?Charge a Gate

At our school, there's almost no way to charge students. Parents would pay, but students would just watch from the parking lot next to our field, or they wouldn't come, which is what they do mostly.

However we sometimes go to this community ballpark for tournaments, districts, games of the week. For those, the ballpark charges entry for fans, and usually students show up to those because the games are held Friday and Saturday nights, and will pay because there is a fence surrounding the stands, and you can't really see the game unless you get in.

But sadly at our school, baseball is the third best sport to the students, even though this year the football team was 3-7, the basketball team was 15-12(Going 11-2 against teams under .500), and the baseball team is probably going to be ranked Top 10 in the area, possibly Top 5 after returning many from a 17-8 season.

lafmom-
I dont know of any school in southern NJ that charges an entrance fee. It simply would not work here except to turn away the few spectators we get. On occasion you can expect to pay a fee on entrance to a tournament or discrict game in the area.

Are there enough people attending HS baseball games to make it worth all the bother!!!!

I dont think so

In my county in Florida, almost every high school collects. It is mandated by the county and a county employee collects. The only schools that do not are those that cannot gate in the premesis, making collection impossible. The regular season games cost $3.00 with districts and tournaments $4-$5! With a family of four or five, this can get very expensive. The county offers a family pass for $150 which will get you in every sporting event for the year. And yes, TR, there is quite a crowd at some of the better schools, making it very profitable. The proceeds got in to the 'county pot' and are split evenly amongst ALL the schools, weather or not they collect.

TR - We actually have a packed house at many of our games (home games). However, many of those are students. Therefore, you charge a gate and you may run some of those off! It's a interesting delimma for us to give up the tournament gate in order to not charge for regular season.

Interesting to see the differences from everyone.

Here in the northeast attendance is sparse

Our High School never charges for baseball games. We play in a VERY competitive conference and usually have a lot of past and present students and parents as well as the general population in attendance. We DO have a great snack bar and use that as our fundraiser. Keep the food good (especially on weekends/double headers)and reasonably priced and we do a good business. Fire up the grill and who can resist? (It's also a great place for a Pitcher's Mom to hide when I can't stand watching. The parents in the stands keep me posted pitch by pitch).

At our school, the ISD collects for all district games of all sports. You can buy a $20 pass that covers all sports, all games, all year for the district. (Maybe less for kids....)

You still have to pay a separate gate fee when we play a school in our district that is not in our ISD.

Tournament games are a booster club fund raisers...and quite profitable.

Students always pay less...$2 - $3 a game, I think.

Here in Texas, football has a very good gate. The other sports do okay but the fan base is mostly parents and boyfriends/girlfriends.

We have to charge in order to be able to pay the umpires. We charge $4 for adults and $2 for students. Even our parents pay to get into home games. The only folks that don't pay are players/coaches and school system employees. We usually clear an average of $40 per game after paying umpires

Here in NC all HS games have a gate charge for everyone that attends. Each conference sets the rate which is usually 4 or 5 dollars. Playoffs are set a 6 bucks. We usually have a pretty good crowd at our games especially after day light savings time when we start at 7pm. I had no idea that this was not the case in other areas.

We charge at the gate. $2 during regular season and $4 during tournaments. This year our school is taking all the money we raise at the games and putting it into an account set up just for baseball. The football and basketball programs are done the same. They do this so to make sure nothing is bought that shouldn't be bought. We don't like it, but that's the way it has to be. Why they started doing this is a long story (nope, not because of the baseball program. We do things by the book.).

I like the idea of selling "season" tickets for all the programs.

Georgia normally charges from $3-$4 for adults and $2 for kids. Our team receives only a portion of the gate. The funds raised go into the schools sports general fund as does football and all other sports gate receipts.

All gate money goes into the general athletics budget for all the teams. The concessions go to the teams. Our baseball Dug Out club runs the concessions at all our JV and Varsity games and we get to keep this money for the program. We have a booster club that raises money for all the programs. Each individual sport can have its own booster club which can raise money for individual sports. We have 12 home Varsity games and 9 home JV games. We usually make a good bit of money on concessions on 21 games. We also sell hats t-shirts etc.

In our area games are $4 for adults and $2 for students, that includes Varsity, JV and Freshmen. Of course all that money goes to the school directly and is used to pay for bus transportation and umpires. All other expenses of the teams come from the booster club and fundraisers.

All of the high schools that I've been to in S.C. charge. The going rate seems to be $3.00.

In WI the WIAA requires adimission the Regional, Sectional, and State games. Other that that it is up to the school. As TR and others stated the attendance in the North may be even fewer if $ were taken for every game. I think you would be better off sending a couple of players into the stands on both sides of the field after the 5th inning with the hat out. It may not be enough to retire on but if you collect $100 a game with at least 10 home games, it's better than nothing.

Even better yet, a 75/25 raffle. Send a couple of the players girlfriends into the crowd, it's surprising what happens when you factor in that "chance" offering incentive.