The Journey - Day 19
When the Math Changed - From $5 a Game to $15 a Game
Journey Marker: 2016-2017 | Bouse Sports Complex, Choctaw - When Growth Started Carrying a Different Price
When we first opened Bouse Sports Complex, I understood that BCM Sports had to pay the City for the games we put on the fields.
That wasn't hidden from me.
It was part of the arrangement.
Firsthand Memory
In my 2024 oral-history recording, I remembered the original rate as $5 per league game and approximately $7.50 per tournament game.
I was scheduling the games, bringing the teams, paying the officials and trying to make the entire operation work financially.
At five dollars a game, I could build around it.
Then the math changed.
Five Dollars Doesn't Stay Five Dollars
As the operation developed, I began trying to secure more time under the agreement.
From my perspective, that made sense.
We were building leagues. We were developing tournaments. We had recruited officials. Families were learning the facility.
I wasn't thinking one season at a time.
I wanted enough stability to build something.
My recollection is that during the contract discussions, the game charge increased to $15 per game.
From the Historical Record
The rate change is significant because volume changes the meaning of a per-game charge.
In that same oral history, I remembered BCM Sports paying the City of Choctaw more than $90,000 in lease and game-related fees during roughly two and a half years of operation.
The change from $5 to $15 is what stayed with me.
Not because fifteen dollars sounds like a huge number.
Because volume changes everything.
Every Game Became a Cost
That was one of the things I began understanding at Bouse.
If I created another game, I didn't simply create another opportunity for two teams to play.
I created another expense.
More games meant more umpires. More workers. More gate operations. More field supervision. And another payment tied to the facility.
The very thing I was supposed to do - bring activity to the complex - also increased the amount BCM had to pay.
That doesn't automatically make the arrangement unfair.
A public facility costs money to operate.
Lights cost money. Utilities cost money. Maintenance costs money. Someone has to pay those expenses.
What I began questioning was whether everyone involved in the event was carrying those costs in proportion to the benefit they received.
That question came from experience, not theory.
The Operator in the Middle
By then I had learned that the tournament entry fee might go one direction.
The concession revenue could go another.
The City had its game charges.
The umpires had to be paid.
And BCM was trying to create the activity that made all of those other pieces possible.
I remember feeling like the operator in the middle.
The more successful we became at putting teams on the fields, the more obligations we created for ourselves.
That was frustrating.
But it was also educational.
I didn't know it yet, but I was beginning to think about the difference between gross activity and actual operating margin.
Those are two very different things.
A full parking lot doesn't tell you who made money.
Neither does a packed tournament.
Looking Back
Years later, Integrity of the Game would force me to examine public sports facilities differently.
I started asking what a municipality receives.
What the tournament operator receives.
What officials receive.
What concession operators receive.
What families pay.
And which party assumes the risk when the weather turns bad or the teams don't show up.
At Bouse, I wasn't conducting that analysis.
I was living inside it.
The lesson wasn't that cities shouldn't charge operators.
The lesson was that the structure matters.
How is the fee calculated?
Why is that amount appropriate?
What expenses does it recover?
Does the structure encourage participation or discourage it?
And when the operator is the one creating the games, how much pressure can be placed on that operator before the model stops working?
Those questions stayed with me long after Bouse.
"The fee wasn't just $15. It was $15 multiplied by every game I worked to put on the field."
Question for the Reader
When a public sports facility charges an operator based on the number of games created, what is the right balance between recovering taxpayer costs and preserving enough margin for the operator to keep building leagues, tournaments and community participation?
Next on The Journey
While I was trying to make the numbers work at Bouse, someone came to one of our softball events and started asking questions.
He wanted to know how the operation worked.
He wanted to see the financial information.
And that conversation was about to open a completely different door for Brian's memorial.
Next on The Journey: The Visit That Led to Seminole - When Someone Finally Asked to See the Numbers.
The Journey is a continuing first-person series tracing the path from family and memorial work through hands-on youth-sports operations and, eventually, toward research and reform.