England Hockey (EH) is hoping to push through “significant changes” to its player membership model when it goes to a vote at Tuesday’s AGM.
The national governing body says that change is necessary due to “inflation and unavoidable costs” which need to be passed on to the hockey community.
Club player membership numbers around 146,000 and EH says it needs to maintain the long-term sustainability of the sport, which has also forced England Hockey into redundancies at Bisham Abbey.
On average players pay EH £10 per year, including personal accident insurance for the vast majority, which is well below other UK sports and national hockey bodies’ membership fees.
EH’s proposed changes result in an average fee increase of around £9 per player per year.
Research commisioned by EH left the governing body “encouraged” by what its members were interested in contributing to.
Members wanted more state schools hockey, free-to-air hockey on TV, coaching, umpiring and safeguarding courses, and prepared to pay for insurance.
Rich Beer, England Hockey’s sport and development director, said: “Whether club’s management committees reflect what the views of the players are is always the challenge in these scenarios, but we are pretty confident in the research, that there was some strong feeling on what was important.”
Clubs have spoken out against the planned changes, saying that their fees will be double or more from next season, from circa £5,000 to over £11,000.
David Brereton said on X: “England hockey club membership – Clubs trying their hardest – new membership cost takes club cost from £5k to £10k next season for no real tangible benefit bar a few online courses. Use your AGM vote carefully.”
Another club member said: “As always, the litmus test is how it will affect the small clubs. Their fees will be lower than the big clubs, but money is always tight and any increase in costs affects their viability disproportionately, because they don’t have the variety of income streams to compensate.”
The majority of national governing bodies in other sports, highlighted in the panel above, operate an individual membership model or a hybrid model, where both clubs and players contribute financially when participating in the sport.
Beer said: “The challenge leads to a chunk of money that the clubs are collecting from its players and passing on to us.
“We had a choice of whether we went directly to the players.
“We are realistic and if you look at other sports, a player registration is completely normal to be a competitive player. We have never done it until this point and there is a bit of a step change on the way we are going about it.”
