Humphrey Appleby

Quoting from Article 3.5 of the Speedway GP regulations... In each SGP Meeting, 1 Wild Card Rider will be nominated to take part. All FMNs may propose riders. Proposals must be made in writing to the FIM not later than 1 month prior to the meeting. The SGP Commission will make the final approval and nominations. But I'm sure you already know this.

Test matches variously had 7 or 8 rider teams. 6 riders had programmed heats, and there were one or two non-programmed reserves who could be used as required. I'd say the reserves were part of the team. However, I also seem to recall 'tests' between National League teams and the likes of Russia that ran with 7-rider teams under the 16-heat format that was used at the time.

So it actually had little to do with the cost of the bridge and everything to do with Copenhagen being an expensive venue?

I think towards the end, crowds were down to well under 20,000 in Copenhagen, which given the size and presumably cost of the stadium were pretty low. Phillippe blamed the cost of the bridge over from Jutland for putting off fans, but the bridge was there before the GP and crowds were initially quite reasonable.

I think it's well documented that promoters increasingly cut back on points/prize money for second-half races down the years, which contributed to riders increasingly taking them less seriously. And the likes of the Golden Sash also lacked meaningful context, and eventually morphed into the nominated heat if I remember correctly. A junior match interspersed within the main match would in principle allow things to run more quickly, as there would be less likelihood of riders having two rides on the trot. But there's still the added cost of having to pay for 6-8 extra riders, and more importantly have the costs of sending 3-4 extra riders around the country for away matches.

I doubt the Cardiff GP loses money as it's subsidised by the Welsh government. The British GP is probably one of BSI's bigger cash cows. BSI would only be interested in running another at Belle Vue if the local tourist board was willing to throw some money at it, or a local promoter was willing to front up a significant staging fee. Neither is likely to happen because the small capacity of the stadium means it's unlikely either scenario would be financially viable. BSI is in the game to maximise their profits - they're not interested in using the profits from one GP to subsidise another. They do have to put on a certain number of GPs for television purposes though, and there's obviously not enough cost effective big venues, or suckers who'll throw money at them to go around. Hence why they still have to find venues in the middle of fields that only cost a few bob and won't lose too much money. It's possible that a Belle Vue GP might make its debut if BSI desperately needed to find a cheap venue to make up the numbers, but as it would potentially pull some fans away from Cardiff, far more likely that they'll find somewhere in the likes of Germany, Italy, Finland or Croatia first, whilst claiming to support 'minor nations'. I'm sure though, they'd prefer to have ten Polish GPs if they could actually find ten Polish cities willing to pay over the odds, and thought they could get away with it...

You could have 1100 online programmes on a smart phone, and look back at them during the long gaps between heats to fill the time. I'm not actually unsympathetic as I still like filling in traditional programmes, but there comes a point when it's no longer economically viable to produce them for the number of patrons who'd purchase them.

And the 1966 World Cup!

A major contributor - not the major contributor. But you've inadvertently just pointed out the benefits of supporting the development of foreign infrastructure - allowing British speedway fans to get to GPs in a timely fashion to help enrich a British company, who in turn order programmes from a certain other British company.

Very silly comment. More likely to have come from Germany if anywhere.

Even aside from the funding, Ipswich is quite a small town with few facilities or things of touristic interest, and the venue itself is several miles away from Ipswich out in the countryside. There's no public transport there, I think only a junior speedway track currently exists, so presumably the plan would be to build a track on the infield of the motor racing circuit. However, the configuration of the stands would be terrible for viewing.

Ipswich surely has to be a bad joke?

I agree that the heat format isn't really the pressing issue. However, as we're discussing it, I don't think 13, 14, 15 or even 16 heat represents insufficient value for money if meetings are run swiftly as they should be, and by stringing things out to make them last longer, doesn't add any value and just annoys people. The problem is that an 18 and certainly a 20 heat match drags on a bit too long, especially if it's something of a one-sided contest. And of course, there's more chance of abandoned matches if inclement weather sets in. You could of course divide a meeting in two or three 'mini matches' with league points awarded for each, in order to keep interest and minimise one-sidedness, but again you could run into problem if there's a significant number of injuries. Plus devoting the whole meeting to one contest limits the opportunities for giving new riders some races. I think something like a 14-heat match with a 6-heat support event would be optimal. In a perfect world you might run a juniors/reserves match as a prelude to the main match, but that would realistic require another 6-8 riders to be found with the associated travel costs. I personally think a 15-heat match, followed by a 5-heat hybrid individual/team knockout competition that includes riders from the main match with (say) 4 junior riders, and culminating in a 8-rider finale might be a fair division. This would contribute to some sort of national season-long ranking (maybe qualification for the Rider's Championship), but you wouldn't really want team mates racing each other, so points would have to be structured to encourage team mates in the same race to work together. Maybe you could use the same concept to award bonus league points.

Quite honestly, printed programmes should be a thing of the past, as they increasingly are in football. Make an app which allows people to follow the results online, and adds a bit of additional content, save the printing costs, and maybe charge a nominal seasonal subscription.

This inadvertently sums up the thinking that bedevils the sport. If promoters need to commit to 20-heat meetings to make a better night's entertainment and provide the paying public with better value-for-money, they need to be putting it in the riders contracts that they're obliged to ride in whatever events are required of them, and riders should be fined if they bugger off early. Similarly, those saying that 13 heats would 'cut costs'. The whole financial viability of the British speedway is at stake now, and costs need to be restructured around a lower semi-pro level, anyway, so again you structure the pay policy around what's required to put on attractive and value-for-money meetings. Find the riders willing to commit, which are unlikely to be the international journeyman, and structure your competitions around them. I personally see little point in running second-halves (or 'first-halves' for that matter) that have no meaning beyond the end of the meeting, but you could easily have a structured competition that scores points for some meaningful season-long event, or some sort of league bonus points.

Nothing to do with blocking out BSI or whoever. If those sort of promoters want to stage events on their own volition in Britain then good luck to them, apart from the issues that the wider sport might want to consider. But British speedway certainly shouldn't be spending money chasing these sorts of events unless they get some sort of no risk return from them. Most members of the public would sadly have no clue who Lambert, Bewley and even Woffinden are.

Bike transponder are available for under 250 quid I think, and that's a rip off price given they actually cost about 5 quid to make. So probably could be a fair bit cheaper with a bulk deal, although they're increasingly leased nowadays. A complete timing system is probably under 10 grand - maybe even 7 grand for a basic system. Speedway is years behind even the most grass roots of motor sports. The cost of a timing system is not the issue for the lack of introduction.

If there was an easy answer it would have already been done (although knowing speedway it wouldn't ), but I certainly don't think the answer is hosting expensive travelling circuses that have little long-term stake in the sport and take revenue aware from local tracks. I also still think you need to keep the team element, because it's difficult to establish continuity around individual riders who come-and-go. People are also not going to turn-up regularly to watch meetings that don't count towards something. Unfortunately, and as some have already said on here, the sport has become so badly run down and under-capitalised, that I think you have to rebuild the sport around a lower semi-pro level. I think you need to establish a central pool of established riders in order to control costs and ensure broad competitiveness amongst as many teams as possible, but encourage teams to develop riders who'd be protected (i.e. allowed to stay at the same team) for 3-5 seasons. I'd not advocate wholesale rider changes every season, but the sport needs to control its costs and ensure there's no incentive for cheque book speedway. I'd also think about having a central pool of engines, all maintained to as similar standards as possible, which would be randomly allocated before each meeting. There's no point discussing anything else until you work out what the sport can afford and bring its costs under control. But I do think you'd probably want to merge the current three leagues into two, with the second being NL level, to provide more variety than now. I'd think how you can run a 20-heat programme swiftly, whether that's as one match or a shorter match and support event. I also think there needs to be some sort of gimmicky event at each meeting, like an 8-rider (two grids) race that counts towards something, and possibly some after-match individual event that contributes towards some sort of national season-long competition. Some of this isn't going to be palatable to traditionalists, but the sport is now on its knees and there soon won't be any traditionalists left unless it can appeal to new audiences.

Even the Olympic competition was played out in front of pretty sparse crowds from memory. Difference of course with hockey, is that it's really only international players who get paid, and then only a pittance. Speedway's problem is that it's underlying costs are unsustainable compared to what it generates in revenue.

It's also been discussed at length on here. To a certain extent, I think it's fair to say that the SGP generated revenue that didn't exist (or no longer existed ) in the sport, and there is some argument that it provided the sport with some wider exposure on which other revenues (television and sponsorship) might be attracted elsewhere in the sport. However, the SGP (and now the SEC to a lesser extent) lives off the back off the professional leagues as the participating riders can in no way make a living from those competitions alone, and has the choice of the most attractive dates whilst the leagues who do provide riders with their main source of earnings have had to just give way. This did badly affect the British Elite League, even though other factors were certainly involved, and probably substantially contributed to the demise of formerly 'big' tracks like Coventry, although even Poland has been occasionally affected as well. Of course, this also happens in English cricket where the top players now rarely play in domestic competitions, but the difference is that most of the revenues from international cricket accrue to the ECB who use them to support domestic teams. There's a lot more money in international cricket, but the ECB (through the ICC) kept control of the licensing of the top level competitions to ensure that domestic and even grassroots cricket derives some benefit, which does not happen in speedway. The sad reality is that no-one within speedway, especially British speedway, seemingly had the foresight or gumption to do what the likes of BSI did. There was a burgeoning cable and satellite television market at the time, desperate to fill air time with relatively cheap content, and the opportunities were there for a promoters body to go and run this for themselves. At the very least, they should not have allowed the rights to be sold off by the FIM without insisting that some of the revenue came back directly to them (and not just disappear into the FIM coffers), and that just shows a collective lack of vision and cooperation. I'm afraid that I don't really buy into this notion that the SGP required substantial investment to start with, and if the major national leagues had been able to cooperate, could have more easily shared any risk between themselves. And whilst I'm realistic enough to realise that the old World Championship would be pretty difficult to market, I do think it was either deliberately or neglectful allowed to be run down because attendances still held up in the decent venues even at the end.

How are privately promoted events that take money out of the sport, and in some cases even charging local tracks for the 'privilege' of hosting, going to take the sport forward? One of the reasons that speedway is in the mess that it's in, is because it doesn't benefit from the few semi-lucrative events it actually has. What little money there is needs to be kept within the sport. And why do people think Polish and Swedish speedway remains relatively viable year-after-year, whereas the fortunes of other countries fluctuate wildly? Precisely because league speedway provides the fan identification and continuity that individual racing does not. I'm also not sure how many times it needs to be pointed out, but when all the top riders used to ride in Britain, the sport still saw diminishing crowds. Trying to put on expensive meetings more than once a twice a year will simply undermine the novelty for existing fans, and the new audiences to whom the sport really needs to be appealing, have essentially never heard of any of top riders anyway.

Does the average worker also have to buy and maintain expensive equipment, and are they likely to get injured or dropped after one match with no compensation? It's trying compare and apples and pears, but the reality is that no matter how much riders may or may not deserve the wages they get, it comes back to the fact that sport can only afford to pay what it generates in revenue.

I think in fairness, tracks were living hand to mouth even back in 2000, and the Sky money was merely keeping the wolf from the door. Of course, with some foresight it might have been an opportunity to control costs by buying out rider assets and having centrally contracted riders, or indeed funding development tracks to bring through new riders in place of often absentee journeymen. But the paying public at the time, those that should be consulted according to another thread, were insisting on having the top riders who’d bring back all those missing fans (despite the fact there had been an ongoing decline even during the period when every top rider rode in the UK). And any attempt to make the sport more affordable was derided as watering down the product. I think though, the bigger concern is how just about every other minor sport can get on television these days, whilst speedway got cut. And even if Sky had overpaid for football, cricket and F1, why were other broadcasters not jumping at the opportunity if it’s such a hot property?

It’s actually somewhat pointless asking what existing speedway goers want, as they’re largely going to come anyway. There’s probably not even much point asking former fans - even if you can identify them - because they’ve long since lost interest and walked away for whatever reason. You need to be identifying new audiences to target, to whom speedway might appeal, and work out what will bring them through the door.

You're effectively building bespoke products, and if clients are spending millions then you can afford to take the time to consult with them. Plus you're really only having to satisfy a handful of clients - not a few hundred or thousand at a time. Total speedway revenue is probably only a few million - I think it was stated as being a 6 million business a few years ago and may even be less now - and punters are paying 20 quid a head at best. Reading this forum, whilst there are certainly some good ideas, could you actually draw any conclusions on what the average speedway punter wants, and being realistic on what can be actually be delivered, sufficient to turn speedway businesses around?