Why has the Liverpool AU membership fee increased by £20? We asked the AU President

If you’ve done Freshers’ (or re-Freshers’) correctly, by this point in the term you’ve had taster sessions in everything: from surfing to table tennis, from snooker to skiing.

Let’s say you’re so keen on all the sports you tried, you want to commit to three sports at university: that’s a total of £108 in AU fees alone (£60 for the first club, and £24 for each one after).

But those who’ve been at the University as long as me will remember that last year, your first club was only £40 to join.

So why the sudden increase?

The Tab Liverpool reached out to your AU President for 2022/23 to get some answers.

Describing the rationale behind the fee increase, which happened before he took over as AU President, Luke Almeida told The Tab Liverpool, “Sport Liverpool wished to ensure all club members had access to training and matches at the same price. In the past, indoor clubs have had to pay entry fees to access their training sessions and matches at the sports hall.”

He continued saying: “This was seen as unfair, with some clubs paying £40 and some sports paying over £100 to access sport. In order to remove sports centre fees, an all round increase in AU membership cost was necessary to recover some of this income loss.”

“Although some club’s members have to pay £20 more, many other club members are saving considerable amounts of money. In comparison to other traditional competitor universities, Liverpool is still cheaper.”

Sounds fair enough. We love an initiative that makes sports accessible to a greater number of people!