Or is this children's sports club reasonably priced?

[powerof10]

DS is 8, likes sport, is getting interested in clubs, competition etc.
I'm sporty but new to the world of organised sport for kids. From my experience I expect sport to be a cheap hobby.

E.g. For my sport (running) my £90/year club subs gets me 4 club sessions a week, free entry to 30+ races a year, club gym, cheap bar. Juniors pay £20/year.
Where I grew up sports clubs were run by parent volunteers or by members for members, costs were nominal. E.g. Junior membership at the local tennis/squash club was £40/year for use of courts, clubhouse, organised sessions run by older kids, local leagues. (yes, that was 90's prices, but costs now are £40 for U11s, £70 for 11-18, £170 adults).

Last week DS went to a taster session at a club (for a sport I'm unfamiliar with) and loved it. It was an indoor winter training session with around thirty 8-12s, lots of skills, drills, run by volunteers in a hired hall, no expensive equipment. All good grassroots sport stuff.

But... the club are asking for a Direct Debit of £36/month (£432/year!) or £11/session. I think at his age the only session this covers is this 1 hour session a week, term time only.
I think this is a LOT! I was expecting to pay around a fiver a session. But AIBU and out of touch? Are my experiences unusual? Is it normal to expect to pay this much for organised kids sport now?

Definitely depends on the sport. We pay:

£14 every fortnight for tennis
£15 per session for fencing (when DS starts properly in a few months)
£10 a week ballet
£13 a month swimming
I'm looking into gymnastics at the moment, and the decent one around here is coming up as £50 per month!

I'm just glad DH teaches DS violin, because that can be costly for a decent tutor. DD wants piano so we'll have to see how DH copes with teaching that. 😂

It's all worth it tbh, the clubs/lessons are good! I think it depends on how well they're taught. I'd resent it if it was mediocre.

Depends where you are. Most things my way are £10 an hour

That’s the same price as my DCs swimming and gymnastics (both term time). I think it depends on the sport.

I might jab been pipped to the post by the PP but I'm guessing gym but one of the more commercial ones.

One of mine did a few terms at one run out of the local sports centre. It had a blended monthly payment but meant you sometimes paid the fee for one class. Everything was extra -£ for each certificate etc. We dropped it reasonably quickly. It was a lot for what they were actually offering - and more than the equivalent for a proper club if that makes sense. The ts and cs for giving notice were fairly tricky too!

The responses on here are definitely a reminder of how hard it is for normal families to access sports. Some people appear to be spending the equivalent of mortgages in my area!

Football is £10 a month and swimming is £24. Dance, gymnastics and martial arts tend to be £50-100 depending on the level and she from what I know. Thank god mine just like football!

Football is really expensive here, so expensive we had to talk DC out of wanting to do it. The sport they play is purely because it's cheap.

This. The only cheap activities now are ones that are some combination of heavily subsided, run by volunteers, or use buildings/facilities they own (eg Scout hut).

My DCs swim competitively, do martial arts and Scouting.
Scouting is the cheapest at £15 per half term per child. They have their own building and field, it's run entirely by volunteers, and the cost of each meeting to the unit is generally pretty low as it involves a lot of local specialists coming in to talk about things (again, volunteering their time for free and often providing anything needed for the activities after their talk too) and going to places that offer free or subsided entry, such as the fire station or local observatory.
The next cheapest is the martial arts. It is £20/month for 1hr/wk with extra for gradings or extra sessions in the run up to gradings. The club is family-run 'for the love of it', but still has costs for hall hire, insurances, membership of the national body and equipment.
The swimming club has 3 paid senior coaches, but is otherwise staffed entirely by volunteers. On the surface you might only see the coaching team and have email contact with some of the committee, and probably assume the coaches are all paid (I'm a coach and have lost count of the number of other parents who are surprised to discover I'm a volunteer). There are also a number of volunteers who take on the huge task of organising meets, both holding our own and arranging our entries to other club's. Then at meets, the officials are all volunteers, with at most their lunch provided and petrol paid, the latter only available if you don't have a child swimming. Despite this, costs are still high as pool hire and volunteer training costs are very expensive, as well as insurance, lifeguards etc. My training costs so far have been around £2k (and a lot of hours of my time on top of the usual coaching to complete it), which is paid for by the club. We also pay the training fees of anyone who wants to do any of the officiating qualifications as we are expected to send some officials to every meet we attend. DC1's monthly fees are £50 for 4.5hrs/wk and DC2's are £36 for 2 hrs/wk. Per hour of training it is pretty reasonable for what you get IMO, and a lot cheaper than some other neighbouring clubs who pay all their coaching team and an admin person. It is exceptional value when compared to the run-as-a-business council swimming lessons at £40/month for 30 mins in the water each week.

Our Scouts cost £10 a month...

However what a lot don't realise is the constant fundraising going on behind the scenes to keep it that cheap and do things like pay the electricity bill.

DDs rugby is £75 a year... and again, lots of fundraising going on.

The irony is its easier to fundraise in more affluent areas but its the groups in the less affluent areas that need it most.

The sport has still not been explicitly named. Can't understand why, in a country of 69M people.

We pay a lot more here.
£120/ year for football (1hr a week training and 1 match run by volunteers)
£38/week drama lessons (not stage school: just drama)
£15/week 30min swim lesson

That's a shame, are you in an area rife with "academies" rather than grassroots teams run by volunteers? Thankfully the academies haven't done well here (probably due to obscene costs) so the volunteer-run clubs still manage to thrive.

My daughter's gymnastics was £240 a month so we had to get the club to subsidise her- luckily they offered.

Tedious, isn’t it?

If they are hiring a rink for sole use it's possibly a reasonable cost.

Rugby is £70 for the season and most kit is heavily subsidised.

Swimming was £32 a month for 5x 1 hour pool sessions, races were extra £0-£10 per race depending on gala

Dance was £32 a week for as many group classes as you wanted, or £8 a class + £12 for 1/2 hour for private lessons. + Different leotards for every class, different shoes, show outfits, exam outfits etc.

It is ridiculous not naming the sport.

costs for local sports…
Regional talent centre for football £60 a month for 4hr training & one match (if picked) each week
rugby £110 for the year, training 2hr from Sept to May
grassroots football £130 for the year, training 1hr Sept-July, occasional matches
swimming £32 a month for 30 mins once a week
netball £13 a month for 2 hr training & monthly matches
winter nets for cricket £5 a session pay as you go

Not really. A lot of "pay to play" type set ups but even those are pricey.

My DC do kickboxing for £60 per month each. You can go twice a week although we only ever make one class. Riding lessons £40 at time but I appreciate these are huge costs involved with that one. I don’t think £36 is expensive- hall hire, staff training, DBS checks for everyone, insurance, registration with an organisation, equipment……..

I don't really understand the responses saying £11 per hour (the price stated in the OP) is expensive after dozens of posters have said their dancing/gymnastics/fencing/whatever clubs are similar - it's obviously not way off the market rate. If a club is run by volunteers that's great but we can't really expect that. I doubt many people are getting rich running a kids' sports club, probably at unsociable hours too.

@GutsyBiscuit because the OP was clear in her opening post that It was an indoor winter training session with around thirty 8-12s, lots of skills, drills, run by volunteers in a hired hall, no expensive equipment. All good grassroots sport stuff.

30 x £36 per month (that's £1080 per month)
run by volunteers

Haha thanks, I was reading responses to the thread and hadn't read the OP since yesterday.

Not cheap but being on the committee for a club there’s unseen costs like insurance, venue hire and also paying for training for volunteers - even if they aren’t paid.

I think its very easy to underestimate costs. I used to be lightly involved with the admin of a local basketball club. Hall hire has gone up MASSIVELY. Our hire costs went from £45/hour to £70 over 2 years.

Volunteers these days often aren't! And there are additional.costs even if they are - transport, dbs, first aid training etc.

Insurance and club accreditation.

Then equipment. Basketball is mostly just balls... but my word, we got through a lot of them! Plus a fee other costs- updated first aid kits, bibs for team separation, website and technology apps/cloud services, storage for our kit, ....

It adds up v v quickly. And of course, costs have to be spread so you might have a group of 20, but the other class inly have 11

.

The hall hire alone could be a couple of hundred (care taker to open up, electricity, heating.....)

Even if sessions are run by volunteers they do need some money to keep them safe and effective - coaching qualifications, first aid, welfare and safeguarding training, kit and equipment etc. as well as hall hire.

No one is getting rich running a sports club. And usually if you ask them they'll be happy to tell you where the money goes.

I mean my daughter's sport is showjumping so everything is cheap compared to that 🥴