Willingness to pay club membership fees for children's and youth sports
As part of research in the field of sport economics conducted at the Department of Sport Management and Social Sciences, a project has been launched on the economic concept of willingness to pay in children and youth sport.
In the current era of high inflation and rising costs of living, there is also a number of questions about how all of these factors will affect household resources directed toward sporting activities, specifically the major team sports in the Czech Republic. The background for us to conduct research with a similar focus was a survey that was already conducted in Germany in 2011 (Wicker, 2011). The topic is also important because of the current situation in sports clubs, where many of them are dealing with rising costs associated with the increase in energy prices, and are forced to address the revenue side of their budgets to cover the costs of running the club.
The financing of sports in the Czech Republic is subject to constant debate, but almost all attention is directed toward the financing of sports from public budgets (see e.g. Pavlík, 2013). In contrast, our study is directed towards domestic households and their willingness to spend resources on children and youth sports, which ultimately provides an irreplaceable source of income for many sports clubs, even in major sports with extensive state support.
The aim of this research is to identify and compare the level of club membership fees in team sports, specifically football, ice hockey, basketball, floorball, and volleyball. The research team aims to collect sufficient data to determine the average membership dues in each sport across clubs, as well as to build a model within an economic theory framework that compares the actual values of current membership dues to the value of dues that parents would be willing to pay for their children's regular organized sports participation.
The background to this research has the potential to show not only the economic facts, but also the intrinsic motivations of parents who have brought their children to participate in a team sport, and to give an insight into the importance of sport in their children's lives. Therefore, the research questionnaire includes follow-up questions that focus on parents' expectations of regular organised sporting activity, subjective perceptions of the value that sports clubs provide to their children or the hereditary relationship to sport within the family
