Starting A Broomball Team

Budget

Like most sports, recreational or professional, monetary support is a necessity for the survival of the team. Leagues, tournaments, jerseys, and misc. expenses are all things that should be accounted for when preparing your team's annual budget. If you are trying to start a broomball team, here are some tips that can help you plan your budget.

1. As a team, decide if you want to play in an indoor league, outdoor league, or both. When you've decided, find out the cost of the league. To find a league click on the leagues section. There, you can find a league near you with a contact to get price information as well as the skill level offered to fit your team. Outdoor leagues usually run between $250.00 and $500.00 depending on the number of games. Indoor leagues usually run between $1,440.00 and $2,000.00 depending on the number of games. If you can not find anything on the leagues section, you can check www.usabroomball.com and refer to the classifieds section, or check with your local park and recreation office.
2. Tournaments are an important part of the broomball season. When planning your budget, try to make sure to include a few of these in your season. Tournaments can run anywhere from $120.00 to $350.00 depending if it is indoors or outdoors. To find tournaments you can check our tournaments section or check www.usabroomball.com and refer to the tournaments section.
3. Uniforms are a necessity when planning your team budget. It is clearly stated in the USA broomball rule book (rule 1 section 12), "All teams must supply and wear jerseys." Make sure that the jerseys have numbers that are 4 inches in height. They can not be taped on or duplicated. You can refer to our equipment link for some help with this, or you can shop around your local sporting goods store to find the best estimate for your team.
4. Miscellaneous expenses are one thing a lot of teams forget to account for when planning a team budget. You don't want to be asking people for more money half way through the season. Make sure you account for water bottles, first aid kit, and extra broomballs for the team. Broomballs can run from 20 to 25 dollars, first aid kits from 20 to 50 dollars, and water bottles from 6 to 20 dollars.

Sponsorships

A sponsorship from a business is one way for your team to offset costs. Your team might like to play for a particular bar, restaurant or business. It is very hard to go door to door to businesses asking for money, so here are some tips.

• Choose a person from your team who has courage or a sales personality. That is, who could sell "ice to an Eskimo?"
• Bars/restaurants are more likely to sponsor you than normal businesses because they stand more to gain from you. Realistically, 6-16 people frequenting their establishment once a week throughout the season and spending money can be a very attractive offer. Many bars realize this and are happy to sponsor your team. The key piece of this is actually going to the bar, showing the manager that you are there every league night and you are spending money. Pick a place that your team likes and go there in the off season as well. Bar owners are much more likely to sponsor your team if they know your team is there often and throughout the year.
• Be sure to point out benefits for sponsoring your team - loyal business, advertising with their logo on your jerseys, and word of mouth advertising. Finally, the most important, your team is spending money at their establishment.
• When asking for their support, show the establishment what the budget is for one season. Never ask for the whole amount. Instead, ask them if they would like to contribute any monetary support for your team to help bring down the cost of your budget. This way, you point out you have more to spend at their place. Also, they are more likely to give you more money.

These are some tips that have worked in the past and hopefully will help your team.

Fundraising

Some teams aren't comfortable frequenting establishments. Fund-raisers are a good way to raise money with no obligations to sponsors. Here are some good fundraising tips.

• Raffles - each player donates $15 to the pot (if you have 10 players, that $150). Create raffle tickets with 1st prize of $100 and 2nd prize of $50. Each player is responsible for selling a set number of tickets at $1 or $2 a piece. Each player should sell at least 30 tickets to make it worth while. Set a drawing date and contact the winners.
• Novelties - sell t-shirts with the team logo on them. Fans and family would be your first sales. Little towels and pins are also fun to sell. Get creative and figure out what your friends like - beer cozies, mouse pads, key chains, jackets, etc.
• Working fund-raisers - call the yellow pages. The yellow pages pays you to deliver books. Tell them about your team and that you have 10 people willing to deliver books for a fund-raiser. Many super markets have a hot dog vending cart outside the store. Your team could spend a weekend or two selling hot dogs, chips and sodas. It's a fun and easy way to make some extra money.
• Call the nearest sports arena - many arenas pay groups to sell concessions during a professional sporting event or concert. Typically, the team would get paid a lump sum to sell concessions and clean up after the game.