Humphrey Appleby

The public accounts of BSI Speedway recorded a profit of just over 1.6 million pounds for 2008 (the accounts for 2009 are not yet published). This figure obviously comes with the usual caveats of public accounts, and assuming most of the activity was undertaken by this company and not parent or subsidiary companies. However, the BSI Speedway recorded substantial losses in 2006 and 2007 which amounted to more than a million pounds. IMG also appear to have written off the investment in certain subsidiary companies when they took over. Perhaps more interesting though, is the state of the parent company. BSI Speedway is owned by IMG(UK) (via a holding company) which recorded a loss of 15 million pounds for 2009. There's a statement that IMG Worldwide have undertaken to provide funding to allow IMG(UK) to continue to trade, so make of that what you will... Whether it's down to any fees payable to IMG/BSI or the cost of bringing the stadiums up to FIM standard, it amounts to the same thing. The costs of staging are too high, and the proposed venue in NZ seems pretty explicit about that. Indeed, it doesn't sound from their press release or from the local newspaper that they plan to pursue this in 2012 either.

I've not actually ever criticised IMG/BSI for this. I fully appreciate they're a commercial enterprise who're taking advantage of an opportunity afforded them by the FIM, and have no problem with their actions in this respect. I would however, criticise the FIM for handing out the commercial rights in the first place, and also the various professional speedway bodies for not exploiting the opportunities themselves. It would appear to be something in the order of one million pounds per year, but it has previously been rumoured that the FIM is responsible for paying the SGP prize money from this (which coincidentally appears to be just about the same amount). I'm sure Mr Rising will be able to correct any misapprehensions in this respect though.

I'm guessing there must also have been a change of government regulations that prevented lift maintenance companies from sponsoring the series.. It would be interesting to know what the viewer audiences are like in some of these countries compared to those watching Sky. I'd imagine Sky represents the main market by far. When I get a moment I shall try and look up the figures. I think many would argue it was because of the poor fare being served up last season, regardless of the actual reasons. It wasn't me saying it, but just about everyone posting on this forum, a (former) sponsor included.

I think it's clear that the SGP was dying a slow death. Sponsors were pulling out, and television coverage was increasingly being relegated to the 'red button'. It sums up the situation that a member of the SGP establishment who'd long criticised the Internet, felt the need to come on the BSF and generate some positive publicity about the whole thing. However, I agree it has been a lot better this season.

World Championship qualifiers used to be reasonably well attended, but why would anyone be interested in paying inflated prices to watch non-SGP riders riding for just three places? It's a pointless exercise and the fans are not fooled, particularly as they know certain riders will almost certainly be nominated if they fail anyway.

The problem is that tracks aren't really fighting to stage the current GP rounds, which is why the geographical diversity is so limited, and why Poland and Scandinavia stage three of them each. Now whilst I don't think the incumbent series organisers have actually promoted the SGP particularly well, maybe it's simply a limited market. When it comes down to it, professional speedway is really only ridden in four or five countries, and perhaps basing the SGP around those countries with a couple of 'novelty' countries thrown in (provided it can be done cheaply, which rules out the Antipodes) is the best that can be hoped for. It simply comes down to cost. If track owners are expected to pay high staging fees to the series organisers, then they either need to ensure the expected gate money will cover it, or they need to persuade their local council or tourist board to put up the readies. Sponsorship and television money generally goes to the series organisers rather the local host, so does not benefit the local promoter. It might bring in a few extra fans, but it's a big 'might' as there's very little evidence that the SGP does anything to boost audiences for domestic meetings. Fans turning out for a one-off big event is one thing, but turning out week-after-week for run-the-of-mill meetings is quite another. In fact, staging top flight speedway could even have a detrimental effect, if the next week you're only offering a product of perceived inferior quality. You can't generalise about Europe as the weather in the north is different from the south, and the same between the west and the east. It's true that Britain and parts of Scandinavia have very unpredictable weather and it often rains a lot. However, Italy and Croatia usually have very reliable weather in the summer, although it's really too hot for staging speedway there at times. Poland falls somewhere in between, but there's always the chance of getting a rainoff anywhere (it seems even in indoor stadiums, as we discovered with Germany ). Indeed, the last time I went to Australia it rained virtually every day for two weeks, and I wasn't only in Melbourne either. Getting back to why the SGP has not gone to other continents though (except for a one-off GP in Sydney a few years ago), you'd need to ask IMG/BSI why they've not expanded much beyond the same old countries. Did BSI overestimate the potential interest in the sport and its revenue raising possibilities, did the market change, or are they simply not as good at promotion as some would have you believe? Probably a combination of all three...

I think there are two separate issues... I've long thought that it's incongruous that the speedway's premier competition is run by a private company with no other links to the sport. It should be run by and for the benefit of the promoters and tracks that actually develop and employ the riders, and of course there's an argument that qualification should be through some sort of competitive process rather than through patronage (my own suggestion is this could be done through second half racing - with rider accumulating points over the course of a season and the best qualifying for following season's SGP, but that's a minor detail). This said, nothing would be gained by running a parallel GP series, either in competition or in cooperation with the existing SGP. There's already limited number of countries and tracks willing to host rounds, a limited amount of television and sponsorship money, and a limited number of fans, and any new series would be competition for these resources. If there was any realistic possibility to expand any of these factors, IMG/BSI would undoubtedly already have done so as they're in the business to make money. As to whether it would improve the chances of having a GP round Down Under - I'd guess the most practical option would be if the series organisers were willing to waive any staging fees to make it easier for an prospective promoter to make things pay. However, what then would be in it for series organisers?

They've been saying it for years, but it's quite another thing to actually make it happen.

I thought this was one of the best issues for a while, and it was good to see a balanced assessment of Simon Wigg for the first time. Clearly he was a talented rider with a flair for self-promotion (in the positive sense). Equally, I thought some of his ideas about the sport were totally unrealistic and it was good to see that John Berry holds similar views. Enjoyed the piece from Rob McCaffrey as well.

I haven't read it, but I can take or leave his column and I find Malcolm Simmons to give a much more interesting rider's perspective. Even so, I don't quite understand the diatribe by some against the bloke for wanting to do something other than ride speedway, nor blaming him for the decline of American speedway. It might well be the case that American speedway was never quite the same again, but that's hardly the fault of one rider...

Or in other words decided they couldn't make any money...

Not really any surprise. The non-committal language being used by the potential promoters was the giveaway.

A rather unfortunate but perhaps freudian translation of the article... On a more serious note though, the article doesn't really add anything new to the matter. Most people would agree an Antipodean GP would be an interesting addition to the calendar, be good for the sport and all that, but the bottom line is would it be financially viable for the promoters and riders?

If crowds and viewers are down for the SGP, then I can't see who elses' fault that is. The simple fact of the matter is that it became tedious over the past few seasons, to the point where a member of the SGP setup felt compelled to respond to the criticisms on a medium of which he'd previously been critical of. Although I've long only been a passive viewer of the SGP, I actively chose other things to watch because it simply wasn't worth the effort, and I'm sure many others (and sponsors - where is 'The Know' these days?) did as well. I'll acknowledge the SGP has been a lot better this year, but it's much easier to lose viewers than to gain them, and it's a shame that so much turgid fare had to be served up before the penny dropped. With respect to the change of time for the British GP - well why was the time changed? AFAIK, it was because of the scandalous accommodation prices and poor transport to/from Cardiff in the evenings, which makes it surprising that so many are religious about the place.

Look at the bigger picture though. The 11 World Finals have come at the cost of taking 11 (22 if you include Fridays) of the most lucrative race nights away from league racing. All very well if the SGP could provide full-time employment to the participating riders, or alternatively put money back into lower levels of the sport (as international cricket does), but it does neither. It uses assets of those developed and employed by others for a cut price fee (not to mention public money in some cases) for the benefit of a private corporation. Enjoy it while you can, because once professional speedway as we know it is strangled, IMG/BSI will move onto the next sport willing to do its bidding.

I'm not sure how an occasional 2 or 3 column inches in the national press justifies speedway not getting a cut of any profits. Moreover, many sports with virtually no national coverage whatsoever get better attendances than speedway. National media coverage is even less critical in these days when fewer and fewer people read papers, and television viewing is diluted over umpteen channels.

Unfortunately, I think economic realities will set in with the Olympic Stadium and it'll be sold off as a football ground or dramatically reduced in capacity if it stays as an athletics stadium. Large athletics stadiums are simply unsustainable as evidenced by the crumbling Olympic stadiums around the world.

There's a couple of points to be made here. Firstly, I think there's a reasonable argument that the World Final was run into the ground by the FIM to justify the introduction of a GP system which could be sold. It's reasonable to say that crowds had declined, but neither were they that bad at 'proper' venues either. Certainly the crowds at the likes of Munich, Gothenburg and Wroclaw were as good or better as at modern GPs, and even those at Vojens and Bradford were better than at most GPs now. Secondly, satellite and cable television was still in its infancy in the late-1980s and there was much less scope than now for getting speedway on television. Even live football was a relative rarity, but by the time the SGP came to fruition, channels were proliferating and were desperate for content. The FA Cup is a knockout competition and is shown on television, so there's no reason to believe television wouldn't show the old-style World Championship if was presented in the right way.

I'm not sure that speedway is ridden in any more countries than it was years ago, and the main professional circuits are still in the four or five countries they always were. As to whether speedway is more widely watched (geographically) on television, well that's a bit debatable even if BSI do claim it's being shown in Dijbouti or wherever. What certainly changed was that more countries wanted to stage a 'World Final', and in the case of Denmark and Germany they perhaps had a reasonable case at the time. However, taking the showpiece event to backwater stadiums in small countries hastened the decline of the World Final, and frankly shouldn't have been allowed. UEFA wouldn't stage the Champions League Final in Latvia or Slovenia (with all due respect to those countries) because they don't have the facilities or fanbases, yet the FIM were apparently happy to allow the World Final to go to Norden, Pocking and Amsterdam. Even then, despite the supposed decline of the World Final, as many people watched the latter events in Poland and Sweden as go to the GPs there now, and a British World Final would probably have got as many as Cardiff if there had been a decent-sized stadium available at the time. Even Bradford got 25,000 which is an attendance most contemporary GPs would be very happy with. The GP was and is simply about making the competition saleable to television and sponsors, which would be fine if this money actually benefitted the sport rather than enriching a private corporation. I'll fully admit that I lost interest in the World Championship after the SGP was introduced (even pre-BSI), simply because part of the attraction was following the riders from your team through the various qualifying rounds, hopefully eventually to the Final. I never really had a lot of interest in individual racing though, so once that link was broken, my interest waned. Nevertheless, I certainly don't think we should live in the past, and I can see certain advantages to having a GP series. I do think the current format suffers from overkill and a lack of variety, but that's nothing that can't be fixed. However, what absolutely does need to change is for the national leagues to cut themselves in on the deal. You can't blame BSI for exploiting a commercial opportunity, but it's ridiculous that the golden goose was allowed to be sold off by the FIM. Furthermore, not everyone bought into the BSI hype (reserving judgement on the current IMG incarnation). Their success was packaging up the existing events and selling them to television (albeit for a relatively moderate sum) as well as pulling in a few sponsors, but their promotional capabilities didn't seem anything special and fiascos like Gothenburg were just down to poor organisation (regardless of who was supposed to do what). Unfortunately, SGP devotees only seem to see things in black-and-white. Unless you unequivocally praise the SGP then somehow you're 'anti-SGP' even if you might support the basic concept albeit not the way things are currently implemented.

What's wrong with being anti-SGP, especially if you can make a reasonable argument that it's not all it's been cracked up to be? And whether or not the start time has changed, a drop in viewers is a drop in viewers.

It seems to be a reasonable analysis of the situation, and adds some weight to the supposition that everything is not rosy in the SGP garden. The irony of course is that this year's SGP has been the best for a while, but I suspect the goose has been cooked.

I used to love reading old programmes to see the names of the second half races - "Reserves (sic) Romp", "Junior Jaunt" and the like. However, the 'Hawkins of Harrow Snowball' always seemed pretty daft to me.. A ketch is a sort of sailing boat isn't it, although what is has to do with speedway is anyone's guess.

That a good point. Given that the news leaking out was suggesting a Feb/Mar timeframe for an antipodean GP, there wouldn't seem much time to get things arranged before the FIM meeting in October when dates get agreed. Reading between the lines of the press announcement, it doesn't much sound like it'll happen in 2011. The other problem with running GPs before the European season starts is that riders will be going into them cold without much in the way of competitive racing beforehand. Has David Tapp finally given up on rugby league? He's been involved with speedway for years though, and promoted the ISMS a few years back. If an Aussie GP was financially viable, he'd surely have been the person to have done it by now.

Yes it is ridiculous, but championship points don't have to be awarded in this manner. There are all kinds of ways of ensuring the winning rider gets the most points (and 2nd placed the second highest numbers), whilst still making the points scored during the 20 heats meaningful.

I was specifically referring to events on the night, for which it's more important to have a meaningful finale to keep people watching. Yes, in any Grand Prix system the result can be decided before the last round, but that's undoubtedly what the Superprix was about, and why NASCAR has a contrived finish. However, if you market each GP as a specific event as they do in F1 for example, then the overall championship can still be incidental to the popularity of the event. Tennis is only a knockout sport because it developed that way; probably because tournaments were originally the preserve of amateurs with limited time (professionals tended to play exhibition matches in the early days). However, there are some tennis tournaments with round robin play, and the various tournaments do contribute to overall standings akin to a GP system. In the early days of speedway, individual racing was a match racing contest and the four rider formula was undoubtedly introduced to make things more exciting. Nevertheless, some of the riders of the time apparently considered the 20-heat format to be mickey mouse and nothing but a lottery, which shows there's nothing new under the sun...