Message from Pete Ackerley.
Now that we know more about the shape of our competitions for 2021, we’ve decided to make a number of reductions to our playing and coaching membership fees for this season.
As your National Governing Body, it’s important that we balance the need for funds to deliver essential operational and development activities with our responsibility towards you – our valued members.
What we deliver and the costs we incur extend far beyond running a competitive season and have continued during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our priorities include developing all formats of the game, investing in coaches and referees, creating a long-term sustainable strategy for our sport, building commercial and public funding partnerships, and lobbying and working with the government and home nation sports councils on your behalf.
Your memberships fees support this, as well as the administrative costs involved with running our not-for-profit organisation, including annual insurance to cover both members and clubs, legal and accountancy fees, infrastructure costs such as our registration and email systems and much more.
The reduction in our playing and coaching fees reflects both the reduced competition many of our formats and age groups will be having, and the wider financial challenges we know many of you may be facing.
With these things in mind, we’re reducing the majority of our playing and coaching memberships by 25% as detailed below. These new fees take immediate effect, and if you’ve already purchased a membership, please don’t worry – we will be making a refund back to the card you paid with over the coming weeks.
I would also like to reconfirm that we’re also extending the majority of individual memberships and team memberships to 31 October. The exceptions are women’s adult contact and women’s adult flag playing and team memberships, which will be set to reflect their slightly later timeframes for competition.
If you have any questions, please refer to the Q&A below in the first instance, or alternatively contact registrations@britishamericanfootball.org
Thank you for your support this year. It has never been more important or appreciated.
Pete
| Player fees | Original fee | New fee | Refund |
| Adult Contact | £50.00 | £37.50 | £12.50 |
| Women’s Adult Contact | £50.00 | £37.50 | £12.50 |
| Adult Flag | £30.00 | £22.50 | £7.50 |
| Women’s Flag | £30.00 | £22.50 | £7.50 |
| U19 Contact | £15.00 | £11.25 | £3.75 |
| U16 Contact | £15.00 | £11.25 | £3.75 |
| U14/U17 Flag | £15.00 | £11.25 | £3.75 |
| Coaching fees | |||
| Coach Contact – £57.50 | £57.50 | £43.13 | £14.37 |
| Player / Coach Contact – £67.50 | £67.50 | £50.63 | £16.87 |
| Coach Flag – £45.50 | £45.50 | £34.13 | £11.37 |
| Player / Coach Flag – £50.50 | £50.50 | £37.88 | £12.62 |
| Associate player fees | |||
| Associate Adult Contact / Women’s Adult Contact | £40.00 | £30.00 | £10.00 |
| Associate Adult Flag / Women’s Flag | £20.00 | £15.00 | £5.00 |
Q&A – fees
Why didn’t you review fees before people started registering?
BAFA memberships for the 2020-2021 period have been available to purchase since October 2020. This was to enable members across the country to be insured to return to activity where able – reflecting the different timescales and regulations in different areas of the country. Originally, we had hoped to start moving towards normal practice activity across the UK in January 2021, and then look at a more usual timeframe for competition, but due to the emergence of more transmissible variants of Covid-19 and subsequent national lockdown, that had to be pushed back.
Only once we were able to fully understand the timescales for activity to return on a broader basis including what limitations would be placed on that activity (travel etc) and the risk appetite of our member clubs to return on that basis, could we then look at planning a season based around these things – all of which takes time. In an ideal world these two things would have happened simultaneously but, as we hope you will appreciate, we are operating in unprecedented times.
How long will it take to get my refund?
Our volunteers in the registrations team will be working with system provider GoMembership to process refunds in the coming weeks. This will take some time to organise and is likely to be managed in membership type order. Refunds for members who have had their membership manually adjusted – for example if you registered for one format in error or changed from coach to player coach and adjusted this by making a bank payment – will also need to be manually keyed and may take a little longer. We thank you for your patience.
Will partial refunds and fee changes this include university coach and university player / coach memberships?
Yes – these will be included.
What about age ranges for children’s contact and flag football? Will these also be extended / amended if the membership period is extended?
Where possible the competition timeframe for children’s football formats will conclude as close to normal as possible. However, players who registered with an age group format they are eligible for during 2021, prior to the usual cut-off points, will be able to complete their playing season with that age group even if that extends slightly normal that usual. For example, an U16 member who has turned 17 after 31 August 2021 will be able to continue participating with their registered U16 team until the conclusion of this season’s games. No new players aged over 16 will be able to join or transfer to that team after the usual age cutoff points however.
Why aren’t associate memberships for children’s football formats receiving a refund / discount but adult associate memberships are?
Children’s £5 associate membership fees are already significantly discounted to encourage growth and development in these age groups. Players in these formats are not scheduled games, and unlike adult associate fees are not expected to complete a set number of games before being considered for BAFA league membership. We therefore feel it’s appropriate to keep these fees as they are.
Why aren’t non-coaching membership fees being reduced / partially refunded?
These £5 non-coaching memberships are designed to cover people holding management and support roles in clubs, and we feel the scope of the activity these individuals undertake to support their clubs is not significantly changing.
Are upgrade fees to add flag football onto a contact membership being refunded?
No, these £5 upgrade fees are designed to cover the contribution of adding a second format and competition to an existing contact membership. While any initial contact membership fee will receive a pro-rata refund of 25%, any upgrade will not be refunded and the £5 fee will remain unchanged for any new contact to flag upgrade requests.
