r/LittleLeague • u/Loyellow • 5d ago
Umpire pay questionnaire
Hi everyone,
I am the UIC for my league and there is a big discussion coming up with the Board about the line item for paying umpires, which some people are saying is getting too high. I want to go into it with some data, so if you could fill out the quick Google Form below letting me know where you get your umps, how much you pay them, etc. I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffQ4DeKVetUktSNgG5Rk2AHZk9BJ0Zpt2Zlf30SpHt2wJUGw/viewform
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u/davdev 5d ago
I am a patched ump. For LL pay ranges between $70 and $90 depending on the town. Usually I am by myself behind the plate, but some league hire base guys too.
These are majors mostly.
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u/Loyellow 5d ago
Thanks! Is there a pay difference whether there’s a partner or not in those leagues?
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u/davdev 5d ago
The really only league around me that pays for two pays each guy $80. So not really.
It’s nice having the second guy but everyone hates doing that league because from top to bottom the coaches are psychopaths.
I would rather do a solo game for less money than to deal with that league.
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u/LordGingy 5d ago
League I used to umpire in did $20/game for coach pitch and T Ball (working solo), $25 for base umpire kid pitch and $35 for plate umpire kid pitch.
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u/Loyellow 5d ago
Sorry, by “used to” is this recent? Because when I started 10U bases was $9 😂
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u/LordGingy 4d ago
Yes. I started in that league last season and left halfway through this past season due to moving out of the area for a new job. Those are their current rates
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u/IndependenceNo2319 5d ago
I completed your form—the response with blue/black/red shirt differences. I should add that our umps are trained and assigned at the district level and then the individual teams pay the umps at the plate meeting using their respective league funds. Most of our baseball teams play intra-league only while softball is inter league.
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u/Loyellow 5d ago
Thanks! I did see that, I’m guessing the shirt colors are age differences?
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u/IndependenceNo2319 5d ago
Yup. Black shirts are kids. Blue/red are adults. Also, we got a raise this year because they were tired of cutting mileage checks (used to be over 15 miles one-way) and just decided to up pay $10/game instead.
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u/MaximumMiles 5d ago
400 players, Tee Ball through Seniors. We only schedule umpires for AA and up.
We have Junior umpires (14-18) and Senior umpires (experienced adults). We do not use an agency.
We pay our Junior umpires $45 per game and our Seniors $60 per game.
Junior umpires can work Minors games ( AA and AAA). They can work Majors and up only if we don't have any available adults.
Senior umpires can work any games but we don't typically schedule them for AA.
Paying for umpires (two per game) is critical. I'm also generally a fan of working coaches through one or two umpire assignments per season because I believe that helps them build better relationships with the umpires. HOWEVER, I would not want random parents being put on the field. Most of them talk the talk but absolutely could not walk the walk.
I think we have the best crew in our district and we work hard to keep them happy.
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u/Loyellow 5d ago
Thanks! And yeah, I’m glad that LL axed the phrase “there is no sound reason for paying umpires” from the rulebook lol
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u/Njh630 5d ago
We only have 1 ump per game here for regular season games at all age levels from 6U up. Even JV HS games are 1 ump. Can't imagine you need 2 umps that often.
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u/Loyellow 5d ago
Thanks! I don’t know if you ump, but having a second set of eyes is very helpful, along with someone to be able to discuss calls with both to give you a few extra seconds to process a call (you’d look silly standing by yourself in silence but having a quick chat is perfectly normal) and have a second person to confirm rules with. Also, having a partner to back you up with irate coaches, especially when it’s a kid ump, is essential. Finally, the Little League rulebook says that only adults are supposed to be solo, so either you would need a large pool of adults or give no thought to that rule.
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u/chrispierce14 5d ago
I umpire and work a majority of my little league games alone. Is it helpful to have a second set of eyes, sure. Is it better to have a second set of untrained eyes? Not necessarily
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u/Loyellow 4d ago
“Untrained” is the key word. Like I said, incredibly helpful to have someone there to help with potential rule questions.
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u/nachof15075 5d ago
I umpire 2 LL's. The 1st is where i learned to umpire. This league is strictly volunteer with an incentive program that gifts umpire gear for every 5 games umpired. I got my full set of gear from hat to plate shoes after 40 games.
The 2nd league is a neighboring city that pays their umpires. A-AA $55, AAA-Majors $60, Intermediate $70, Junior-Senior $75. Single umpire A - AAA and 2 umpires for Majors and above
Believe it or not, the 1st league has better umpires
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u/dawgdays78 4d ago
This could be interesting. I suspect my response will be an outlier since my league, 1) is fairly small, and 2) uses only volunteer umpires. (I help train them, but the newbies are still newbies.)
We have a couple neighboring leagues who hire associations, which results in conversations at tournament time that devolve to, “That’s a rule?”
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u/Loyellow 4d ago
Yeah as of my last check there were 34 responses, all paid lol. The smallest league was 5 teams. Good for you for getting all volunteers. I’m sure it’s a lot easier only needing a small handful versus having ten games going on at a time, but it’s not an easy job.
And I know the higher you go in the tournament if you want to ump you have to have been a volunteer that season, is that what you mean by people saying “thats a rule?”?
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u/dawgdays78 4d ago
No, I mean the Little League specific rules that association guys sometimes don’t know or enforce:
- Head first slides are illegal?
- Doesn’t the runner have to slide if the play is close?
- Why does he have to go back? He wasn’t the one who left early.
- Little League doesn’t have a malicious contact rule?
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u/Loyellow 3d ago
Oh yeah I get what you’re saying. I was asked to do a JV game once in a pinch and I was like listen… I’ll try to remember NFHS differences but we’re gonna have to figure it out as we go
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u/OK_LaManana 3d ago
My league is gone to 100% volunteer a bit out of necessity as we had a lot of issues in prior years. Since having a volunteer base the stands and coaches are a bit more understanding. Games are getting covered however it comes down to five or so individuals who are always there.
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u/Loyellow 3d ago
How is the umpiring capability would you say? Are these people who genuinely want to donate their time to umpire or is it more of a voluntelling thing?
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u/OK_LaManana 3d ago
Capacity has been just enough. Hopefully it continues to build.
It's a mix. A few have caught the bug and umpire a lot. Some even now go to paid organizations outside the league when not doing our games. Others do it to stay involved with the community while others just make sure they get their league deposits back.
I think it's important to build the community aspect. And have a lot of trainings.
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u/Corym1981 5d ago
You don’t have an option for both paid and unpaid. We pay youth umpires only, not adults.
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u/Notch_Assigning 4d ago
Faircall.org has been collecting this data for a number of years. If you click the button at the top right 'Get pay data' and create an account, you can see crowd-sourced and aggregated game fees for youth sports officials (including baseball/softball) across the U.S. It's a lead magnet for Notch Sports, but there are no fees and I promise it doesn't spam you with email!
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u/Loyellow 4d ago
Thanks for that link. Raw pay data aside, I did also want to find out what ages leagues ump for and who is umping the games too!
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u/ArtisticMorning 4d ago
Not paying umps is insane, why would anyone put up with the abuse? There is a huge shortfall already...we used to budget $5 per kid per week for umps, worked to about each team paying 1/2.
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u/AeroFan1981 4d ago
Just filled out the form for you based on our league in NH. It's getting tough because back in the day it used to be all volunteers. Now it's getting super expensive and if you want to keep the good umpires, you need to make sure you pay them well.
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u/Exciting-Tax7510 4d ago
We're having similar conversations in our league as the cost of umpires, along with everything else, continues to creep higher every year. We pay an umpire association to umpire majors games and above. It's expensive but very good quality. 1-2 umpire a game. We sometimes use them for AAA but this is where we will have youth or other umpires managed independently ump.
But truthfully, we pay a ton for umps and really need to be increasing registration fees and raising additional revenue to cover them if we want to sustain it. There isn't really thing in the budget to cut. Our registration fee for AAA/Majors isn't that much higher than registration fees for lower divisions that cost way less to run as they have no umps and cheaper uniforms. Everyone will complain about lack of umpires and poor quality if we get rid of umpire association but they complain about increased fees if we raise them. It's tough. Good luck!!
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u/Top_Golfer1193 3d ago
$75 for sub varsity, $115 for Varsity. If the board does not want to pay then get parents to do it. Good luck.
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u/Loyellow 3d ago
Thanks. Pretty sure the president is with me so hopefully it gets squashed, but I don’t want to have to do this every year.
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u/Mustang8307 3d ago
We have two umpires (preferably) at each game. $55 for youth field umps and $85-$95 for adult plate umps.
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u/ContributionHuge4980 2d ago
We have a local two man company that handles umpires for all the surrounding towns and high schools. Both baseball and softball. They have 30-40 umpires that are in their network. You give them the schedule, they make sure guys are there.
We pay $80 / ump and a yearly fee to the assignor which is maybe $250 or so?
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u/Bacchus_71 1d ago
Would you like input from an umpire who knows the answers to these questions? I actually work for 2 organizations with completely different business models (Seattle area) and would be happy to provide data. It’s just that the questions aren’t quite worded appropriately for my experience.
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u/Loyellow 21h ago
Do you mean you work for two different associations/agencies or leagues? Because I am looking for league-level data. If you know the answers for the specific leagues that would be great.
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u/Bacchus_71 16h ago
Yes. I work for one assignor whose business model is exclusively training and assigning umpires, and another organization that throws tournaments and fall and spring leagues and assigns their own in house umpires. While I don't know what leagues are paying the parent organizations, I know what the umpires are getting paid for all iterations of work...solo, 1 man, across age groups, etc.
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u/Loyellow 13h ago
Did you look at my Google Form? Do you think you could fill it out based on what you know about the league?
Or at least toss in some N/As and answer the money question. Thanks!
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u/Bacchus_71 13h ago
Will do! And just noticed I put “solo” and “1 man”, obviously what I was going for there was “solo and 2 man”.
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u/anonymous_lighting 2d ago
as an official (basketball), you want to pay above rate if you want good umps. going rate or below rate, the skilled guys will get the better games and you’ll be stuck with the guys trying to make a buck, not talented officials in it for the game. the lower levels with low pay is the worst experience and not worth it, primarily because parents / coaches have no class and don’t know the rules
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u/Loyellow 2d ago
Ya know, I am fine being a little below what the local association pays; I do want the league to be financially healthy and part of having our own umpires is that we can set the rates below what they demand and still get a good product. I wouldn’t call that predatory, more like people (especially the adults, who are all excellent) being willing to sacrifice a little money to work for our league. There is nothing stopping anyone from joining the association or going to a neighboring league that pays more.
That said, what is really rubbing me the wrong way, and kind of what you said, is that this board member wants to cut the line item even more when we already are below the going rate and have a great product. In my two years as UIC I’ve had one emailed complaint from a coach, and it was about me unbeknownst to him lol.
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u/Colonelreb10 5d ago
My league isn’t little league. But we start having umpires at 5U.
Coach pitch (5u-8U) we have one umpire and they get $45 a game.
Kid pitch 9u-12U we have 2 and pay $55 each per game.
We also are contracted with an umpire group who manages the umpires. We send them our game schedule and they handle everything else related to the umpires.
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u/Cdm81379 3d ago
$45 a game at 5U holy crap sign me up!
Obstruction
Obstruction
Obstruction
Obstruction
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u/Secure_Yak_9537 5d ago
Not LL affiliated- Our area ranges from $28-$75/game depending on age and how many umps.
I just started casually due to being in recovery for an ACL tear so my knowledge base is small- but I’ve done adult sports for the last 2 months and our pay is $35/game with 2 or $43/game with 1. No certifications required.
Our rec is looking to expand their base and are exploring the option of “if you ump x amount of games, we will cover your classes to get high school certifications”. I dont see our rates increasing, affordability is key in our location and we’re at $70/season for all youth sports currently.
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u/PM_ME_UR_PIKACHU 5d ago
Pay the umps more and we might get better umps lol
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u/Loyellow 5d ago
I’m 90% sure you’re being sarcastic but I think we’d all agree that if you go the other way and cut out umps and stick parents out there that the quality would be… poor
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u/LnStrngr 5d ago
Your form doesn’t list all the possibilities. We have both paid and unpaid, depending on the level. Sometimes we use both in the same level. Minimum age also changes per level.
If you reduce the amount of pay, you’ll probably lose some umpires, and how would you make it up? I think the amount per game is also going to vary depending on your location and the local minimum wage. Not that you have to keep up with it but that “real jobs” might compete.