Yes, because most - or at least a sizable portion of - people do not report it on their taxes and. Around here, a lot of people will pick a tournament that pays cash precisely because "it pays cash" over one that will do a direct deposit.
I think we are in the same state. This is a key line in that email. "If by chance the Home Team forgot your pay envelopes, the fee MUST be paid before ½ time. If that means they must collect from parents on the sideline, then that is what they will have to do. But referees must be paid. If they are unable to collect and pay the referees before ½ time, then the game is a forfeit and all ASA forfeit fees will apply to the HOME team." How does that look to the visiting team and parents if the home team is passing the hat to pay the referees? I think this is a way to recruit referees.
Paying cash at the field is very big with kid refs. That is the area where I would think it helps referee retention. My guess is that if they have it in their pocket, mommy/daddy can't control it as easily. Every town club in our area does this differently. And my home club pays cash at field and we often have kids telling us they would rather ref for us because of this. And every season at the coaches meeting, I emphasize how coaches need to pay refs before the game and have exact amount, not a bunch of $20s.
I still use cash often when buying something. But, yeah, don't want to count or have a stash of cash in an unattended bag. Like most everyone, i've had snafus when getting paid in cash, so i like the paper trail of direct deposit, check, payment app, etc. I claim it all so it's not an issue. I've worked an indoor league and watched them go to the gate receipts box, put bills in an envelope, and hand them straight to us. Hmmmm......
One of my big peeves is that teams are supposed to pay 1/2 of the center fee and one AR fee. But most team managers make it 1/2 ref, 1/2 AR1, 1/2 AR2. So for our U13/14 games that pay $28 for an ar, you get two envelopes of $14 most of the time. Before you know it, you have a pile of ones that make others wonder what you're doing in your spare time.
The state youth association holds its annual meeting in a couple of days. On the agenda is a referee fee increase for the upcoming fall season. It would be the increase since 2014. In general it's a $10 increase for the center and a $5 for the ARs.
One time, at a U-11 3-men game, I got a $50 bill that I was supposed to split, somehow, with the others. Wow. We get an increase every-single-year and it is tied to CPI.
That would be lovely. We have that for our HS games, which is why we got $98.49 for V and $64.05 for JV last year. But for youth games, most clubs do their own thing. And sometimes they are really weird. I started assigning for a club last year and they paid $35 for center and $25 for AR. For every single game - did not matter if it was U9 or U15. Real nice pay for a U9 center, but not so much for U15. They told me it was to make it easy for the person mailing the checks..... When I found that out, we changed it in mid season to a tiered pay scale. Made it a lot easier to get refs for the higher level games.
Sometimes we get the other end of that. AR fee is $23, so every game I'd get an envelope from each team with $11.50 in it. Five games, ten envelopes, 20 quarters. Thankfully this season, all games are in increments of $5 and all is paid by the home team.
I ref/assign an adult league where the teams pay us at halftime. You see them collecting from each player while we stand there delaying the start of the 2nd half. $100 per team. Sometimes they will hand you a $100 bill and sometime you get a stack of ones! We refs have learned to bring change so we can split it amongst ourselves.........
I took over assigning a 200 game tournament a couple of weeks ago. It was held last weekend. I had to start from scratch getting refs, assigning them, arranging food and drink, the works. I had 12 days to pull it off. It was being done old style email for assigning. When I took over I didn’t have time to get the schedule loaded to Arbiter or to mess with setting up the ref pool and ranking them, much less dealing with refs with no arbiter/AP accounts that you find with youth refs. So I did it all in a spreadsheet and emailed it out to the refs for assignments on Sat and Sun. That also meant paying cash. I paid $14500 out over 2 days. I wasn’t happy holding that I promise you. But I know the refs loved it.
Some tournaments around here pay cash or a check after your last game. Once I was at a tournament's one site away from the main venue, on a Friday afternoon. We were told to go to the main venue to get paid or, if we didn't, they would send us a check the next week. There was no way I was going to sit in rush hour traffic to get to a venue that is right next to the worst traffic bottleneck in the entire metro area. Never got a check. When availabilities were requested for the next year's tournament, I replied that I would not work their tournament until I got paid for the previous year. I got a check that week with a muttered apology. All leagues around here pay by check, through the assigning website's payment service. Direct deposit, unless you want a check, in which case there's a $5 fee for check writing and mailing. Team registration fees include the referee game fees. The cash at field thing would be even worse with our largest men's league, since pay for the center is by USSF grade. I also do NOT like the optics of teams handing cash to the officials before or during the game. Just too many opportunities for accusations of the other team having slipped the referees extra money.
I hope they paid you at least $1500-$2000 for your efforts. That is a ton of work in a short time frame. 40-60 hrs at least, I'm guessing.
I think I am more surprised there are 3 Alabama referees here. But yeah not happy with this cash-on-field. Like others said... I have other things I need to do. Not to mention the optics.
Around here the competitive clubs pay exclusively in cash. Community clubs vary, frequently pay by check at the end of the season. One nearby club does Venmo, day of or soon after. For myself, I pay "alien" refs in cash at the field, to encourage coming to my club. Those on my roster get a check after the season. Many of mine, particularly kids, have expressed interest in cash on the day, so far my board is ok with me paying some cash but going 100% gives people hives.
Yeah it was a lot of long nights leading in to it and then of course being the site coordinator added to it. Games were some small sided solo, small sided 3 man and full field 3 man. I ended with 411 ref slots filled up. Between the assigning fee per ref and the site coordination part it came out to slightly over $2k. Its a nice check but it was mentally stressful. I'm glad its over.
Around here State League pays direct deposit, others are cash. Some tourneys are check at the field, most cash. One big one is check a week after. There was a push to move State League to all cash (apparently surveys say refs prefer cash, I assume largely due to tax/1099 reporting) but it didn't happen in time. I've been reffing for 5 years here, no raise in fees. High School bumped us $5 a game at the start of the year.
I had a high school coach pay me cash in advance for doing 4 of his summer league games. Something about not wanting to have to chase his booster club president for money all summer. Not wanting to chase HIM for cash all summer, I took it. And the last two games were rained out. He got a kick out of getting paid BY a ref the first time I saw him during his regular season.
Oh, there is also this story from the region, although not specifically my area, but not too too far.. that a tournament was constantly paying 2 months after the tournament happened, instead of the promised 2-3 weeks. It was paid by check. People got pissed, word got around and the tournament came out bewildered showing paperwork that they submitted payment to the assignor right away.. as it turned out, the assignor would bank the money in a HYSA for a month, collect the interest and then transfer it over to a checking account and distribute the money. Needless to say, tournament found a different assignor. That was a long time ago.
Every youth game I’ve ever done, I’ve been paid in cash, with the sole exception of one time I did a U11 tournament that was run by the state association and they mailed a check. If they wanted to do direct deposit, I’d be fine with that. But it’s a state policy that all league games are cash on the field, 1/2 from each team. Some teams are nice enough to give separate envelopes for each ref with the proper denominations. I’m guessing this just makes things a lot easier for clubs (let the parents deal with the money) and also makes the teams seem cheaper (since you aren’t collecting ref fees upfront). HS season is an enormous hassle because some schools take weeks to mail a check. Out of the 40-50 schools we serve, I’d say that 20% pay cash, 15% usually have a check for you at the field, 15% pay the assignor and then you have to get money from him (seems odd to me, but I guess it’s much easier for schools to write one check instead of sixty), and the rest mail a check. I report my ref income on my taxes, but I’d still prefer cash. It either goes back in my car (unless I’m in a bad neighborhood) or in a Velcro shorts pocket.
I’m trying to imagine living off the float of short term interest from soccer fees. That’s a bold strategy.
Now that it's a new year, upon thinking about it, I honestly don't know how I feel about the ref shortage last season. On the one hand, obviously it wasn't fun having to do a handful of games as duals. Neither was doing a handful of MLS Next games solo. Neither was having completely unqualified kids as the AR on some of the high level competitive youth games I was doing, the first time I ever kicked ARs out of my game. On the other hand, after really starting to take refereeing seriously in 2018-19 and then losing all of 2020, the shortages probably allowed me to have a lot more games and experience than I would have had otherwise if there had been too many refs to go around and probably fast-tracked some progress for me. Lots of ECNL/GA, NPL/EA, MLS Next, adult amateur. I also at least learned experience with duals (never did them before). But I'm sure this shortage will now be commonplace for the next few years at least.
I definitely predict a death spiral happening. Obviously the camaraderie is great with refereeing, and doing games solo with no one to talk to before/after are way less fun. But I also look at how the shortage will likely have unqualified refs being put on games that are too advanced for them, resulting in getting abuse, resulting in them quitting even faster than normal (I expect most of these to be kids). Or just getting a lack of support in general, thrown to the wolves making them get very discouraged. I also wonder if massive shortages like last year will be "the new normal", because I really don't see how refereeing numbers will recover. It isn't like most of the referees who decided it wasn't worth it to return in 2021 are suddenly going to want to return in 2022. Then they'll probably pump tons and tons of new referee classes into local leagues, but will still have the poor retention anyway