How To Reduce a U.S. Youth Recreation Sports Player Cost by 30%

Since most U.S. youth sports are run by parent volunteers, the primary cost driver for youth recreation sports is facility cost---here is how parent run volunteer sports leagues partnering with Cities and School Districts can significantly reduce facility costs (by as much as 30% or $90 per player per season) while still providing School Districts or Cities sufficient revenue to manage and maintain the sports facilities.

Solution

Summary -School Districts

1. Lower Prices/More Usage/ Increase Revenue:

o Utilize Underused Facilities: School athletic facilities are often underused. By renting them out during non-school hours, school districts can generate significant revenue while still providing a significant community benefit. For example, if a mid-size school district rents out half of its available 2800 non-school hours at $50 per hour, it could generate $350,000 over 60 months per facility. With eight facilities, that's $2.8 million in potential revenue over 60 months.

o Simplify the Rental Process: Streamline the registration and approval process to make it more accessible for sports leagues, reducing the time and effort required to secure a facility-which primarily translates to the State or School board making affordable public use a key priority for the school district and evaluate local principals or real estate managers on being more responsive to public access requests to school district facilities they manage. (i.e. 24-48 hrs to respond ---vs 15-30 days)

2. Reduce Labor Costs:

o Parent Volunteers: Just as parent volunteers help in classrooms, they can assist in monitoring and cleaning up sports facilities, reducing the need for paid staff-which can be as much as $200 for a little as a 1-2 hour rental..

3. Centralize Insurance Coverage:

o Leverage Existing Insurance: School districts already pay for liability insurance. Increasing usage will raise premiums, but the additional revenue from renting facilities can offset this cost, making it manageable.

Summary -Cities

Optimize Facility Usage (Rented Not Used):

o Address Overbooking: Better city monitoring of actual usage by implementing a more flexible and transparent reservation system. This ensures that fields are used efficiently and available to more leagues.

o More Accurate Field Use Estimates: Encourage leagues to book only the actual hours needed. Typically, youth leagues book thousands of hours more then they actually need which can easily be remedied by relative simple estimate models----if only this recommendation is implemented this could reduce youth league sports cost by as as much as $60 per player.

2. Centralize Insurance Coverage:

o City Insurance Plans: Similar to school districts, cities can manage the increase in insurance premiums with the additional revenue from better-managed field usage. This can lower costs for leagues by $25-$30 per player.

Detail Discussion-School Districts

Lower Prices/More Usage/More Revenue

Based on our review of school district sports facility access, most school athletic facilities are only used about 20% of the time via official school activities-which leaves about 80% of the time that billions of dollars in assets could be rented and used.

From school district perspective, providing public access is clearly not a priority for them since funding for these facilities is uncertain and the school districts or states that provide school funding does not make public access a priority and does not sufficiently fund the construction and maintenance of the facilities. As a result, most funding for school athletic facilities is funded by local community fund raising efforts-so once these facilities are built -the school districts restrict use to the extend the life of the facilities since future funding to maintain or replace the facilities is uncertain.

The primary way that the school districts restrict use is through pricing (sometimes as much as $200-$300 per hour) and time consuming registration and approval processes-that can take as long 2 -4 weeks to coordinate with the local school management to get approval to rent a field (even sports leagues frequently opt out of the effort due the high cost and time investment in getting access to the school facilities).

While clearly there is a very broad benefit for youth sports participation, if we only focus tangible direct revenue and cost benefit, there could be win-win for both the local communities and school districts by better balancing pricing with use.

For example, we estimate that most mid-size school districts (based on 2800 hour non- school hour availability) that half those hours could be rented at $50 per hr ( a rate that most families could afford) -which would generate $350k over 60 months and if a school district has 8 facilities (gyms and sports fields) -that’s about $2.8 million in revenue ( as compared to no revenue) that could offset maintenance/ replacement cost plus that leaves an additional 1400 hours of free time for the community’s kids to use the facilities.

Reducing Labor Costs

A big cost factor is labor when renting the facilities-for example-typically janitor or cleanup charges for a rental can be as much as $50 per hour with a four-hour minimum charge-which amounts to $200 for every rental.

Just like there are parent volunteers in most classrooms, it seems equally viable to have parent volunteers in the community that provide the monitoring and cleanup for the schools sports facilities use.

Centralize Insurance Coverage

Its inevitable if the use of the facilities goes up -so does legal risk-but that is the purpose of insurance -and most schools are already paying on average of $50k a year for its insurance coverage (including liability insurance) -even if the premium went up by 50%-this seems a manageable cost based on the additional revenue generated by the facilities and the general benefit to the community families.

Detail Discussion -Cities

Rented Not Used (The City Issue)

By our estimate, for most cities, we estimate that since 80-90% of the athletic field supply resides in the school districts in most U.S. cities and, as described above, those facilities are generally off market and out of the price range of most volunteer leagues.

While most city parks and recreation departments prioritize supporting youth sports leagues-those facilities tend to be in very high demand (because there is an artificial shortage of facilities created by the school districts) creating a lot of demand for a relatively small number of city sports facilities.

To most cities credit, they have tried to keep costs as low as possible-but because prices have been kept low-in an area of high demand -it’s had an effect of overconsumption of the facilities which further limits and restricts the access to fields.

Which means a local soccer league(s), already shut out of most school facilities, sees the low prices and the prospect of no fields if they don’t secure access to city fields -they overcommit to using the city soccer fields from 8 a.m. -8 p.m. for three months at $10 per hour to the only 4 soccer city soccer fields for 3 months even though those leagues doesn’t need those facilities -they buy all they can to provide scheduling flexibility ----which in large part is due to lack of scheduling transparency by city

That translates to $30k-$40k price -which is about $170 per child (for 250 player league) -plus $50 for uniforms plus another $25 for insurance and another $50 for other supplies and we are at a roughly $300 cost per player-without any real cost for coaches.

Even though the city parks and recreation department understands that these fields are only being used 65% of the time, they lack the staffing and the systems to adequately monitor the leagues plus there is significant political pressure by the legacy sports leagues (250 kids translates to 500 voters-which easily swing a city council election) to maintain the status quo ---which while well-intended has increased prices for the city facilities by as much as by $60 per player due to artificial shortages of facilities created by school districts and overbooking by the leagues .

In the leagues defense, the leagues justified the overbooking due to inflexibility and nontransparency of the tools and methods to reserve these fields (frequently booked in time windows every three months and require a highly manual negotiation process with the city) -so the inclination, according to one popular San Jose soccer league manager is that you book (despite need) all you can -or risk being shut out for the current and future years as your league needs grow.

And while the cities could be much better at managing and enforcing how facilities are reserved by creating a much more flexible and transparent field reservation system -the primary responsibility resides with the leagues and how they estimate and use the fields by using common sense practices that actually estimate actual field use 14 teams need 12 hrs of field time per week for 12 weeks -means we only need 2000-2500 hrs of field time (vs 4 fields from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for 3 months which is about 4300 hours)

Also, those additional 1800 hours could be used to encourage other league play that previously has been shut out of play or generate additional revenue for the city of about 1800 x $50 per hour -which is about $90k annually per facility (or $360k for 4 city facilities) which could go toward supporting maintenance for the high use of the fields or to fund insurance coverage -see below.

Centralize Insurance Coverage

Like school districts, most cities are already paying on average of $50k a year for its insurance coverage (including liability insurance) -even if the premium went up by 10k -this seems a manageable cost based on the additional revenue generated by the facilities and the general benefit to the community families to lower cost for the volunteer leagues by roughly $20-$25 per player.

Conclusion

School Districts and cities athletic facilities have a unique set of sports facilities assets that managed well have the power to enhance our children’s development, unite communities and promote physical fitness. However, realizing this potential requires a paradigm shift in how we approach facility management and access.

By prioritizing affordability, inclusivity, and community involvement, we can unlock the gates to these valuable resources and usher in a new era of vitality and opportunity for U.S. families. It's time to restructure how our athletic fields, that we fund, as vibrant and active play spaces.