John McKenna wrote:Has one of them misunderstood something because ECF membership of club members will automatically mean no cost to the club. There's got to be a potential financial gap in there somewhere for some clubs.
They are both in a way right.
The club could insist as a condition of being selected to play in its matches or to enter its club championship, that players go to the ECF website and become members at whatever level they wish and disclose to the ECF whatever it asks for. In those circumstances if the ECF doubled the membership cost, it would be at no cost to the club.
On the other hand, the Bronze cost could be added to the Club membership fee. In those circumstances the club is responsible for passing on the club data and money to the next level in the chain. That's usually how they worked in the areas that became MOs under the existing arrangements. Obviously, if the ECF puts its price up, the club has to as well, unless it has other assets it can use to subsidise ECF membership.
Depending on your local charging, a fee would currently paid by a club to a local league to cover the league's Game Fee costs. The simplest way of structuring this is usually to express it per team as an entry fee. Again depending on the league, this can be reduced as the abolition of Game Fee will reduce the league's cost. What isn't made clear is that unless your club plays in several leagues with the average player playing around twenty games, that the saving in Game Fee isn't going to amount to the £ 12 or £ 13 that you or the club have to pay the ECF. Existing Direct Members of the ECF incur no additional costs and should save on the implied Game Fee contained in the club sub.
