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Is Canadian Soccer "Pay to Play""?


Patrick

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This article in the Vancouver Sun discusses the costs of elite sports, including soccer, and the fact is elite soccer is quickly pricing itself out of the reach of a lot of families in Canada.  The US is going through a big struggle over Pay to Pay.  Hope Solo may not be Canada's favourite American but she describes a broken system where money is the strongest predictor of success.  Are we going down that same road and will that hurt the development of talented soccer players in Canada?  I think we are, and I think it already has.

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good article, thanks for sharing.

As the article states, this has become true in all youth sports.  The sport that figures out a way to address the participation among lower income people, will have a huge advantage in terms of recruiting the best athletes.

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City of Toronto raised gym rentals something like 400+% in one year. 

For our wee little league, we had to pay for a Janitor $75/hr or something like that on top of the gym rental fee.  For a gym we had to sweep ourselves in a facility with no hot water, half the light bulbs didn't work and were not replaced in a decade and a pile of rotting clothes in the shower stayed there for seven months.     This is the last year that league will run, in part priced out of existence. 

 

 

 

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Hopefully this changes with the CanPL.  A proper professional league can drive changes at the grassroots level. 

If we want player fees to decrease, youth clubs need revenue from other sources.  And not just solidarity payments if a player makes it big and goes to Europe, those are too few and far between.  Youth clubs should receive payments from CanPL clubs whenever a pro CanPL contract is signed.      

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30 minutes ago, BrennanFan said:

Hopefully this changes with the CanPL.  A proper professional league can drive changes at the grassroots level. 

If we want player fees to decrease, youth clubs need revenue from other sources.  And not just solidarity payments if a player makes it big and goes to Europe, those are too few and far between.  Youth clubs should receive payments from CanPL clubs whenever a pro CanPL contract is signed.      

This along with more widespread coaching education I think are key. If good coaches are readily accessible in clubs all around then the way to recruit players to clubs changes from being based on coaching ability to perhaps the price point that is offered. If CPL can grow to a level where all or a lot of the teams have free to play systems that of course helps, but then if others can reduce their prices to try to compete with other good clubs, or with the CPL clubs themselves then that could lower the barrier to entry.

But I'm guessing this would all be one or more generations away rather than a few years away. From the very little I know about this kind of thing, my understanding (or is it an assumption?) is that free to play models are possible a couple of ways. Either an extensive pro academy system (like dozens of pro teams at least, and those teams paying amateur clubs for players as well) or government funded. We are unlikely to get soccer to be paid for by the government, and we are a long way from having a pro network extensive enough to make systemic changes throughout the country.

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