By The Numbers - Beer League Season Fees

[nickerjones]

For me, there was a huge shock of seeing Calgary adult hockey fees coming from Oklahoma. But are Calgary's fees that bad. We took a dive into checking out the league fees from across NA over at BLT. I thought the beer leaguers here would find it interesting

https://blpa.com/blog/beer-league-ho...orth-america//

While obviously not able to find EVERY league cost here are some general rankings.

Below is a list broken down into the price per game using a 13-player roster (with the goalie paying half), with costs standardized to USD. Obviously there are different rinks in each city, so there may be other options at different price points.

7. Boston – based on 24 games: $21.59 per game (New England Senior Hockey League)
8. Memphis – based on 13 games: $21.37 per game (Mid South Ice House)
9. Calgary – based on 30 games: $20.87 per game

[Buff]

Down here in Lethbridge I just play a weekly game of shinny with the same group of guys and girls. One feller rents out ice and we get together and play. We've had the same ice time for over a decade now.

This year we're paying $200 for the season to play as many games as we wish (we have 26 games), or casual players can pay a drop-in fee of $15 per game. Most groups who play "organized shinny" have a similar model. It's a cheaper fee to pay it all at the beginning of the year than to pay per game. I paid $200 and if I were to make it to all games it would cost me $7.69 per game. I saw this one guy show up to every game last year and he paid his $15 each week.

[Weitz]

How many players do you assume are on each team?

I play on a couple teams, one where we have minimal players because everyone shows up and obviously the cost is more, and another where people are flakes so more people are on the team and the cost is less.

How about ice times? Playing in late leagues is cheaper but really ####ty ice times.

[lazypucker]

Nickerjones - you guys at NCHL charge too much!!

Realistically, are Calgary-area arenas that expensive to book nowadays?

[bc-chris]

here in kelowna we pay $10,900/team. 31 regular season games and minimum of 2 playoff games.

my team has 15 skaters and i'm the goalie and run the team. we all pay the same amount

there are lots of teams that carry 17/18 skaters to help keep the fees down a bit. it sure sucks for them when everyone shows up! ha!

we play any day of the week and starts times could be as early as 5pm (on weekends) and as late as 11pm (oh those are fun on a weekday).
the only days we do not have games on are christmas eve/day, boxing day, new years, easter sunday, super bowl sunday.

we play out of two rinks - cnc and prospera place. prospera sucks. it's downtown and hard to find any street parking close to the rink so you have to pay $10 to park at the rink. the ice is awful too - it's where the kelowna rockets play, so it's meant to get a scrape after 20 minutes - which we don't get. so by the second period the ice is gross and by the third period the ice is down right terrible. the arena is also soooo hot and the change rooms are ridiculously small (guys getting changed in the shower and in the change room entrance since there is not enough space in the room).

i'm trying to remember what ice was to rent when i ran a shinny group - a little over $300/hour. but that was a number of years ago and i know it costs more now. one thing that the cnc arena does is a 'buy ice now' program where they post available icetimes online that you can buy. the closer to the date of the icetime the lower the cost. if you hit it right you can get an hour of ice for $125 - which is unheard of. but i guess the rink's idea is we might as well get something for the time-slot instead of nothing

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by lazypucker

Nickerjones - you guys at NCHL charge too much!!

Realistically, are Calgary-area arenas that expensive to book nowadays?

Depends what you are comparing to I guess, but short answer is 'Yes' once you go out to smaller towns. Calgary is obscenely expensive for ice. $200/hr or more for ice here in Calgary compared to ice well under $100 in some places we have been to.


Our beer league was about $8800/season, based on 28 games.

[nickerjones]

Originally Posted by lazypucker

Nickerjones - you guys at NCHL charge too much!!

Realistically, are Calgary-area arenas that expensive to book nowadays?

It's different from Arena to Arena. In regards to pricing though, I can tell you that almost every arena around Calgary considers anything up until like 11:30 PM as primetime ice & prices it as such.