The Price of Playing Football

Welcome back to Kickabout where today we will explore the cost of playing football and whether it is becoming too expensive.

I’ll begin by discussing the results of the twitter poll. Of those who responded that they play football, more than half indicated that they spent more than £10 a week in doing so. Daniel Marshall got in touch on Twitter to tell us that he spends an average of £21 a week playing football, which adds up to a staggering £1092 per year and that’s before accounting for travel costs etc. Even playing one game of 5’s per week will rack up a yearly spending of over £250. While many of us are happy to pay these amounts, you could forgive someone, perhaps just trying to get into football, for contemplating whether their £250 might be better spent elsewhere as a they take a Mitre straight to the face during their turn in goals on a rainy Tuesday night. There’s also the argument that many people simply can’t afford to part with this much money to play the game they love and, with prime-time 5-a-side pitches in Glasgow ranging from £55-63, its unlikely that they’ll find a cheaper alternative.

With regard amateur football, Jack McQuade of Cambuslang Rangers got in touch saying that their park for home games costs £147 for two hours, before including the costs of a referee. These costs could be enough to deter people from getting involved in football and, with the price of pitches unlikely to drop, its hard to see what can be done.

Daryl Rankin, who has played amateur football in both Aberdeen and Glasgow offered some defence for the prices here in Glasgow, saying that while it can be up to 4 times more expensive to play in Glasgow, games are rarely cancelled, whereas in Aberdeen it was the norm to see games cancelled all throughout winter.

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