Youth Hockey: A Game for the Rich?

A friend of mine, who happens to be an awesome hockey mom - and a goalie mom at that! - sent me a really interesting article about the rising cost of youth hockey and its impact on the game in Canada. It seemed like a great topic for a blog post, and it also inspired me to create the latest Beeski Survey!


It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - especially hockey parents - that ice hockey is an expensive sport. In-house hockey programs tend to run in the hundreds of dollars, and that increases to thousands when you move to travel hockey. And that's just for ice time - on top of that, tack on the costs of equipment (kids grow too quickly!), travel, tournaments, camps, clinics - it adds up quickly.

The article mentions that the rising costs of youth hockey are threatening the "blue-collar roots" of the game. It blames the rising cost of ice time in particular:

"One of the biggest reasons for hockey’s spiralling costs is the rise in the price of ice time. Municipal facilities have become overburdened in many parts of the country. Private arenas have begun offering more and more of the available ice time, often at a much higher cost. What used to cost a minor hockey team $50 an hour can now be upwards of seven times that."

Maybe that's a key difference between the U.S. and Canada. Youth hockey is very popular in the Philadelphia tri-state area (PA, NJ, DE), but as far as I'm aware there are typically no "municipal facilities" to rely on. The one exception I can think of is within the borders of the city of Philadelphia, where the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation provides opportunities for any kid in the city to play. They've even taken over management of the city's ice rinks, saving them from shutting down completely.

But most of us can't rely on a charitable foundation to ease the burden. Based on that, maybe youth hockey in the U.S. has always been a game for the rich?

I suspect some of you might not agree with that. And I know one way to find out!

Here's a link to the latest Beeski Survey. It's short - will take 5 minutes (at most) to complete. I'll leave it open for a few weeks and post the results in a future blog.

I'll warn you in advance that in order to get useful information about costs I had to ask some sensitive questions. Rest assured, the survey is completely anonymous - I'm not collecting any identifying information. But if you are still uncomfortable answering a specific question, just skip it - most of the questions are optional.

Thanks for reading and thanks for participating in the survey!

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