The Ref Stop

tournaments fees - again

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Kent Ref

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A club approached me a couple of weeks ago to help in their annual tournament.

They are offering £50 and 2 free drinks / burgers. Last year i believe it was £60.

They wants refs from 9.00 - 5.30pm (2 competitions am/pm) (edited as i have just seen a flyer). That's 8.5 hours i reckon. 12 pitches with 14 refs.

I know the guy quite well and i declined and told him why. I said the fee needs to be £100 and you need 18 refs.

Bizarrely he told me the club has allowed it's own teams to enter for free and the club needs to raise maximum funds.

Maybe he should start by paying a fair amount and charging their own teams. How can the fee go down? It's already a joke.

I'm told they made a 6.5k PROFIT last year so there's plenty of money to be made.
 
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The Ref Stop
I did a tournament at an academy earlier this season. 2.5 hours, 5 games, 8 refs (4 pitches) £40 each. Free food and drinks. We were all guaranteed between 3 games (all groups) and 5 (SF and Final as well, which is what I ended up getting). I benchmark everything roughly on that now, as regular teams are much more of a pain and less respectful. £50 for a whole day? No chance! Your assessment sounds perfectly reasonable IMHO.
 
Same response for me as previously, no one is being forced to do it so if you aren't happy with what is being offered just decline. If others decide they are happy to do it then equally that is their choice, I've never been a backer of what seems to be an increasing tendency to be offended on behalf of others.
 
I agree with Rusty. Although I would decline such a fee, that is a personal choice rather than something that everyone should be expected to do. I tend to decline the majority of tournaments anyway even if paid generously as I've found from my own experience they are a great opportunity to give newer refs some games and develop them a bit more. I found that helpful when I started and wouldn't want to take that opportunity away from others.
 
Kent Ref said:
A club approached me a couple of weeks ago to help in their annual tournament.

They are offering £50 and 2 free drinks / burgers. Last year i believe it was £60.

They wants refs from 9.00 - 5.30pm (2 competitions am/pm) (edited as i have just seen a flyer). That's 8.5 hours i reckon. 12 pitches with 14 refs.

I know the guy quite well and i declined and told him why. I said the fee needs to be £100 and you need 18 refs.

Bizarrely he told me the club has allowed it's own teams to enter for free and the club needs to raise maximum funds.

Maybe he should start by paying a fair amount and charging their own teams. How can the fee go down? It's already a joke.

I'm told they made a 6.5k PROFIT last year so there's plenty of money to be made.
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I actually would of taken this as for 8 hours it £6.25 an hour so I’ve done harder jobs for less
 
RustyRef said:
Same response for me as previously, no one is being forced to do it so if you aren't happy with what is being offered just decline. If others decide they are happy to do it then equally that is their choice, I've never been a backer of what seems to be an increasing tendency to be offended on behalf of others.
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I was offended on MY behalf. That's why I declined.
 
Kent Ref said:
I was offended on MY behalf. That's why I declined.
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Which is exactly your prerogative. People vote with their feet, if the offer isn't good enough their feet move the other way.

The way it is often made out, and in fairness I mean more on social media and other refereeing forums than your post, is that referees are forced to take part in these lowly paid tournaments and what an outrage that is. Whereas they absolutely aren't, it is personal choice, and it then comes down to supply and demand. If the organisers don't get enough interest they will have to increase the fees, if they do get enough interest there obviously isn't a problem with the fees.

Given the fact I missed all but the opening weekend of last season through injury, and therefore am desperately short of match fitness, I would probably accept a tournament like this just for my own benefit regardless of the fee. Whereas had I not had the injury issues I would politely tell them to do one.
 
Finals day junior (u18 and u16) and they didn’t tell us fees in advance. Turned out they only gave £20 for being AR so doing 3 games on a hot day without any refreshments and they tried to charge refs for parking gave me £75 which I thought was very poor.
Compared to another league where I did the finals and they gave a flat fee of £40 for u18 matches regardless of what position. They said it’s only fair and that way everyone is happy to chip in. They also provided drinks and food voucher.

No doubt which league final days I’ll be doing next season.
 
Ori said:
Finals day junior (u18 and u16) and they didn’t tell us fees in advance. Turned out they only gave £20 for being AR so doing 3 games on a hot day without any refreshments and they tried to charge refs for parking gave me £75 which I thought was very poor.
Compared to another league where I did the finals and they gave a flat fee of £40 for u18 matches regardless of what position. They said it’s only fair and that way everyone is happy to chip in. They also provided drinks and food voucher.

No doubt which league final days I’ll be doing next season.
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I've read this a few times. Did you get £20 or £75 for the first one?
 
Ori said:
No doubt which league final days I’ll be doing next season.
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Surely you don't get to choose what finals you do? If you do that is probably part of the problem, finals should be appointed to officials on merit.
 
RustyRef said:
Surely you don't get to choose what finals you do? If you do that is probably part of the problem, finals should be appointed to officials on merit.
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I was asked to be in finals by both leagues over two weekends. I chose to do one of each even though I was asked to do both by both leagues.
 
RustyRef said:
Surely you don't get to choose what finals you do? If you do that is probably part of the problem, finals should be appointed to officials on merit.
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I've done final(s) where they don't pay at all and don't even tell you.
By that, i got appointed to a double final, same day, and got a trophy for it after the second game. 1 line, 1 middle. Was there for approximately 6 hours too (factor in pre match, actual match (both 90 minutes), gap between games (extra time factored in) and post match (awards etc).
They never said there would be no fee. We just assumed it was same rate as their league matches.
Safe to say, they changed it the next season. We were the first set of finals over 4 weeks and tbe other officials had found out with some dropping out.
Thing is, we could've done league matches and actually earned money at the same and been away from home for less.
 
ladbroke8745 said:
I've done final(s) where they don't pay at all and don't even tell you.
By that, i got appointed to a double final, same day, and got a trophy for it after the second game. 1 line, 1 middle. Was there for approximately 6 hours too (factor in pre match, actual match (both 90 minutes), gap between games (extra time factored in) and post match (awards etc).
They never said there would be no fee. We just assumed it was same rate as their league matches.
Safe to say, they changed it the next season. We were the first set of finals over 4 weeks and tbe other officials had found out with some dropping out.
Thing is, we could've done league matches and actually earned money at the same and been away from home for less.
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That’s awful. I’m surprised anyone turned up for finals after they found out they weren’t getting paid.
Suffice to say we both know to ask before accepting.
 
A friend of mine did a tournament yesterday and they had 2 spare refs for 16 pitches. 3 refs went at 4pm - same money though.

The hot food ran out at 2pm and they ran out of drinks by 3pm.

He was there 9.00 to 6pm and got £60. Two tournaments AM/PM.

He had 25 minutes off at lunch time. I make that less than £7 an hour.

He's not bothering next time. The organisation was poor too - so he said.

Club made 6.7k PROFIT. He'll now vote with his feet.
 
Kent Ref said:
A friend of mine did a tournament yesterday and they had 2 spare refs for 16 pitches. 3 refs went at 4pm - same money though.

The hot food ran out at 2pm and they ran out of drinks by 3pm.

He was there 9.00 to 6pm and got £60. Two tournaments AM/PM.

He had 25 minutes off at lunch time. I make that less than £7 an hour.

He's not bothering next time. The organisation was poor too - so he said.

Club made 6.7k PROFIT. He'll now vote with his feet.
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That sounds brutal. That’s all we can do. Vote with our feet and not do jobs that don’t pay enough.
 
Kent Ref said:
For me refs are worth minimum wage at least.

Unsurprisingly most of the refs were under 20 yesterday.
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At least! Even at £40 for an u18 match is just about minimum wage when you consider travel time, having to be there at least 30 mins before KO, half time break and additional time.

They end up with younger refs, because it’s not worth it for adults.

Im hoping fees go up for next season as they stayed the same last season.
 
Ori said:
At least! Even at £40 for an u18 match is just about minimum wage when you consider travel time, having to be there at least 30 mins before KO, half time break and additional time.

They end up with younger refs, because it’s not worth it for adults.

Im hoping fees go up for next season as they stayed the same last season.
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You can't really count travel time when talking about minimum wage, who gets paid for travelling to their place of work? If you work at McDonalds you aren't paid for the time it takes you to travel to whichever branch you work at.
 
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