Facing A Tough Economic Reality, The CCHL Will Charge Players Thousands To Play:

This has nothing to do with the Vernon Vipers or the BCHL but I thought this was a very interesting and good article. I found a link to a article just like this back in late June that was on Gregg Drinnan's Blog that I posted on this blog.   This article I found in the Ottawa newspaper.  The OJHL will now be charging players to play. It is suggested it would likely be between $3,000 and $4,000 for next season. Will we see this in the BCHL or through out the rest of the Junior A Teams across Canada in the future? 

This was in the Ottawa Citizen Newspaper:

Facing a tough economic reality, the CCHL will charge players thousands to play

By Don Campbell, OTTAWA CITIZEN

June 18, 2013

It’s a concept that never would have been imagined in the days when young coaches like Bryan Murray, Archie Mulligan, Jim Farelli, and Mac MacLean were making their names in the Central Junior Hockey League.

But with teams struggling under the weight of increasing costs, it has become the only way to survive.

The Central Canada Hockey League, as it is now called, will charge its players a registration fee of several thousand dollars to play in the league in 2013-14.

CCHL commissioner Kevin Abrams says the league will charge $3,750 per player across the board, an increase of more than 400 per cent over the $800 (plus HST) it charged players to play in 2012-13.

It’s a far cry from the league’s glory days when players could pocket several hundred dollars a week in pursuit of a Centennial Cup, now renamed the RBC Cup.

Abrams says it’s this simple: all 12 owners in the league are losing money, some in excess of $100,000 against budgets of $200,000, and the league faces either contraction or a revolving door of owners if it doesn’t address the ever-increasing costs of Junior A hockey.

“There are 127 Junior A teams in Canada and about 100 are losing money,” Abrams said Tuesday.

“Hockey at this level has just got so expensive, there must be some sharing of expenses.

“In the last 10 years, the model has changed. We don’t want to see the league cut in half, like it almost was when it went down to five teams in the 1980’s.

“It’s still a fraction of the cost of minor hockey and people have to look at the value in our product.”

The registration fee is broken down into three categories:

The first $1,000 goes to equipment. Each player will, at the end of the day, have purchased his own equipment through the league in an exclusive deal with Reebok-CCM as its official supplier.

The next $1,000 will go toward a “league fee” that will guarantee all players gym memberships, concussion baseline testing, the services of educational advisors, a minimum number of hours of ice-time a week for practice, and post-game meals as outlined in the official CCHL contract.

The next $1,750 will offset club operating expenses, meaning owners can expect a windfall of about $40,000, considering most teams carry about 23 players.

Abrams said the fundamental changes in the way Tier II teams operate began when he and a committee of three-four owners met with owners of the Ontario Junior Hockey League, hoping to come up with some interlocking play.

All agreed that the owners needed a subsidy and they looked at models of junior hockey in the United States, where Abrams says some teams charge more than $10,000, putting the entire onus on the players to pay for the program.

They also looked at how entire leagues could deal directly with suppliers to get better deals on equipment and sticks.

“I’m from the days where they threw you a pair of used gloves and you were never sure if they were going to even have palms,” said Abrams.

“There are different issues now and this way players get new equipment that is their own.

“So we are giving back value.”

The OJHL has yet to set its fee but it’s expected to be in the range of $3,000 to $4,000 for the upcoming year, in addition to the $300 players already pay to the Ontario Hockey Association and $750 to the OJHL.

That makes it about $1,000 more expensive than the CCHL.

Most CCHL teams have held their spring training camps so the rosters have been selected to within a player or two, and it’s up to the general managers to sell the kids and their parents on the value of playing in the league.