Team Pays Tournament Gate Fees Upfront?

[PEPPERS]

I have ran into this before it was not as expensive as you described, but it was a few years ago. Normal gate price in our area is $5.00 a day.

The times we’ve ran into it the total cost was about the same for parents and teams. Team member and parents would vote on the tournaments to get in. At first parents were against paying tournament fee and gate fee at the same time, but when added it was close to the same.

 

[Easton33]

Whether it is at the gate or in your registration, same people are paying it. Single parents with one child are the ones getting ripped but it would work great for me. 4 spectators a game for me. The overall price is what is getting out of hand. Some of it does goes to field and umps but this last summer, 100+ day the park decided to charge $3.00 for $0.10 bottled water, on top of entry fees, on top of gate fees, on top of over priced poor tasting food. Just ridiculous.

Not to mention last game on Fri. and Sat. was play at 3:30 so they could get everyone back a 3 days.

 

[redhotcoach]

I have been involved with running tourneys. A complex can make maybe $2k a tourney. That is with most of the help volunteering. $2k a tourney, doing several a year is just enough to pay water, insurance, equipment, utilities, etc, plus save enough in a fund to do necessary upgrades, re do infields, maybe add a cage every 5 years.

I know of a baseball complex that went deeply in debt 5 years ago. The city bought them out and had to put 1.5 mil into it just to get everything into usable conditions.

The fact is everything is getting expensive, and I would bet there a majority of complexes are trying to figure out how they are going to continue to operate.

...sorry for the perspective from one of the lazy azz volunteers who busts tail 18 hours a day a few weekends out of the year...gets yelled at by fans...coaches...family who doesn't see ya...wife who has to do laundry...all for the monetary reward of $0.

I will say it is pretty poor if the total fee wasn't communicated at the time of registration.

 

[MNFastpitchDad]

This is very typical in MN for our State and "National" tournaments. Most venues in MN are very open and would require a lot of temporary fencing to police a daily gate fee. We estimate the tournament fees at the beginning of the season and bake those numbers into our "slush fund" money that is collected from parents or fund-raisers. $100 had been typical for many years, but has not move to $150 in most cases. Personally I like the idea as we drag the siblings to almost every event and the grandparents show up on a regular basis as well. For one parent, they may not get their $15 worth (assuming a 10 player roster), but it's not too far off. I would guess concession sales do go up under this method.

 

[gophert]

Most of all our NSA and USFA tournaments are $200-$230, but we have one complex that charges more and includes gate fee. The fee is $375. I have never seen an additional fee on top of that in our area. This is the only complex I have seen do this in our area.

COOKEVILLE FALL FRIENDLY