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July 2004
STATE OF THE GAMEPrice to Pay Continues to Rise
By Lyle Phair | From 
During the recent NHL playoffs, virtually every
coach or player interview contained one very simple phrase: paying
the price. If a team has been winning, the person interviewed is
sure to credit the victory to the fact that individually and as
a group the squad was willing to pay the price. Conversely, if the
person speaking was on the losing end, they usually say that all
they need to do to turn it around is, you guessed it, pay the price.
So what exactly does it mean to pay the price?
In the NHL playoffs, (no different than any other time of the year)
it means sacrifice, courage, hard work and attention to detail all
over the ice. In other words, whatever it takes to get it done.
But in the playoffs paying the price becomes much more of a focus
because if you don’t, you go home. In the regular season –
at least for most of it – there is always a tomorrow. So in
that respect there isn’t the same urgency in paying the price,
but there is still a price and it just isn’t as high.
If you ask me, the ones who are really paying
the highest price in the playoffs are the fans buying the tickets.
If you don’t believe me, you haven’t witnessed the magic
that teams can work with ticket prices that rise from round to round.
But hey, I know, it’s all about supply and demand and what
the market will bear. If you’re not willing to buy tickets
at a certain price, there is someone else who is. Get it while it’s
hot. Simple business.
While the phrase paying the price has its meanings
at the highest levels of the game, it also has similar meanings
at the youth level. Unfortunately – as most prices tend to
do – they don’t go down, they go up. And the cost (the
actual monetary cost) of playing the game is reaching some alarming
levels. And with that hefty price tag comes a number of other issues,
such as the sacrifice and the time commitment for families to be
involved in the game and the seriousness of how parents now approach
the game because of the money and emotion they have invested in
it for their children. But those are topics for another day.
I grew up in a much simpler time and in a much
simpler place. And the price of the game, at least monetarily, was
much, much less than it is today. Until I was 10, my parents paid
exactly one dollar, yes one dollar, each year for me to play hockey.
After that the price jumped astronomically to $10 annually until
I began playing junior hockey – where it cost nothing.
In a small town, the rink was only open from November
through March and was run by the community. There was one paid part-time
caretaker and a slew of volunteers, including the mothers who ran
the concession stand. My parents paid for my hockey, not with money,
but with their time.
Today, there are very few communities, if any,
that can operate an ice arena (or any other recreational facility
for that matter) solely on the time and effort of volunteers. Simply
put, ice arenas are very expensive to build and to operate. Think
about it for a minute. The costs are there 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, 12 months a year. But how many hours a day are the
rinks actually used?
Contrary to what many might believe, private rink
owners, cities and municipalities that operate rinks are not getting
richer and richer every time they raise the rates. In fact, many
of them are barely surviving. Many older arenas are inefficient
and are costly to operate or renovate. Many newer arenas have high
debt obligations to meet and do not receive public funding. Every
time your insurance and energy costs rise at home, they are also
escalating for the arenas.
Subsequently, ice sports like hockey and figure
skating are always going to be more expensive than other sports
like baseball, basketball or soccer because of the added cost of
the facility. That will never change.
The cost of ice is one thing, and as I said, there
isn’t much control over that. But we certainly can control
how it is used, if we choose to. In some areas it is common for
younger teams to split the ice for practices, but older teams (and
their parents and coaches) want no part of that (even though they
complain about the high cost of ice). What makes it more perplexing
to me is watching these same teams practice and only use half of
the ice to run their drills. Such a scenario doesn’t seem
very efficient to me.
To me it makes sense, from both an efficiency
and value perspective, to have a smaller number of players on each
team and have teams share ice for practices in all age groups. During
games, with fewer players per team, each player would get more ice
time. And with two teams sharing the ice for practice, teams could
actually get more practice time each season and keep the cost to
each player down.
The equipment, which is just as necessary as the
ice, can also be very expensive. Or maybe not. With equipment there
is at least somewhat of a choice between different brands and models
and different price points. And used equipment can function just
as well as the brand new, top-of-the-line model. Do you really need
the most expensive composite stick when a less pricey wooden model
would suffice? At least you can choose.
For the ‘serious’ players playing
at the A, AA or AAA levels, there are additional costs, including
travel to and from far away tournaments and games; time off from
work and school; hotels and meals; matching team equipment, bags
and apparel; home and away jerseys and the ‘much-needed’
third jersey for those big games; and paying coaches for their services,
a recent trend. Here, a player could choose not to play on a certain
team or at a certain level because of the associated costs, but
if you want to play at a higher level how much choice do you really
have?
Right now the high cost of hockey is a barrier
limiting entry into the sport and the barrier only grows larger
in slow economic times. Not only does the cost often preclude parents
from even giving their children an opportunity to start playing
hockey at the younger ages, it sometimes forces players to drop
out of the game after years of playing it or prevents them from
having a chance to play at a higher level – even though they
are good enough – simply because their parents can’t
afford it. To me, those prices are much too steep.
This article appears in the July 2004 issue
of New England Hockey Journal. Click
here to subscribe to the magazine.
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