Advanced options
Peak-evening pitches run GBP 60-90/hr at the big venue chains, less at leisure centres and schools: leagues price per team per fixture instead (GBP 35-55, covering ref and admin). The economics only break when SEVEN people turn up to split a ten-way price: standing orders and a paid-up-front month are how long-running games survive their flaky fringe.
What The Five-A-Side Cost Calculator Works Out
- Per player per game: the hourly pitch hire divided by the players who turn up. A peak-evening 3G cage at GBP 60 to GBP 90 an hour divides ten ways to a GBP 6 to GBP 9 game.
- Per player per year: the per-game cost multiplied by the weeks you play. Floodlit 3G runs 45 to 50 weeks a year against the grass game's 30, so weekly football comes to GBP 300 to GBP 400, gym-membership money for a cardio session its participants would never do voluntarily.
- Organiser survival kit: the denominator is the format's single point of failure. Three dropouts turn a GBP 7 game into a GBP 10 one, which is why standing orders, a month paid up front and a paid ringer list separate the games that run for decades from the ones that die by October.
- Hours booked and no-shows (advanced): cost a 90-minute or two-hour slot, and enter the average number who drop out each week to see the realistic per-game price the reliable core actually pays.
- Referee or booking fee and kit (advanced): some venues add a per-booking or app fee, and somebody buys the balls and bibs. These are spread across the players in the yearly total.
- Including the social (advanced): the post-match pint and food per game, multiplied by the weeks played. For many groups the social costs more than the football, and it is also the accountability apparatus that keeps attendance up.
- League alternative (advanced): organised leagues charge per team per fixture (GBP 35 to GBP 55, covering referee, admin and the fixture computer). Divided by the squad sharing the fee, it usually comes out similar per head with competitive stakes included.
- Versus a gym (advanced): your yearly football cost against a monthly gym membership. An hour of small-sided football logs 7 to 9 kilometres of interval running, and the football-as-intervention literature finds adherence rates gym programmes envy: nobody notices cardio while arguing about a penalty.