Humphrey Appleby

Except February, March and April are the wettest months of the year in SE Queensland, and when it rains it's Biblical...

There isn't anything like the money or global appeal in speedway as there is for even Rugby League, and I'm not convinced Canadian teams in RL makes much sense. Certainly people have lost interest in Super Rugby since it added the teams beyond its core base, and the huge time differences make the whole thing a bit of nightmare for television. League speedway is really only run in Europe so time zones wouldn't be the same issue, but a European competition would only make sense if some decent television or sponsorship deal was secured on the back of it. You couldn't really run such a thing on the expectations of crowd revenue, and I'm not convinced the likes of Poole v Falubaz Zielona Gora on a cold Wednesday night would really have as much appeal as Poole v Swindon for the average fan, although you could maybe stage away 'tours' as a couple of matches at a time which might appeal to some fans. I don't honestly think Poland would have much to gain from this nowadays, and it would appeal more to those national leagues where a team or two would like to run at a higher level of competition, but there aren't enough teams in their own country to form a league at the desired level. I actually think it more likely that British teams would run in the Swedish Leagues than the Polish ones. The time to have done a European League was 20 years ago when there was more equality between the three or four main leagues and cable and satellite televisions were looking for cheap content. It would also have been a good opportunity for those leagues to have taken control of the SGP and SWC and run those competitions for their own benefit. But no-one wanted to look at the big picture, speedway is now way off the radar as a marketable sport and everyone within the sport is just fighting over scraps these days.

Of course it could be done if the will was there. A Latvian and I think even a Hungarian team have ridden in the Polish Leagues, both a Swedish and German team rode in the top Danish League for a year or two, and a Norwegian team rode in the Swedish Leagues for a while (Phil Morris rode for them). Could be wrong, but I also seem to recall a Russian team in the Finnish League.

There's a speedway track at North Brisbane (near the airport) which is mainly/exclusively a training track, and I don't see any meetings listed in February. That's about 1 mile from Northgate railway station. There's also a speedway track at Ipswich - the town itself 30 miles from Brisbane and on the City Rail network - but the venue is actually at the Ipswich Motor Park which is another 5 or 6 miles further out in the countryside. The Australian U21 Championship is being held there on 19 January, but I don't see any meetings listed in February. Archerfield in the southern suburbs of Brisbane has formerly held speedway meetings, but I think is now exclusively Speedcars. I believe there's still some sort of junior track at Labrador in the Gold Coast about 50 miles from Brisbane, but I've not seen any meetings there for a long time. I think Rockhampton also runs some solo meetings, but that's nearly 400 miles north of Brisbane.

Ronnie Moore and Ivan Mauger are not British (and few will remember they rode for a 'British' team), and were involved in a sport that ranks somewhere alongside cheese rolling nowadays. I'm not sure why people are surprised by SPOTY each year - it's never been much interested in sports it doesn't cover. Yet every year there's the predictable letters from 'outraged of Tunbridge Wells' about the omission of so-and-sos favourite sport. Why do people bother watching it?

So what’s the ATP and WTA then? Individual tournaments might be run by clubs and promoters, but I was talking about the running of the professional circuits. More muppetry from Mick.

Day-to-day administration should be independent, and it's advisable to have independent advisors with significant influence to handle specialist areas like marketing and legal matters. Ultimately though, those investing the money and running the clubs ultimately need to have a significant say in the structure and direction of the sport even if they're bad at making the right decisions. I always think though, that Rugby League hasn't really made the progress it should have done considering the investment it's had over the last 20-odd years.

I'm familiar with the Mark McCormack and IMG's background, but I think it's arguable that he got his start in sports promotion because he was actually one of the (golf) players at that point. Mainstream tennis professionalised quite late, and prior to that professional tennis was a marginalised sideshow with inconsistent promotion and unstable finances. The first attempts at running a proper tour were actually put together by former players, before the ATP and WTA were founded to give all professional players eventual full control of the sport. Tennis is a very good example of a sport almost entirely run by the players, and golf substantially so. Of course, golf was one of the first professional sports and there is a long history of the players organising the tournaments they played in. So I think the point is that a sport run by the competitors and a successful sport are not mutually exclusive things. With a few exceptions though, IMG specialise in low budget sport as cheap fodder to fill off-peak television schedules around the world. When they tried to get into mainstream sports it didn't seem to go so well for them. By contrast, Barry Hearn has found a couple of niches that do well for him, and largely stuck to them.

Not really. Professional tennis is run by the players and is more lucrative than when it wasn't. Professional golf is largely run on similar lines successfully. Barry Hearn happened to chance upon a couple of (so-called) sports that have very little overheads, and where the players were paid a pittance at the time. The fact they're easy to televise allowed him to take advantage of the rise in satellite and cable television that needed a lot of relatively cheap content to fill their airtime. Good luck to him too, but the examples of snooker and darts are not necessarily a model or even replicable for other sports. I suspect that speedway is also something that he'd have looked at, and quickly realised that he shouldn't touch it with a bargepole...

And what if the excluded rider is still not ready after another 2 minutes? 2 minutes is there to ensure a race isn't indefinitely waiting for a rider who may have mechanical problems.

You're absolutely not getting VFM, but I'd expect more than 15 minutes actual entertainment even if it's only spread over 90 minutes, for 17 quid.

Long drawn-out meetings were also one of my main bugbears, but the reality of running 15 heats with 4 minute gaps is that a meeting would be over in an hour and 15 minutes. Unless there's also consideration of the overall package such as 'first-half', 'half-time' or 'second-half' entertainment, then it's not really going to really improve the value for money.

Is the 2 minute clock, absence thereof, or how the 2 minute rule should be interpreted, really the most pressing issue for British speedway?

Tee Mills went bust sometime around 1990 if I remember. There was also another tour company around that time that I forget the name of.

"The costs to a rider's equipment is nothing to do with the promoters." - allegedly...

One of the reasons speedway has got itself into the massive hole it has, is because both promoters and spectators have got themselves into the mindset that things have always been done in a certain way, so let's keep plugging away doing exactly the same thing regardless of whether it's actually appropriate for the modern world. Is Lewis Hamilton responsible for building and fixing his car, or does Harry Kane buy his own kit and take it home himself to wash? Of course not, so why on earth can't speedway reconsider how it does things? If, for example, the BSPA had a central pool of (say) 30-40 engines maintained by 2-3 engine builders to a contracted standard, which were allocated to riders at each meeting, there could be huge savings all round. Now the above may or may not be the right solution, but the only nonsense is when people are so blinkered that they're not receptive to considering change, or even worse just keep blindly heading down a path of failure. The harsh reality is that unless some workable solutions are tried to reduce costs all round, the sport is finished. All very well but the first thing a promoter is going to say when a rider on old kit loses a race against another rider on new kit, is why isn't your gear up to scratch? And the fans of that team will likely be moaning about it as well. Presumably though, someone must be buying all this second hand gear and using it somewhere, because you can't really use it for anything other than speedway. Well just cut the rider wages without doing anything else, and let's see where it gets the sport. My prediction would be a lot of riders just simply packing it in.

Of course it has something to do with the promoters. Yes, teams should only pay what they can afford, but if enough riders turn round and say it costs x in order to be competitive against other riders and I'll be running at a loss, you'll not only lose riders from the sport, but there will be more competition for those riders that remain - effectively negating any cost savings, even assuming you can still find enough riders to populate the teams. Individual riders can't simply decide to cut back on equipment by themselves, and indeed sufficiently cheaper to buy and run engines may not even exist. Promoters need to legislate what can be run for the good of the sport, and if that means maintaining a central pool of engines maintained to a common standard, developing a lower cost engine and mandating its use, or whatever, then that's what needs to happen. Nothing will ever change if those running the sport absolve themselves of responsibility for controlling one of the biggest costs in the sport.

Wages will constitute one of the biggest, if not the biggest cost for a promotion, and is something that the collective will of the promoters can control unlike most other costs. No point simply saying reduce wages and the rest will follow, because there's a certain inherent costs involved in manufacturing small numbers of specialised engines, and then finding the handful of rebuilders/tuners to maintain them. Of course the equipment costs have got beyond the point of stupidity and what can be afforded, but it's partly incumbent on the promoters to find solutions to that - either through bulk purchase of engines, maintaining a common pool of engines, or severely restricting how engines can be modded (and that still won't stop the use of selected parts engines).

Would guess it would be established as a company limited by guarantee, with the track owners as the company members.

That wasn't really my point. Things like the points limit, lack of control over wages, and an engine tuning arms race have forced up costs beyond what is sustainable. Of course you have to get fans through the door as well, but can't reduce prices until you reduce costs. And even if you do get more fans through the door, teams will just spend any extra money on trying to lure riders unless there are controls on this, which doesn't get you any further forward.

Likely to be simplified accounts which won't tell you much.

Rider allocation, centrally-contracted riders, wage control, standardised equipment and procurement thereof are all possibilities.

Would have thought there was always the risk of a rider taking the BSPA to court over the asset system, winning the case, and then getting damages that the promoters (or at least those on the Management Committee) would be collectively liable for. Maybe it wasn't done before because of the need to publish accounts which would open the promoters to financial scrutiny. The law has been changed in recent years though, to increase the amount of turnover before you have to publish full accounts, and I doubt 6.5 million per year is going through their books.

Of course, in a proper sport it would be unacceptable for the same owner to have controlling influences in more than one team in the same team, which is why virtually every (if not all) credible sports competition disallows it. However, speedway is already a joke with teams borrowing riders (guests) from other teams in the same league, that it probably makes little difference in practice. This said, I can see the benefits of running a league as single corporate entity, because that will allow for better control of costs, and better competitive balance. Provided there's a separation of the league ownership and team management once the riders have been doled out, the contracts agreed, and competition starts, then there's no reason why it shouldn't work.

Presumably because those players meet the criteria for being granted UK work visas (which are clearly specified for ice hockey), and Jaimon Lidsey does not. Maybe ice hockey is better at lobbying UK immigration than speedway, not to mention that speedway abused the rules a few years ago and has probably lost the trust of the authorities. However, the visa rules for speedway have been pretty much the same for years, and are fairly generous towards Australians in terms of allowing the top 4 (maybe top 3 now?) in the National Senior Championship or a state championship to qualify. Probably also comes down to the fact that UK population (including many speedway fans on here) wanted to reduce the number of immigrants, speedway contributes little or nothing to the economy or social fabric of the UK, and there's therefore absolutely no reason to give the sport any special treatment. I personally think it's a shame for young Australian riders, but Australia has their rules for Brits wanting to go there too, and it's a reflection of the way our respective wider populations want things to be at this moment in time.