6 days ago
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Tide turning against clubs, codes fear
The country's sports clubs are battling mounting costs, funding issues and volunteer burnout. Reporter Adrian Seconi checks the pulse of the club scene in Otago.
Sport Otago chief executive James Nation wonders whether we have reached a tipping point as sports clubs battle with rising costs and volunteer fatigue.
Southern Football boss Dougal McGowan reached for the word catastrophic when describing the impact the Online Casino Gambling Bill will have if it goes ahead as proposed.
Otago Rugby Football Association chief executive Richard Kinley is concerned that if the clubs cannot access adequate funding, they will have to pass on the extra costs and that could have a chilling effect on participation rates.
Hockey Otago general manager Andy McLean said anything that made "funding harder to obtain was worrying".
A report commissioned by the New Zealand Amateur Sport Association found national volunteer numbers had dropped 28% between 2018 and 2024.
It also highlighted funding as a key issue, noting 72% of clubs were concerned about their long-term financial sustainability.
Bill seen as threat
The proposed Online Casino Gambling Bill looms as a major threat.
If it goes ahead in its current guise, it will potentially undermine the funds available through class-4 gambling, which has propped up community sport since tobacco sponsorship was outlawed in New Zealand in the 1990s.
Increased user charges for Dunedin City Council grounds and facilities have piled more pressure on clubs.
It all paints a grim picture for community sport, Nation acknowledged.
And neither do there appear to be many options.
"Clubs are really loathe to put up their membership fees any more than they have, and so that's having an impact because all the costs for the clubs have certainly gone up," Nation said.
The Dunedin City Council's sinking lid policy on class-4 gambling was starting to bite, McGowan added.
"If you have a look at the types of organisations that get support from the class-4 gaming industry, it's such a broad spectrum of the community.
"They help us with rent. They help us with insurance. They help us with staff salaries so that we can get staff out into the schools to support kids being active."
"Without that, I think it will have such a significant effect on what it means to be a community in New Zealand."
The proposed Online Casino Gambling Bill threatens to further chip away at the available pool of funds.
The licensed online casinos would not be compelled to make community funding grants as the Bill stands.
Former New Zealand Cricket boss Martin Snedden is leading the charge to get into the ear of the decision-makers.
Submissions close on August 17 and McGowan encouraged sports organisations to engage in the process.
"The flow-on effects for this could be catastrophic for community activity and sport," McGowan said.
Kinley said it was important to impress upon the government the challenges "sport will face across the sector if this should be approved in its current form".
"If clubs and sports can't access other forms of funding to support the community game, it'll be passed back to participants," he said.
"So potentially the cost of participating in sport will increase, which is something that none of us want to see.
"If we have less people participating in all sports because of financial difficulties, that could be potentially quite detrimental to society as a whole."
McLean said hockey was in the same boat.
"Class-4 gaming funding is really important in terms of supporting what we can deliver to the community," he said.
"We want hockey to be as accessible as possible.
"Anything that risks reducing the amount of class-4 funding that's available is obviously of concern ."
Costs rising
The other half of the battle to keep the books in balance is the rising expenses.
Everything has gone up from the halftime oranges to the user charges for Dunedin City Council grounds and facilities.
The latter has been quite a hike.
McGowan said user charges have more than doubled since 2018.
He has seen Southern Football's bill grow from $42,202 to $98,119 in 2025.
It has been reluctant to pass that extra cost on to members and has instead opted to reduce the number of fields it uses to bring down the cost.
Southern Football has budgeted a loss of $58,000 this financial period but that may double, McGowan said.
The association cannot keep absorbing the costs. McGowan said he was going to have to have an awkward conversation with one club about its ongoing financial viability.
It could lead to the club closing. He declined to say which one.
Nation said the problem was widespread.
"I think clubs are really having to have those conversations about their financials and how do we make sure that we are viable."
Fewer volunteers
The burden of helping bridge the gap between rising expenses and revenue often falls to volunteers, who are in dwindling supply.
"They're there for the love of the sport and helping people out and not for the rewrite of their constitution and chasing up funding all the time," Nation said.
"It's not a recipe for a great future.
"I think there's a really core pool of volunteers that most clubs have. They may be ageing.
"They may be struggling to bring people in. But I think the good clubs out there have got good structures in place, and they look after their volunteers, and they're doing well.
"So it seems like for the level of people that are playing, it is pretty healthy across the board in Otago.
"But I think there is a bit of a tipping point there ... and it's not going to take much to turn it to being a bit of an exodus."
It is a gloomy assessment that Nation walked back a little by adding he does not believe the volunteer base has thinned as much in Otago as in other parts of the country.
McGowan had similar thoughts.
"We've got a very strong group of volunteers, some of them with considerable experience, who do an amazing job. And it's a big job now.
"It's not like it used to be, where you'd just turn up on a Saturday and put the nets up.
"They are running large organisations which have large cash flows.
"We know our volunteers are required to do more and more, and it almost becomes like a second job for many of them.
"I think it's got harder and harder, so I think we will start to see an impact on that pretty soon."
Kinley said referee and coaching numbers were holding, but they did not keep statistics on overall volunteer numbers.
"I would say that what I've found over the years, and this is a general comment, is that we tend to follow the things that happen in other areas of the country.
"While we're holding OK, it's certainly an area that we need to focus on. I don't want us to see us following what the rest of the country has done."
