quota at Premier League level to ensure 50 percent of squads are aged 23 and below to create a talent nursery rather than leagues with aging players earning their last dollar from the game.

Of course, those State Federations charging exorbitant fees for a Premier League license should be called to account by FFA to reduce the burden on clubs and further negate the need to overcharge.

For the foreseeable future, the whole football economy below the A-League is completely unsustainable and reliant on the parents of young hopefuls forking out exorbitant amounts for the privilege of giving their child a chance to develop a football career.

It’s time to give the parents a break.

Cap the fees payable by parents at every level across the nation, and the game will be forced to restructure to accommodate a more sustainable reality.


No youth player, whether recreational or elite, should ever have to pay more than a few hundred dollars for the right to play.

The disgraceful gouging of parents must come to an end.