Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People arguing that clubs and coaches are raking in the benjamins like Warren Buffet have me ROFL. It's a low margin business across the board.

Yep, former board chair of a large local club here. I'd say zero-margin or even negative margin. The hardest part of my job was explaining to parents (and even some knuckle-headed board members) that our only source of revenues was fees and the fees barely cover the cost of the program. Biggest expense is salaries, and no one is well paid compared to the non-soccer world. Second biggest expense is fields, a surprising number of otherwise intelligent people think that fields just magically appear.

The reason there is so much churn is that youth soccer is fundamentally a barrel-bottom-scraping business.

I agree the margins are thin to nonexistent but in the large clubs that includes a lot of salaries in the management/overhead. Lots of directors of this and that, who command a larger salaries than the coaches. It is disproportionate. I could give lots of examples of FT positions that are of questionable value to the kids like director of marketing. Sure some marketing is necessary and raising the general profile of the club is of indirect benefit to older players. But does making a FT position make sense to the development mission of the club? How does it benefit Ulittles who can’t attract and keep a quality coach and end up with complete inconsistency in coaching or second and third teams who by definition provide the bulk of the funding.

Big clubs are non-profits so you can easily access their 990s. They prove your point the there’s not extra money sitting around. But they also show a lot of money is passing through and is used in ways that doesn’t fairly align with the interests and priorities of people proving that revenue.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People arguing that clubs and coaches are raking in the benjamins like Warren Buffet have me ROFL. It's a low margin business across the board.

Yep, former board chair of a large local club here. I'd say zero-margin or even negative margin. The hardest part of my job was explaining to parents (and even some knuckle-headed board members) that our only source of revenues was fees and the fees barely cover the cost of the program. Biggest expense is salaries, and no one is well paid compared to the non-soccer world. Second biggest expense is fields, a surprising number of otherwise intelligent people think that fields just magically appear.

The reason there is so much churn is that youth soccer is fundamentally a barrel-bottom-scraping business.

Agreed. Bunch of used car salesmen posing as youth coaches because they don't want to have to grow up and get a real job. Not all are like this, but from what I have observed over many years most are. Sad thing is I wouldn't mind coaching when I retire as I enjoy the game and teaching kids, but not sure I want to deal with these clubs and other coaches. I can always just coach rec - but that has it's own challenges ...