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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Club volleyball is a total grift. After you shell out the bucks, your child may never get any playtime. And then you have to sit there and not complain or even speak to the coach.  You have been warned. [/quote]

They tell you this willingly and openly before tryouts. It's your fault if you didn't think it would apply to your kid or if you didn't consider what your reaction would be. [/quote]

That may be so, but why do people think this is good deal? [/quote]

DP but I’ve never heard anyone say club volleyball is a good deal. You keep changing topics.  It’s like any other EC. Most of us are paying for it because our kid likes it, we can afford it and are willing to drive to it. A few are paying for it in hopes it will lead to college but it’s not that majority.

Change volleyball with any other sport, dance or expensive EC in this area and you will get the same reasoning.

It’s never because it’s a good deal.  
[/quote]

It can be a very good deal if you end up playing for MVSA or Volley Viet. Unfortunately, they have limited availability. It can also end up being a good deal if your player is college material and you end up playing for higher end clubs like Metro. Volleyball is not a good "deal" for most of us - we are willing to pay knowing that we are being ripped off. However, this doesn't mean that we should simply accept it without complaining about it. It's like "We know that they rip us off. They know that we know that they rip us off. We know that they know that we know that they rip us off." [/quote]
Yes, club volleyball is expensive.  Believe it or not we are fortunate to live in a relatively lower cost area for club sports versus other regions.  If you want sticker shock check out the average price for good clubs in metro areas of TX, MN, MO, & FL.

And MVSA is a great club that should be commended for keeping club fees low. However the actions they take to keep prices low has the effect of increasing the costs to other clubs in the region.  A two court, 1 day, 8 team tournament earns ~2700.  They hosted 20+ of those this year with revenues exceeding $50K, plus their large multi-day with revenue of over $40K -- that's $90K+ transferred away from MVSA players and subsidized by players at other clubs.  Even if you include facility rental costs and the 2 referees they need for a 1 day they are making a lot of money.  Plus they earn concessions revenue.

They also have long-standing gym rental agreements that are generally below market rates compared to other clubs. While Montgomery County schools are relatively inexpensive (~17/hr), commercial and non-county school options range from $50-$150/hr.  MVSA generally either pays the Montgomery County rate or a low rate on Montgomery Village facilities. The facilities they use aren't available to other clubs, because of the legacy scheduling process.  Finding evening gym space during basketball season at the small number of Montgomery County facilities with volleyball nets is near impossible and the gyms go to the legacy users first -- which MVSA has been doing for decades and has priority as a result.  That raises the price of gym space for other clubs who have to look at commercial rental, facility ownership and/or private school gyms as their primary court space.

How big an impact does all of this have?
MVSA, according to their latest Form 990 ([url]https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/811916976[/url]) had $582K in revenue against $550K in expenses last year.  The year before it was $540K revenue against $443K in expenses.  That's an average net after tax profit of ~11% for an organization with by far the lowest expenses of any large club within the DC metro area. They have very low cost of facility rental with Montgomery Village facilities and MCPS, low coach cost, very low tournament expenses and very low travel.  And they still only make a small profit each year.  Cross-subsidization from tournament fees likely accounts for all of their profit and more.

As other threads covered, you can build a bottom up financial model that explains why clubs have to charge ~1.5-2X the fees of MVSA in order to break even.  There are certainly clubs well above that price point that you can argue are more expensive than they should.  But a lot of good CHRVA clubs fall right in that price range including a number of clubs with teams usually in the qualifying for CHRVA regionals (top 12 of an age group) like Blue Ridge, BAVA, MOCO, Delaware United etc. All of those clubs have their top teams in the range with their lower teams around 25-40% lower cost. There are also a number of good clubs clubs that are just above that range (Libero, American/540) or in that range (e.g MEVC).

Even Metro travel teams are roughly at that price as well (excluding uniforms, coach stipend and travel surplus charges) which is not a coincidence from a marketing perspective. So are their regional teams even though they aren't generally competitive with any of the upper teams of the clubs listed above.

You can certainly make the argument that the high-cost clubs (primarily Paramount, VA Elite, VA Juniors & MD Juniors) which are all 2.5X-5X MVSA are too expensive.  Those clubs do have a good success record at the upper levels though.  The clubs that charge that amount and don't have that success level are worth questioning more.[/quote]

This discussion turned into a question of whether club fees are reasonable, which is sort of a tangent. This tread is about clubs charging unreasonable fees for activities that don't justify their costs. [/quote]

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