Inflation hits games; athletics an increasingly expensive sport for school districts’ budget
The persisting recession and increasing inflation has taken its toll on sports as well. According to recent findings, the district schools’ budgets are finding it increasingly difficult to bear the expense of athletics sports.
Even though the sports are completely funded by the local taxpayers, the equipment cost is becoming way out of reach for local institutes. The findings have surfaced in an attempt to find why, despite getting funds for it, the schools have been found charging
for sporting events.
The phenomenon of charging participants or the spectators for school sporting events are not confined to the athletics only. Recently, the Indiana River School District has been reported to charge $ 5 each for events like football, field hockey, boys’ and
girls’ basketball, boys’ soccer and wrestling. In case of middle schools, the charges stand at $ 2.
An individual planning to attend the school’s sporting events for an entire season can have all his/her tickets in $ 25, while for a family, the package costs $75.
When asked whether the amount charged for ticket was enough to meet all the expenses, Todd Fuhrmann, the director of the IR athletics said “If you go much higher than $ 5, you’re going to start losing attendance. (That’s) about the limit for that”.
Likewise, the Cape Henlopen School District charges $ 4 from the spectators of the high school football, field hockey, boys’ and girls’ basketball, boys’ and girls’ soccer and volleyball, wrestling and lacrosse for both boys and girls. Although the season
ticket is $ 25 for the adults, the district refrains from charging for the admission for middle school sports.
While sharing the details, the director of Cape Athletic, Bob Cilento, explained that charging for admission could end up increasing their total cost. He said, “We just don’t want to charge for middle school games. To do it, you have to hire people to collect
the money, and we don’t have a way to control the entrance at the middle schools.”
Interestingly, by charging for the tickets, the district schools raised a considerable sum of money. For instance, in the year 2009 and 2010, Cape sold tickets worth $ 43,000 while it had allocated a huge sum of $ 225,000 for athletics only. In comparison,
the IR collected $ 92,372, but earned only a total of $ 74,243 in the following year.
It is encouraging to see that in order to catch up with the increasing costs of the sports material and of organizing events, the district schools have come up with ways that are cheap, yet can raise significant funds. However, if the current trend of inflation
continues, this too may become an impossible feat for the respective administrations.
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