Humphrey Appleby

The problem was that a 'top league' was just was much needed as a lower league to protect it against inflationary pressures. There were always more successful tracks that could run with higher costs, and with a single league that dragged up the costs of the other tracks in order to be half-competitive. Of course, so many tracks had disappeared that I think the sport was down to about 21 in 1995, so it was barely possible to cobble together two leagues by that point. But the 'one big league' whilst providing more variety that was desperately needed, was too expensive for the lowest common denominator and merely accelerated the closure of tracks (I think a couple more had closed by the following season). That of course was the impetus for a (new) new National League, so the sport quickly ended-up effectively reverting back to two tiers.

The big decline really started in 1985 when the British League lost (I think) 5 teams, dropping from 16 down to 11. The set-up was never healthy from that point onwards, and even though the National League gave the appearance of being vibrant for a while, the lack of cooperation and understanding that the health of both leagues depended on each other, ultimately dragged the sport further under. Doubling-up is not an issue if it's to cover for injuries and to give lower league riders experience of riding in the top flight, and as such the antipathy between the BL and NL which led to a refusal to use riders in the other league was really quite pathetic and led to the ever-increasing professionalism of the NL which eventually forced some of those tracks to fold. Doubling-up is only an issue if it's employed because of a fundamental lack of riders to fill all the teams. You could also point to 1989 when the BL decreased again to 9 teams, the BL/NL merger in 1991 that was vehicle to get Poole into the top league, the even more ill-fated 'one big league' BPL in 1995, followed by the introduction of the BEL in 1997. Endless tinkering that's did nothing to address the underlying issues or have an resemblance of longer term thinking.

That was the reason as I remember.

It's why a finger needs to be stuck in the air at some point, but practicality tells us that evening sports events start at 7.30pm for a reason, and most people probably don't want to be in the stadium for more than a couple of hours if that. There's noise and light pollution reasons, public transport reasons, cold night air reasons, and simply because people might want to get to the pub for a round or two afterwards. I'd honestly find it hard to fathom that the majority would want less rather than more action, and you can work out in practical terms how quickly you can run races. 2 minutes to get everyone to the tapes, one minute for the race, 30 seconds for the celebrations and then stick on the 2 minute warning for the next race. Maybe 5 minutes every 4 races for grading and mini-intervals, which means you should easily be able to run 20 heats in around 90 minutes if the will was there. Split things up into a (say) 14-heat match, so those that want their one hour thing can bugger off straight afterwards, but put on a (say) 6-heat individual novelty competition for everyone else who wants the value for money. The British leagues can no longer afford the top stars anyway, so just structure the contracts and pay rates so the riders you do sign take the whole meeting seriously.

I believe there's now a disused car factory just down the road...?

I think Oxford has been a bit different in that it's always had quite a supportive local council who were wise to the games of the stadium owner, and effectively safeguarded the facility against housing development. It's been a battle of wits over the past more than decade as the owner has allowed the stadium to fall into disrepair in the hope of having it condemned, but for some reason the traditional arsonist never managed to visit to help get the job done, and the council has consistently failed to to cave in. By contrast, Swindon Borough Council has a different political make-up that you'd think wouldn't have much time for working class sports but more time for housing developers...

Cricket is very different to speedway though, in having marketing and financial contacts in high places, and talented people wanting to be associated with the sport. It does also have a much wider grassroots base, being more widely played and at very least, more people actually having heard of the sport.

Unfortunately, the writing was on the wall for Swindon the day Gaming International got involved. You only have to look at its erm... track record to see it was naive in the extreme to have believed any of the promises. Not sure what could have been done in the practical terms though as the sport is unlikely to have the money to buy up stadiums to keep them out of the clutches of asset stripping developers. Probably just a concerted PR campaign to raise awareness of Gaming International's proven behaviour...

They don't. Anyone can run a speedway meeting or even set up their own governance body. However, there's ultimately little or nothing to be gained from splintering governance and regulation of the sport, particularly in motorsport where there are more complex technical and safety standards. 'Alternative' sanctioning bodies often leech off the standards and utilise the trained officials of established bodies whilst claiming they're doing things cheaper and better, but it's rarely a sustainable far less improved model. I agree that pressure sometimes needs to be exerted on a sanctioning body to implement needed reforms, but in the long run no-one really wins when everyone is just doing their own thing.

I think speedway inherently needs to maintain the superficial simplicity of 4 riders over 4 laps, even if we know it's more complicated in practice. The basic rules of cricket are easy enough to understand and have been marketed that way for The Hundred, even though it can almost take a lifetime to understand the complexities. The basic problem with modern speedway is there's too little action, which translates into not enough races and too much hanging around between them. There should be absolutely no reason why you couldn't run a heat every 4 minutes under normal circumstances, so you could get 15 heats into an hour, and 20 heats into an hour-and-a-half (certainly an hour-and-three-quarters) including an interval and time for track grading. So how do you run those 20 races? I do agree that a 20-heat match wouldn't add much, particularly if it happened to be one-sided, but you could split things up into 14 or 15-heat match and then have 5 or 6 of novelty heats. That could be a handicap competition, an 8 or even 14 rider mass start 'points race' type of thing, a 'devil takes the hindmost' or even just a straightforward mini individual event that counts towards some sort of national competition. You'd less alienate the hardcore, but might actually attract a new audience if there was a bit of variety and not the same-old, same-old stuff. Some things may work and some might not, but if people aren't standing around bored, then they might notice less the cold weather and crappy stadium they're standing in, or the poor value for money. I don't really buy into the argument that it wouldn't work because the riders wouldn't take the novelty stuff seriously or want to get away after the match. Professional sport can't be run for the convenience of the competitors and you need to be structuring the contracts and payments around the concept of a complete meeting, including post-meeting obligations. F1 doesn't allow Lewis Hamilton to disappear off to his private jet as soon as he gets back to the pits after taking the chequered flag, so why should speedway?

I often didn't agree with him on here, but it was never personal and we had some good banter along the way. I would fully agree that the Speedway Star was a higher quality magazine than the sport deserved, and I did appreciate his insights into the sport on here.

Might be the case, but there's also merchandising, raffle tickets etc...

The right number of meetings is the number that's sustainable. 200 fans might only be turning up a meeting, but they might still turn up to 20 meetings if they're held every week. If you only hold 10 meetings, you'd not only need to double the crowd to achieve the same amount of revenue, but some of your 200 regulars may find other things to do if meetings become more irregular. Fundamentally, you're in a downward spiral if you're saying that you want to cut the number of meetings so that tracks lose less money. That suggests that the business model (i.e. outgoings) is wrong in the first place, and it's not going to be any more sustainable in the long term until that's addressed. I do think a fortnightly April-September model is perhaps more realistic nowadays, but that really depends on what the cost of admission is. If you could make it a tenner, then people might be persuaded to go twice as often compared to if it's 20 quid, and then might part with more money once inside the stadium.

Planning permission reasons? Maybe they're only allowed a certain number of noisy days per week or per year, and limited to certain times.

They'll also have the upkeep of the stadium - all year round whether they have any racing or not.

The IOW are still running every week during their short season though, so there's some continuity. The IOW has always had some quite unique circumstances and they're obviously trying to do what they think works for them (and good luck to them). But unless people want speedway to be crammed into an IPL-type season, it's not going to work for the sport as a whole. With respect to rain-offs, well the fact there's apparently been so little research into improving the surfaces so they can stand up to rain, has been one of the major problems with the sport. Cricket still has its rain-offs, but improved surfaces and drainage means that surfaces can be made playable quite quickly after all but the worst downpours. I never really understood why speedway couldn't have cricket style covers (pitched and ventilated) or even canopies or cantilevered roofs over the track. Maybe not affordable for all tracks, but perhaps for the more premier ones.

But why is there a lack of meetings? Either the demand isn't there - from either riders or spectators, or there's insufficient volunteer effort to organise more meetings. And this exactly demonstrates the problem if speedway tries to run along amateur lines. It will go from a sport where fans know they can turn up every week (or at least every fortnight) to an occasional one.

I think there will have been 'professional' promoters in the past who made money, especially the ones who ran the tracks in prime locations (in speedway terms). But for the more marginal tracks, it was probably always a struggle and one poor season could wipe you out, as evidenced by the number of promoters who lost their shirts. Football is a much more popular sport than speedway, so the odds on finding a wealthy benefactor to bail out a club is much higher. Rugby Union is generally followed by more monied and well connected people, who can always bung in some cash or link up clubs with sponsors or financiers. I'm afraid that speedway is largely the domain of the used car salesman, scrap merchant or self-made fly-by-night merchant who's done alright for themselves, but probably isn't into longer-term business planning and structured financing. And it's harder to attract sponsorship from anything other than local van hire centre because of the perceived demographic of speedway supporters - what will be their return on investment? As for speedway running at an amateur or other level, I don't think you can really expect to run regular (i.e. weekly or fortnightly) spectator motorsport in 'proper' stadiums without remunerating the competitors in some way, and even less so if they're expected to travel anything more than very local distances. They will have significant travel, equipment and running costs, and whilst they might be willing to do it for the love of the sport once a month, a weekly obligation is a bit much and I very much doubt you'd find enough riders to make that sort of commitment. Grasstrack riders can pick and choose their meetings because they're not contracted or have obligations to particular tracks. There may be a handful of grasstrackers who're able to make a living doing weekly meetings, but I'd suggest it's really only very few who're able to do this and I'd be surprised if the average amateur grasstracker is riding every week.

The problem is that the 'insular bumpkins' are the only ones who've kept the sport running, often with their own money. Anyone with any sense got out years ago (or died from the stress of it), and no-one with any sense would really want to get involved now. It's fairly easy to identify where it all went wrong down the years (and it's not all the fault of the promoters), but I suspect you'd end up with not many tracks if you 'took speedway away' from those running it now.

Maybe you need both leagues and open meetings. There may be a number of tracks that prefer league racing, whilst others want to stage other types of meetings. Perhaps even a combination of the two. I'd imagine the reality is that most tracks don't have that many riders on their doorstep, so there would have to be some sharing of riders and travelling around even if you just ran open meetings. Plus seeing the same riders every week would get repetitive, so the costs of running league meetings may not actually end up being greater and it gives some context throughout the season. However, these sorts of decisions need to be made on the basis of some sort of 'market research', even if that's just a promoter's knowledge of what works for them.

This is the tricky part. If you ask the remaining fans of the sport, you'll get multiple answers that will probably coalesce along the lines of returning to the 'good 13 heats + proper 2nd half' with riders marching out to Imperial Echoes. You really need to be asking people who don't go - your potential new audiences, but you're assuming they've even heard of speedway in the first place. With respect to marketing people - speedway is really an odd outlier of a sport and I think the average marketing type just wouldn't grasp the essence of the sport and would do more damage with ideas that just wouldn't work. You really need to find someone who's got a modicum of knowledge of the sport to start with, and that's going to be like finding a unicorn. A tough challenge.

Where does one begin? There are so many issues. I think you'd need to look at the running costs of every track, what their fixed and variable costs are, and work out what they can afford with their current revenue levels. You'd then need to work out how to structure the season in terms of fixtures and pay rates that work for (say) 80% of the tracks, but you'd also need to take into account the number of riders available (for the whole season) who'd be willing to ride for those pay rates. You'd also need to work out what stadiums would be prepared to accept and which could continue to run on the expected revenue, and taking all these factors into account, the hard-nosed decision may be that some teams and tracks are simply no longer viable. But I think there's little point continuing with a sport if all it's doing is rationalising ever downwards without looking at how to improve its situation. So in parallel I think a lot of consideration needs to go into how the whole product can be improved whilst losses are reduced or preferably stemmed - at the very least faster-paced meetings with more races held on days convenient for the fans, up-to-date presentation and efforts to attract younger audiences. If something a bit different is needed (e.g. 8-rider races with double points, sidecars, quads, whatever) - whether fully or partially - then so be it, but this needs to be based on some sort of market research rather than because someone just happens to think it's a good idea. I think to ensure costs are controlled in the longer term, you'd also need to have the riders centrally employed by the BSPL with tracks effectively run as franchises and allocated riders on a needs basis. Maybe you also need to consider pooled engines as well - maintained to as common a standard as possible - but allocated in some rotating or random manner to riders. Ultimately though, I think the underlying problem is that speedway has a poor or largely non-existent image, has an ageing social demographic that isn't attractive for sponsors or even media coverage, and is far too expensive for what it offers. All the tinkering in the world with formats and numbers of meetings won't fix this unless these other things can be turned around, which is going to be far from easy because the sport has sunk so low. The reality is that no decent business or marketing person would want to touch speedway with bargepole, far less work for the limited rewards it could offer currently, so it's difficult to see how the sport will dig itself out of the hole, even if the current promoters were willing to provide a spade.

Umpteen greyhound tracks have closed in the past years and I'd thought it's another sport on borrowed time - not least because of the animal welfare issues. As with speedway, I could well imagine many greyhound stadiums live a hand-to-mouth existence and that it's only the speedway income keeping the wolf from the door, so losing half of that may not go well. The bottom line is that I don't think many stadium owners would be in a position to accept significant rent reductions and expect the stadium to continue to be going concern. Perhaps, but without knowing their cost structures it may be they'd lose even more if they staged less meetings because they'll have certain fixed costs and have probably agreed rent on the basis of a minimum number of meetings. And of course, they'd need to comprise with other tracks who will likely have different cost structures.

I think the problem is that you're adding an entirely different class of riders and machinery to a meeting, which would all cost money that the sport just doesn't have. Would you realistically find 40-odd sidecar outfits that would be prepared to buy and maintain specialist equipment, and be willing to travel to 30-40 meetings per season for a couple of races and a few quid? How also would you provide context to the sidecar class week-after-week as well? This is quite aside fact that sidecars race the opposite way around the track, so you need to duplicate infrastructure like warning lights, and I suspect some tracks would not be safe enough to be licenced for clockwise racing without expensive modification. I've seen sidecars at speedway a few times, and I'm afraid I don't think they're really the answer. I think people go to speedway to watch speedway bikes and not a variety show. I fully agree there needs to be a fuller programme of races run more quickly, but I think the support races need to be junior leagues or mini-individual competitions with ongoing context (i.e. linked to a wider national competition).

I'm not sure you'd get the savings you think. If you reduce the number of riders needed per meeting from 14 to 12, you might save the travel expenses for a couple of riders, but the other riders would need to take more rides each to fill up the requisite heats. Some of those may well be on higher points money anyway, but would certainly expect compensation for the increased wear-and-tear of their equipment over the course of the season. So your costs may well go up rather than down.