When Parents Get in the Way

You know what?  I'm the guy on the other side of this debate for gate fees.  I'm not trying to single anyone out with this post but if you get offended then yes I'm talking about you so get over it.

 

I'm sick and tired of parents / fans griping and complaining about gate fees.  How can you have such unrealistic expectations that everything should be free?  At our events it costs $5 to get in and yes if you attend all 23 games (home and away) we have in most sports you're going to spend $115 for the entire season for one sport.  What do you think we do with that money?  It doesn't go into anyone's pocket - it goes to pay for many many things.  First it pays for officials.  For soccer one official costs $61 and we have three so each game we are spending $183 per game.  For 12 home games that will be almost $3000.  Next we have equipment and that will be in the $3-4000 range for the season.  Next we have uniforms we have to get every 3 - 4 years so each year we have to take money and set aside to pay for that huge bill when it comes around.  Next we have gate and concession workers to pay for which is several hundred dollars by the end of the season.  Next we have to pay for field upkeep which can be several thousand dollars as well.  Lastly, we have to pay for security because idiot parents can't behave themselves and we have to sometimes kick them out.  That will be around $60 per game.  Hopefully, you can see how expensive it is to run just one sport.  Now open that up for volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball and wrestling - all of these sports get to charge a gate so they help offset their costs and sometimes even make a little bit of money.  Then we have the non-revenue sports like cross country, tennis, track and golf.  Granted they aren't very expensive but they don't generate a single dime of profit.  As the AD I want our teams to be super successful because that's what they are supposed to do but it's also because people come to watch winners.  That means we get to make money off them to help pay the bills.  So if it's this expensive to run an athletic program for sports that at best make a marginal profit how do we do it?  Let me just say "thank goodness for football".  Yes it's the most expensive sport but they make so much money they pay for themselves, the non-revenue sports and help out the other revenue sports since they barely make profit.  Our football team will probably finish with one win this year because we're just not that good yet we will make enough money off them to still pay for everything.

 

So what does all this have to do with the original issue of people complaining about gates?  Well if that's how a high school operate then imagine how much tougher it is to use a public facility.  You have to probably pay a field rental fee which can be pretty steep.  Because they have to pay for much the same things we do - officials, gate keepers, concession workers, stock concession stand, light bill and insurance to protect themselves from people suing if they get hurt.

 

Some people have said to put the entry fee into the price of being on the team.  OK so how will that work?  Do you find out how many people are in their family and charge that way?  Example - Johnny comes from a family of 4 but Frank comes from a family of 7.  So does Johnny pay less because he comes from a smaller family?  What if you have a kid who's parents have divorced and remarried with kids from the new marriages - how would you factor that in?  Then what about extended family - are you going to ask grandma and grandpa how many games they plan on attending and charging that?  What do you do if they can now attend extra games or attend less games than they said they could - do they get a refund now?  

 

You may think these questions / situations are ludicrous but I have been around some of the dumbest and shady people after becoming AD where I have no doubt these questions would come up.  Once they come up you have to deal with them.  Who in their right mind would want to keep up with all that on a team with 20 players?  Yes these are some outlandish examples but people are very capable of trying to get out of paying what they should pay.

 

Think of it this way - the $800 (or whatever) just gets you on the team and that's it.  It doesn't guarantee you any playing time and it doesn't guarantee you don't have to pay gate fees.  Stop trying to make it be about cheating us out of money.

 

You're tired of being "nickled and dimed"?  That's cool - I'm tired of listening to people gripe about being nickled and dimed while I have huge bills to pay.  But yet I have to put up with people who gripe about the cost OR try to sneak in OR who do sneak in yet openly lie about having a ticket but threw it away / lost it.  Please you people need to shut up and pay or stay out in the parking lot.

Coach2709, I agree with your post... it is expensive to run high school baseball and we like most parents have gladly paid the fees at our high school.  Our hs offered a "pass" that cost about $75 for the year and was good to all sporting events at the school. Doable and reasonable and no one expected anything for free. 

 

However, this post was about tournament or showcase ball.  And we all know that isn't free.

 

In the not-so-distant-past, I helped run a (3-day holiday weekend-long) tournament and was in charge of handling the money for 2 of those years.  We charged the teams accordingly to pay for the fields, field maintenance, umpires, and insurance,  Thank goodness the concession was run by volunteer parents of the host teams and was where most of the money was made.  That and T-shirts.  We did not charge a guest gate fee and everyone had a grand time.  We had many repeat teams come back year after year.

 

Moving on a few years, let's say above 14U, the tournament fees started to run $600, $750, $1000.   If the costs of the tournament are covered by these tournament fees plus some profit margin, why are they collecting more money at the gate?  Supposed no one showed up but the coaches and the players?  (keewartson traveled as a team, with his team, and the parents did not have to come). Would the tournament sponsors loose money?  I am not thinking so. 

 

So when you see the tournament heads, or their children or assigns, sitting at the gate collecting money, knowing that the team has paid ~$800 for the tournament, it at least 'feels' like it is going right into their pockets.  It probably is, and they have the right to charge it.

 

For our tenure with travel ball, gate fees started out "included in the registration tournament fee".  Then $5, quickly moving to $8, $10, $15, $20, $35 & $50+. Yes, you pay up or don't go (or learn to sit in the outfield at some venues). 

 

And yet, paying admission to watch your child play on a college/university team (or even high school) feels much much different. 

 

I can't even imagine denying my child a chance to play in front of Prepster's son/school.  Boy, what a loss.

It is not always the tournamenrs that are making money off of the gate fees. My son's collage host tournament games for the Buckeye Elite. As aprt of that we do not make much money off the tournamant fees, the money we recieve to host barely covers the cost and wear and tear on the field. We do have the option to charge a gate fee and sell concessions.  We do and this is one of the teams money makers. It helps fund the spring trip and allows the school to take more kids down south in the spring.it also helps fund day to day
Operations.
So the gate fee at a tounament may not be going into the operators pocket. With out charging a gate fee we could not afford to host. Or to make it worth our while we would need to be paid more. Who do you think would absorb the additional cost? Not the tournament, and not the team.
P.S. sorry for any grammatical or spellin errors. I am typing this ip on my cell.

^^^ I like it when a team benefits and works a tournament.  Esp when you know that it is helping defray some of a team's travel and other costs.  If run well, folks/teams will keep coming back.  (If you run out of food/water/toilet paper....not so much).

 

Gate fees are now the norm and aren't going away, and should be part of a family's weekend budget with gas, food, and hotel. 

 

For those that have been to Dreams Park - you know it's "free" to get in right? There's no gate there and while it's not a precursor to getting a look for a college team, it is a tourney where the organizers don't know how many people are coming to watch. Sure they have concessions to make money and they have (for lack of a better term now) knick-knacks they sell, plus of course the photographs. So they've figured a way to run their business to extract an incredible sum of money every week for 13 weeks. The per player and per coach fees are shall we say pretty high for the spartan accommodations you get and the 3 squares a day of meals... Oh and the umpires are "volunteers" - each team either brings one or has to pay CDP a set fee to use one of the guys that pretty much live there for the summer... I can tell you from my experience, we all sit around during the week figuring out how much money CDP is printing on a weekly basis...

 

So fast forward 3-5 years of paying for gate fees becomes a "way of life".  I think depending on the venue, gate fees are "necessary". If I'm at an event in some nice facility, then sure I get it; however, if I'm being charged gate fees at what amounts to a tourney run on high school or rec fields, then I'm left scratching my head as to what they are going towards. Having "avoided" the "showcase circuit" I thankfully never had the experience of someone "pulling" their child because they didn't want to pay a gate fee. While I don't agree with that action, it does leave me wondering about the program and to a lesser degree why people don't ask the questions they should prior to joining a team. I do think to a degree tourney organizers show they have you trapped and you'll probably just pay.  It's become like baggage fees for airlines, ATM fees for banks, "convenience charges" for businesses that "allow" you to make your payments monthly, but yet charge 1, 2, 5 for each such transaction (think about your home/car insurance).

 

As for coach2709's position - sure I think at a high school and up event, I totally understand and support gate fees.  No question - it's a totally different level.

I completely dislike paying gate fees to watch my son play. That being said, baseball tournaments/showcases are big buisness and buisneses have to make money so I pay the fees and TRY not to let it bother me. Also, from my experiences the university that you are playing at get a cut of the fu nds collected for their program. There are a lot of small programs out there that rely on those gate fees to do basic things for the program.

Having coached and run tournament ball both in states where gate fees are common and in states where gate fees are very rare, I prefer the gate fees. Generally, in those areas, the entry fees are much less and the tourney still makes about the same (or more) money through gate fees. For example, in Colorado (almost never a gate fee), USSSA tourneys run $595+. In West Texas and Arkansas, they generally run in the $250 - $400 range. That means less money I have to collect from parents to enter tournaments. They still pay the same, they just do it a few bucks at a time.

 however, if I'm being charged gate fees at what amounts to a tourney run on high school or rec fields, then I'm left scratching my head as to what they are going towards.

 

Not sure about rec fields but for high school fields they are probably renting out the facility.  I know that's what we do and it can get pretty steep.  You have to pay to use the field, provide proof of insurance that you pay for, pay to have a custodian on site, pay a fee that goes towards field maintenance and a fee for a light bill.  You add all that up and it gets to be pretty expensive so that's probably why they have to charge a gate to help offset that cost.

 

I like what you described above in how they let people in free but it's still not free.  You're still paying money (lots of it) in order to do things.  It seems people just have this psychological block in not wanting to pay gate fee when that's still what you would pay (probably more) if they just factored it in with the price of tournament entry fee.

 

I have seen where the Tourney fees are quoted and the gate fee is separate for the whole team.  Tourney figures how many teams it will get and divides target revenue by that number.  

 

Example Fields cost $2k - 16 teams equal $150 to $200 per team.  Allows teams to budget overall costs and avoids this whole conversation.  Only problem is the risk of getting fewer teams show up and take a bath on the fields if you can't wiggle out of a couple. 

 

Gate fee probably does better revenue than this approach but it can be a hassle.  Have to staff the gate and handle the cash.  Depending on who you get there might be the risk of some shrinkage. 

And there is the rub.  It is all in a person's head.  Some people view it as $19.95 others as $20.00.  When we did our Cooperstown year, we purposely chose tournament's with gate fees to keep the team fee down.  It was more a la cart. 

 

In my area tournaments that don't charge an individual gate fee usually add $50 to the cost of the tournament.  If they don't, it is generally $5.00 to get in each day or a little less for a weekend pass. 

 

To me the daily gate fee is just a hassle.  I usually need to stop at the bank to pick up the money, while the kid complains that he is going to be late.  Give me the package deal, so I don't need to worry about it. 

 

But, whether you like gate fees or not, there is no excuse for "parents" protesting to the point that the kids' game gets cancelled.  I guess they are not really baseball parents.   

 

Not to mention that they'll have to pay gate fees to attend HS (Varsity) games, though it's not that high locally - usually $6/head.

 

The gate fee to attend my son's JuCo games was only $5/head.

 

When my son played travel ball, I recall only once having to pay a gate fee, we paid it in advance through the team.  I think it was $15-$20 / family for the entire weekend.

 

If anything I blame the coach/team for not making it clear there would be a gate fee for parents/family to attend.

$15 seems to be a bit much.  The most I ever paid was $10 at WWBA a couple years ago.  But if you know ahead of time, you just know the deal and prepare yourself to pay.  For $15 a head, our two daughters may stay home from that game.

 

On a kind of related note, in our area, nobody charges for baseball games.  Except the school just to the north of us.  To go to any sporting event there, you have to pull up to a gate, they count the number of people in your car and charge $5 a head.  Simple as that.  Their colors are purple and gold.  Whenever we play them at home, we always joke that we ought to set up a table and only charge the people wearing purple and gold to make up for us paying up there.

 

All in good fun, but when your kids are young and they start getting involved in activities, you have to realize you are going to have to spend money on it.

In all walks of life, communication solves lots of problems and lack of communication causes problems!