A staggering 2,600 grassroots football clubs have folded with thousands more still at risk due to the cost of living crisis.
That's according to a new report that details how rising costs in the United Kingdom are ravaging football at the bottom of the pyramid. Inflation hit a 40-year high in the UK on Wednesday, with much of the country feeling the strain as the prices of energy, food and bills continue to skyrocket.
With many people struggling and money tight, grassroots football has once again been hit hard after the financial upheaval brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Price to Play Report, commissioned by Utilita Energy in association with former Manchester City goalkeeper David James, has discovered that a further 6,000 clubs are at risk of closure between now and the end of next season.
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The report asked 1,000 parents of grassroots footballers between the age 5-16 how the game has been impacted by the pandemic initially and now the double whammy of the cost of living crisis. It was discovered that seven per cent of clubs have closed, with another 16 per cent feared to go in the same direction.
34 per cent of parents said that affording subs and the kits required to play were the main barriers to entry for their children, with a further third of them concerned they won't be able to afford a kit next season.
On the kit crisis, James, the ambassador of Utilita's Football Rebooted recycling campaign, said: “The cost of football kit cannot be allowed to be a barrier to playing football. There is enough for everyone - we just need to think twice about throwing away perfectly good items.
“About two-thirds of parents say their child requires more than one pair of football boots for playing on different surfaces (67%), out of which 27 percent said they can’t afford more than one pair of boots, limiting where their child can play.
"This does not have to be the case. Football Rebooted is the game’s biggest ever environmental movement, and there are enough boots for every child who wants to play - no matter what the surface.”
Football Rebooted is providing families with free football boots so children can continue to play football and your local collection point can be found here.
The new report comes following Utilita's State of Play Report from 2020 which unveiled the impact the pandemic had on grassroots football. At the time, 10 per cent of players hadn't returned to action with affordability being given as the reason in 58 per cent of those cases. Worryingly, in 2020 the amount of parents citing the costs of subs and kits as a reason their children can't play was at 18 per cent, which has now nearly doubled in the years since.
