The costs of doing business: insights into the finances of travel baseball

One of the more common concerns brought up by parents across the travel baseball landscape is the cost that many face throughout the year. Despite this, many parents are reluctant to discuss costs with one another, and teams and organizations seem even less forthcoming with this information. Recently we sought to learn more about the finances of youth travel baseball and shed some light on this topic. Here we provide what we learned and hope to shed some insights on the costs of travel baseball across the Carolinas.

One of the most prominent difficulties faced when trying to assess the costs across varying teams and programs is the ability to compare apples to apples. Put another way, some teams and programs offer far more than others and thus costs might reasonably be expected to differ in these situations. As we learned more about the costs for different teams and organizations, we attempted to try and perform a multivariate analysis of our data to get at this question. Unfortunately our data limited our ability to perform such as detailed analysis in any meaningful way.

 

What do you actually pay for?

Any consideration of costs for travel baseball has to start with the question of what you are actually paying for when participating in travel baseball. And while some of the costs are perhaps roughly even across most teams (e.g. tournament fees, uniforms, field/facility rentals, team insurance) a variety of other costs can also come into play (e.g. professional coaching/training, travel, more/less expensive tournament fees, organizational fees). Consequently, while at first glance it might be reasonable to consider that most youth teams should have roughly similar costs across the state, this turns out to not be the case. In addition, our assessment of "costs" does not include indirect costs of playing youth baseball such as individual equipment, individual lessons/instructions, hotels and travel costs, parking/gate or entry fees, etc.

 

What we learned about travel ball costs in North Carolina

We attempted to survey as many coaches and parents as we could reach across the state. We received a total of 55 responses from a variety of teams from different geographic areas within North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia and with different team/program models. While representative this informal survey was certainly not comprehensive, even across North Carolina, and represents direct costs charged by teams and organizations to players and families. Almost all teams included tournament costs, team insurance, field/facility rental for practice, and uniforms in their charges to players and families. In addition, some teams had additional costs including professional training/coaching and organization fees depending on their team and organization structure. We broke down costs as an annual charge for teams. There are some respondents who only play in the spring/summer, and we excluded those teams from our analysis. Generally speaking, teams that play spring/summer and fall seasons, charge approximately 66% of their annual costs in the spring/summer seasons and 33% in the fall.

The distribution of costs across the state ranged from a low of approximately $700 dollars annually to a high of nearly $3000 per year. Many respondents noted their out-of-pocket costs were made markedly lower through the use of individual and team fundraising. We found a significant linear relationship between cost and age, with increasing costs associated with age. The average cost for an 8u team among our respondents was $1,017 (range: $750-1600), and was $1,233 for 9u teams (range: $900-1800), $1,356 for 10u teams (range: $900-2000), $1,456 for 11u teams (range: $700-2200), $1,850 for 12u teams (range: $950-2400), and $2,044 for 13u teams (range: $1200-3000). This represents an average increase of approximately $100-200 each year.

Although we were not able to successfully perform a multivariate analysis of team costs, we can make some general statements regarding the line-item costs of youth baseball teams and organizations. Based on our survey results, team insurance runs approximately $100-200 annually spread across an entire team ($7-20 per player). Overall tournament fees were widely varied based on tournament selection (some events cost more than others) and number of tournaments teams participated in. We observed annual tournament costs for teams ranging from $2000-2500 on the low end to upwards of $8000 on the high end. These costs are then spread across an entire roster, which can range from 9-15 players, depending on the team and organization. Therefore, players and families might expect anywhere from $200-1000 in annual costs just for tournament entry fees. Uniforms were another highly varied cost for individual teams. Many teams use the same uniforms across multiple seasons and years, reducing costs for many parents. In general, a full set of new uniforms ranged between $100-150 per player including jerseys, hats, socks, and/or pants. This does not include shoes and in many cases other gear (e.g. t-shirts, sweatshirts, parent/family "swag", etc.), which is largely left to the individual to purchase.

 

Remaining open questions

While we had hoped to provide a significantly in-depth assessment of a topic that largely remains opaque across the state, there were several limitations to our survey. First, it proved exceedingly difficult to perform regression analysis to ascertain what specific aspects of teams and programs drive costs differences. For instance, we had hoped through regression analysis to be able to make some statements about how individual features such as pro coaching might cost to a youth player in the general sense. In general, professional coaching imparted some increased cost on players and families, ranging anywhere from $300-600 per year, but we were unable to ascertain specific cost differences via multivariate analysis as we were unable to get a good handle on itemized costs for each team. Second, the majority of teams and programs we reached out to were either unable or unwilling to provide cost info. Consequently, while we had over 50 respondents over 6 age groups, this represents a small share of the total number of youth baseball teams across the state. Finally, our survey was limited to direct costs charged by teams and organizations to parents and families. As any of us who have sons participating in youth baseball know, the indirect costs including bats, equipment, gear, etc. can add up into the hundreds of dollars quite quickly, and often times (such as in the case of bats and shoes) have to be replaced annually or even shorter intervals.

 

Final Thoughts

The good news for parents is that the state of North Carolina is loaded with different options when it comes to travel baseball. These options have a wide range of costs associated with them, and  it does appear that programs with higher costs due tend to offer a bit more than their lower cost counterparts, including professional coaching and access to facilities. However, whether what those teams and programs that are on the higher end of costs offer to players and families outweighs the negative of increased cost is a very personal decision. In the future, we'd love to help create an environment where costs are transparent rather than the current situation where costs are really discussed and not publicly available, unless specifically requested. Youth travel baseball should be a participant-driven enterprise with the focus on providing the best opportunities to the players and families. Costs are one such consideration, and our view is that families should have the freedom to choose programs that are consistent with how much they value the youth travel baseball experience. While we don't see an obvious "youth travel ball industry" fleecing parents and making money hand-over-fist across the state, teams and organization unwilling to share their costs and charges with us in an anonymous fashion is somewhat concerning.