Our fees | Brunswick Zebras FC

where do my fees go?

A lot goes into the running of a community football club, not least of which is keeping on top of the finances. One very large component is the registration fees that are payable to Football Victoria and Football Australia. These are paid directly to FV and FFA on credit card transactions via the registration portal. The other main expenses are playing kits, coaching expenses (including Saturday Skillz), wages for canteen staff, team entry fees, referees fees, and equipment such as balls, goals, bibs, goal keeping gloves, etc.

Other expenses that aren’t often considered include the hire of our grounds and payment for use of utilities like electricity and water.

Fees for our programs are listed on the specific program pages. See the links in the menu above, or in the ‘Our programs’ section towards the bottom of this page.

How do Brunswick Zebras’ fees compare?

All clubs have different overheads, but we believe we are offering extremely good value in exchange for the fees that are charged. We know that there are clubs with lower fees, but we are very far from the most expensive.

The graphs below shows the results of surveys into Juniors and Miniroos fees. Seniors fees in nearby clubs are far too opaque to obtain meaningful data. The purpose of these graphs is not to compare apples with apples: we know that all clubs have different aims, different facilities and different expenses to meet.

Some of the data in these graphs come with qualifications: not all fees include kits; some charge an additional fee for new players to the club; some are the averages of multiple price points across the entire cohort. The purpose is not to suggest like-for-like comparisons, but rather to show the range of fees being charged.

Our membership fees only make up 80% of our income, with the remainder covered by canteen sales and fundraising. Our senior teams are especially active in fundraising and staffing the canteens.

We are not a typical club in that we are operate at a number of grounds and facilities – Sumner, Balfe, Clifton, Wylie, Holbrook & Ryder. Many clubs are based at a single location with multiple pitches. This has a significant impact on our ground hire costs and the costs associated with duplicating assets and resources across multiple locations.

Football is an expensive sport to play in this country, as clubs have many costs to meet, and do not receive the subsidies or support that some other sports do. For example, the fees of aussie rules community teams are heavily subsidised by corporate sponsorship, and money from TV rights that flows down to grass-roots level, much of which comes from gambling advertising.

In addition, it is estimated that the AFL business receives as much as $40M per year from the losses of individual gamblers.
Without significant external sources of income, football clubs need to meet their costs through member fees, fundraising and canteen sales.

The fees we charge – when combined with money raised from canteen sales and fundraising – represent the true cost of delivering our programs.