The ridiculous cost of youth sports includes pay-to-stay-to-play hockey tournaments

[sawchuk1971]

interesting perspective that hockey is expensive and shows the pay to play is nothing but a scam..

The ridiculous cost of youth sports includes pay-to-stay-to-play hockey tournaments: Our Best Life

The Aspen Institute, which studies youth sports annually across the country, hockey is the most expensive youth sport at $2,583 annually. And U.S. families spend $30 to $40 billion annually on their children’s sports activities, based on parent surveys and national sport participation data.

That’s more than the annual revenues of any professional league. And it could be driving families out of sports. Tournament costs add up.

The number of American kids ages 6-12 playing sports on a regular basis dropped 6% between 2019 and 2022, according to the Aspen Institute. That’s 1.2 million fewer kids playing, exercising, building self-esteem and experiencing the adrenaline rush of teamwork.

While participation is growing among low-income households, the Aspen Institute says there’s still a gap: 25% of kids play in homes with incomes less than $25,000 v. 39% of kids from families earning $100,000 or more. And those kids probably spend a whole lot more on equipment, private lessons and travel.

Click to read more...

 

[Minnesota Knudsens]

I’m of 2 minds on this. Some parents, believe it or not, love weekend tournaments. It’s their whole social life. To the point where I wonder if some teams include players that aren’t so great because the parents like to party together. Second it’s a great fun experience for the kids. Thirdly it gives your organization a chance to see how it stacks up against other locales. This is probably really important for non-traditional hockey markets (exp. Florida).

But yeah then there’s the cost obviously. I feel as if the price of hotels, and not even good ones, has gone through the roof post pandemic. The service industry seems to be recouping their losses, and I don’t expect the costs to go down, especially with the price of food nowadays.

 

[patnyrnyg]

In the tournaments my daughter's team has done, stay to play only applies to out of town teams, in most cases if your home rink is more than 75 miles from the tournament rink. One of the teams in our organization chose to only play in local tournaments that didn't require hotel stays. As far as the hotels, every tournament we have gone to has given us options with varied pricing. Last year, for a tournament outside of Philadelphia our most expensive option about $400/night and our cheapest was about $90. We chose one in the ~$150/night. Most were between $130-175/night.

And, I think the article is terrible. It's all about the money? Yes, that is called a business. There is work that goes into these tournaments and the people doing the work need to be paid for their time and efforts. No, I do not own or work for any of these tournament companies. He wants city rinks to plan tournaments? Yeah ok. I can tell you, there are tournament companies I have been advised to avoid because of some of the issues he mentioned. My kid's team has done a total of 5 tournaments where we had to get hotels (she is 10). All were a great experience and in 2 of them the team completely got their butts kicked, but it was still a good time. No, of those 5, her team has never won one or even made it to a knockout/championship round.

The writer mentions something about changing a broken system. Well, my suggestion would be first to speak to the people who run the local rink and ask about them holding a tournament. Second, would be to start a not-for-profit company and put together tournaments. Any "profits" can be donated to families who cannot afford the cost.

 

[patnyrnyg]

I’m of 2 minds on this. Some parents, believe it or not, love weekend tournaments. It’s their whole social life. To the point where I wonder if some teams include players that aren’t so great because the parents like to party together. Second it’s a great fun experience for the kids. Thirdly it gives your organization a chance to see how it stacks up against other locales. This is probably really important for non-traditional hockey markets (exp. Florida).

But yeah then there’s the cost obviously. I feel as if the price of hotels, and not even good ones, has gone through the roof post pandemic. The service industry seems to be recouping their losses, and I don’t expect the costs to go down, especially with the price of food nowadays.

Agreed. For the kids, staying in the hotel is a huge part of the fun. In my org, 2 tournament fees are included in our tuition. One, 6 of our 7 non-mite teams and our full-ice mite went to the same tounament. The other we choose ourselves. I called the different companies and we choose the one that had teams entered that we never played and were too far away to try to ever schedule a non-league game.

 

[Yukon Joe]

So many thoughts...

First of all - $2853 annually? Bwahahaha! We pay way more than that. And to be sure - absolutely feel free to mock the f*** out of me for that.

But on the main point - tournaments?

So look - yes it's often times just as much about the parents as the kids. I've definitely seen parents getting absolutely sloshed as their kids run rampant in the hallways. Not a good look.

I think I mentioned we got into an absolute battle with other parents a year or two ago about a far out-of-town tournament. We lost the battle, were probably not the most welcome parents afterwards when the team decided to go. Similarly we voluntarily chose to play on a spring team where the selling point was a tournament in Vegas. We took the whole family. I mean - the trip was fun. We had a good time. But did we need to travel to Las Vegas in order to get quality competition? Absolutely not! And I would not do a similar trip ever again - just not worth the price.

So tournaments are fun. They have absolutely zero to do with development of your young hockey player. Some of the most fun I've had as a hockey dad is just going to a random small-town hockey tournament where you play different teams than you do the rest of the year, the kids have a blast playing in the pool and eating out, and yes the parents have a few beverages (although hopefully not getting blasted, which a few do but not most).

But you don't need to go far for that experience. You can go almost anywhere for that experience.

But remember - this has absolutely nothing to do with hockey development. Unless if your last name is Gretzky (or McDavid, maybe Matthews) - your kid can 100% find quality opposition locally. Going to that tournament is about fun for the kids and family.

 

[patnyrnyg]

The other thing is, the cost of the hotels for stay to play tourneys are no different than the cost you would get through a site like hotels.com. Yes, I have checked everytime. Think one of the tourneys it was $10 more per night.

 

[jetsmooseice]

The other thing is, the cost of the hotels for stay to play tourneys are no different than the cost you would get through a site like hotels.com. Yes, I have checked everytime. Think one of the tourneys it was $10 more per night.

In my experience from putting my kid in a for-profit spring hockey program once, the hotel cost was substantially higher through the pay to play tournament. Like around 50% higher, give or take. I know this because I used Expedia or whatever to book the room at a lower cost, and then we were told that if we didn't use the official booking portal, our kids couldn't play. I facetiously asked if I could just pay the kickback directly to the program, but I never got a response.

I think that was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back for me on for-profit spring hockey.

I am grateful that regular not for profit minor hockey around here goes pretty light on the out of town tournaments. Usually just one or two a season for younger kids, typically no more than a few hours drive (no flying).

I'm already taking my family on vacations to Asia and Europe next year, I can live without a $3000 weekend tournament (once flights for the family and hotels are factored in) in Edmonton, Chicago or wherever.

 

[patnyrnyg]

In my experience from putting my kid in a for-profit spring hockey program once, the hotel cost was substantially higher through the pay to play tournament. Like around 50% higher, give or take. I know this because I used Expedia or whatever to book the room at a lower cost, and then we were told that if we didn't use the official booking portal, our kids couldn't play. I facetiously asked if I could just pay the kickback directly to the program, but I never got a response.

I think that was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back for me on for-profit spring hockey.

I am grateful that regular not for profit minor hockey around here goes pretty light on the out of town tournaments. Usually just one or two a season for younger kids, typically no more than a few hours drive (no flying).

I'm already taking my family on vacations to Asia and Europe next year, I can live without a $3000 weekend tournament (once flights for the family and hotels are factored in) in Edmonton, Chicago or wherever.

Around here we have a wide variety of options for tourneys. Have yet to do one that involves flying.

My experience and research tells me the kickback to the tourney people comes from the hotel. They are getting 30+ rooms booked that would have been empty. I was talking to a parent from another org whose kid played mine and they have done some clinics together. They noticed a stay to play was about $40 more per night than they could get on their own. Called the tournament contact and an hour later received a call back with the lower rate

As for the OP and the article, I feel people complaining about the cost are not really concerned with whether poor families can have their kids play. They just want the cost to be lower for themselves.

 

[Yukon Joe]

Around here we have a wide variety of options for tourneys. Have yet to do one that involves flying.

My experience and research tells me the kickback to the tourney people comes from the hotel. They are getting 30+ rooms booked that would have been empty. I was talking to a parent from another org whose kid played mine and they have done some clinics together. They noticed a stay to play was about $40 more per night than they could get on their own. Called the tournament contact and an hour later received a call back with the lower rate

As for the OP and the article, I feel people complaining about the cost are not really concerned with whether poor families can have their kids play. They just want the cost to be lower for themselves.

The "kickback" in most cases is simply that the coach, and maybe team manager (since they arranged everything) get free hotel rooms.

There's nothing inherently wrong with just wanting costs to be lower for yourself! There are programs out there for the truly poor kids to be able to play hockey, and I'll support those where I can. But even if I can "afford" to send my kid on some out-of-province tournament doesn't mean I want to spend that kind of money.

 

[May Day 10]

I overspend for hockey as well. We seek out some Spring/Summer out of town tournaments, mainly for the vacation aspect. We always hope out winter team schedules a few out-of-towners too so we can get away, not because I don't feel there are plenty of teams locally to play against.
We have also been able to network at the out of town stuff which has brought us new friends and other playing opportunities

Some tournaments and their partner hotels feel like a big time scam. You check into a hotel and it is way too nice and fancy (expensive) for a hockey tournament. You sign a paper that basically says kids aren't welcome. They force you to stay, even if you are out of the tournament by Sunday. Some tournaments, you see purposely will schedule games on a wide basis to maximize hotel revenue.

Other tournaments are very poorly organized. Teams arent/shouldnt be competing against one another. No online schedule/standings. Rules (especially tiebreakers) poorly defined.



Next Summer, my son is playing baseball. So Spring/Summer hockey is going to be limited. We are going to stick with a few local camps, a weekly hockey IQ development class, and a couple tournaments, but we are looking to do things that are more fun and draft-based.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

I have probably been to around 100 out of town hockey tournaments with my 3 kids. Most of the time, teams have had 3-6 such per season, and in most of those cases you are looking at around $150-200/night for 2 nights for hotels, plus some other expenses (gas/food) so around $500-$800 extra per tournament. Sometimes I would defray those costs by booking hotels using my rewards points from work trips, so I could keep some of the extra expense at bay. That wasn't always popular with kids or organizers, if for example I took a hotel chain which wasn't the one the rest of the team was staying at. Sometimes it was mandatory to stay with the team, other times I could bend the rules. Anyway, it probably tacked an extra $2k per season, per kid, onto the sticker price of competitive hockey. Occasionally ballooning to double that.

That by itself is pretty bad, but sort of par for the course. Last year we had a single tournament that was some kind of buy in where you'd end up paying almost $2000 per family. You had to pay up front and stay at a mandated hotel, and they had all kinds of peripheral activities organized and whatnot. We simply didn't go. I'm not paying $2000 for 4 or 5 hockey games. I think 3 families in total on our team bailed on this one.

Now, we've never been on teams which fly to games/tournaments. That to me is just a next level of insane. Teams with their own buses at the higher levels/older ages are nice, you just take the kid to the bus and wish them luck, that's all good. But you don't need to be spending the extra $$$ on young kids at lower levels. Depends to some extent on where you live. But in many hockey hotbeds, there are teams/associations near yours which host a tournament; so just go local I say. At least most of the time. Maybe for younger kids 1 bonding night per season with a hotel trip where they can rampage and play mini-sticks or whatever is fun for them. But you don't need to do that multiple times per season.

 

[patnyrnyg]

The "kickback" in most cases is simply that the coach, and maybe team manager (since they arranged everything) get free hotel rooms.

There's nothing inherently wrong with just wanting costs to be lower for yourself! There are programs out there for the truly poor kids to be able to play hockey, and I'll support those where I can. But even if I can "afford" to send my kid on some out-of-province tournament doesn't mean I want to spend that kind of money.

No, there is nothing wrong with people wanting things to be less expensive for themselves. Just be honest and don't try to hide behind, "How are poor people supposed to afford this?" argument.

And, I disagree on the kickback being just a free room for a coach/manager. Have been told directly from people who worked for these tourney companies. They are getting a decent piece of what people pay. There is a reason why you have to use certain links and codes that are provided by the tourney and can't just book through the hotel directly.

But, for those who seem to complain about the "business" of youth sports, I would say the same thing I said to a co-worker who was complaining about people who live in public housing paying so little in rent. "If you think they have it so good, sell your house and go live in public housing...." So, if you think there are people out there making all this money on youth sports, then why aren't you trying to do the same? Maybe I will start Patnyrnyg Hockey Tournaments. Will charge families exorbitant prices and just watch the cash roll in.