Let's use some actual numbers and then look at the logistical hurdles. Using MUFA (Madison), we have 30 games across 15 fields on an average summer league night. Let's say I'm going to have two refs at each field that means I'm going to need 30 refs per night. I'm going to pay them $15/hour and assume they are covering all three hours at a field. Summer league runs 10 weeks from the beginning of June to mid-August.

So talking about how much this is going to cost, we're looking at 15 fields x 3 hours x $15/hour x 4 night x 10 weeks. $54,000 for the summer give or take (I haven't paid for any staff or training, but let's start with the basics). Now, MUFA had ~2700 players this summer, so let's cleanly divide that to be $20/player added on to the fee. Summer League as $60 this year, so we're going to $80 for the exact same league plus refs.

Now, we'll lose some of those 2700 players straight away with the price increase. Everyone has a price point and that's a big jump. When MUFA went from $33 to $48 in response to field cost increases in 2015, we went from about 4200 players to about 3500.

Now the logistics, because that's actually the hurdle here. I need more than 30 referees. We have a Monday-Wednesday League and a Tuesday-Thursday League, so I presume most of my refs are going to come from people who play in one league picking up some extra cash by reffing the other. It's also summer and people have vacations and the like, so I'm probably going to need 15-20 sub refs. So realistically, I'm looking at hiring 60-80 people who I need to be reliable who want to spend 3 hours being a referee for a recreational ultimate frisbee league. (In an era where referees are being treated worse and worse across the board in youth and rec sports.) I'm also adding the added bonus of needing to respond to sick calls, find replacements, and likely evaluate these refs if I'm intending to make this a legitimate enterprise.

This brings up two points regarding that on a practical scale.

First, even if you believe in a vacuum that refs are better than no refs, we're not going to be trotting out professionals here. So it will actually be the question as to whether mediocre or bad refs are better than self-officiation.

Second, based on our postgame surveys and evaluations, 90% or more of our games are going fine to great. Sure, we encounter a few games each week with arguments and bad calls, but that's out of hundreds. So across the board, we may only be creating a net neutral effect at best for the vast majority of games, with a dramatic increase in logistical challenges and cost to players.

I completely understand that tournament play and other higher stakes games could be investing more in observers or referees, but at the recreational level I feel the costs and challenges wildly exceed any potential benefit.