Humphrey Appleby

Don’t forget the bonkers 5TT, five-riders-per-race format used by them for a while.

The old WTC format wasnt scrapped because Denmark were dominant - indeed they only won it once in the 5 years before it became a glorified pairs competition. It was done ostensibly to free up dates for the SGP, but probably in reality to save money - undoubtedly like now. If you want riders to ride in pairs, theres a perfectly serviceable 4TT format to do precisely that. And I suspect if one were to dig out some old Speedway Stars from circa 2001, wed find an editorial praising the return to a proper team competition and vision of the new SWC promoters. Best pairs is not a proper team competition.

Whilst I like pairs events, even a 3-rider 'pair' does not really constitute a proper team event. You can't tinker with the format just because one country is dominant at a particular time - Denmark were completely rampant in the 1980s, Britain/England in the 1970s, and to a lesser extent Sweden in the 1960s. What goes around comes around. If you got rid of these privately-promoted mickey mouse 'European' pairs competitions, you could have a World Pairs as well as a World Cup each year. Surely riders can postpone their jury service if they're riding in a meeting?

There are already transponders for motorbikes. Whilst it might be problematic to put the detection loop in a dirt track where bikes rip up the surface, I can't imagine it's impossible to do the detection from a gantry over the track, and therefore easily be able to work out who jumped the start. But yes, some sort of optical beam would also work, and is what F1 falls back on if there's a transponder failure (although F1 cars carry two transponders). No need for tapes at all in this day-and-age - just go on green light out. A workable system would probably be in the order of GBP 10-15K, including 20 transponders. If you needed to build a gantry, that would be an additional although not a huge cost. Speedway is light years behind other motor sports.

The sad reality is that the current fans are probably the last people the powers-that-be should listen to. The current demographic is ageing and declining, and it's actually those who dont go, and even completely new potential audiences, that needed to be tapped into to find out what might encourage them to attend and at what price point. You only have to see some of the random ideas, endless discussion about minutiae, and disagreements on here to see how far fan consultation will take you, even though there does finally seem to be more acceptance of the desperate financial situation than in the past. Now more than ever, the sport needs someone with a vision to rejuvenate the sport, which needs to include radical cost controls, and run with that regardless of the objections of traditionalists. The likes of Tesco doesnt consult me on marketing and products lines, but if I like what theyre selling and its the right price, then I choose to shop there. From my perspective, the sport needs to work out what it can afford, which riders it can afford and on what basis (how many full-time, how many part-time etc..), who'd be prepared to ride for the lower pay rates on offer, and on what days, and then work out suitable league, team and match formats from that. Have riders centrally allocated from a pool, with teams allowed to retain a certain number each season, and the rest going back into the pool at the end of the season to be reallocated to weaker teams. Standard agreed rates (albeit with higher rates for star riders etc..), which can hopefully be enforced because riders are allocated from the pool, and possibly pool maintained engines as well. Even better would be centrally contracted riders, but it would be a big liability for the BSPA and I could see issues in getting the money out of promoters to pay the wage bill. The other thing needed, are incentives for teams to run development programmes. So allow teams to retain and benefit from riders that come through their club junior system for a given number of years. And maybe the meetings themselves need gimmicks, like 8 rider handicap finales or similar. Something that offers something different from the current tired format. The purists wont like it, but they're a dying breed anyway.

As I mentioned, I dont think its possible to stage motorsport at the Ekka anymore, as its surrounded by residential property now (I live not far away). Great venue though. Archerfield is a purpose built speedway and could potentially host a GP, but I dont think its staged bikes for ages and is way out of town in an area with nothing for the fans. North Brisbane is a very basic circuit, although close to the airport. The New Sydney Showground is potentially the most optimal venue for an Australian GP, but is now the home of an AFL team. So any GP would have to be in October, and not sure how easy it would be to reconfigure the playing area.

Well that's not saying that much. NRL attendances are struggling, Melbourne isn't a traditional 'rugby league city' and the World Cup format is such that the opening games are pretty much a waste of time. Plenty of budget airlines offering regular and cheap flights to Melbourne, and Adelaide and Sydney are within drivable radiuses, which I'd think would encompass many of the active speedway tracks these days. I'd agree there's probably only a relative handful of regular speedway fans in Australia nowadays, but all the more reason to try to attract the Melbourne locals.

Wasn’t the Melbourne GP sold on the premise that people would go to watch events in the Ethiad regardless of what sport was on?

The New Sydney Showground and Carrara Oval (Gold Coast) are 25,000. The Ekka (Brisbane) is probably around that too, although not sure its allowed to hold motorsports events anymore as a lot of residential properties are now around it. Of course, all these venues are outdoors. The problem is that after an initial reasonable first GP, little seems to have been done to build on that. And of course, its widely rumoured that its going to be the last Australian GP, with a bit of a scratch lineup, which probably isnt the best thing for encouraging people to turn up.

The law of averages would suggest that more than 10 vacant places is unlikely to happen. For the Semi-Finals, vacant places should be filled by the riders placed 9th and downwards. For the Final, the highest scoring 3rd placed Semi-Finalist, and so on.

The SGP no doubt could afford to pay series reserves to attend meetings, but it would cost them another USD 85k they dont have to spend out of their profits. Getting local reserves in is much cheaper. In fact, the SGP did used to pay for series reserves to be at meetings, and they used to switch with the bottom 2 riders at each GP. However, that got scrapped when the lineup increased to 24 riders, and was never reinstated when the field was again cut back to 16 riders to fund a long overdue increase in prize money. And not sure of the exact situation with Melbourne, but dont bikes have to be taken to a certain airport (Amsterdam comes to mind) by a certain date, and theyre then crated and put on pallets together to be flown to Australia. Maybe none of the series reserves could be bothered with that hassle for the last round of the season?

Aside from the fact that it's a cost-cutting measure, what rider wants to trail around Europe and the World as a non-riding reserve on the off-chance they might occasionally get a ride or two? You could have some sort of pre-meeting runoff between four riders to determine which riders go into the meeting proper, and which become the reserves, but again you have the issue of travelling to a meeting and maybe only getting 1 or 2 rides.

The 'millions' likely didn't amount to more than GBP 50k per track per season, and almost certainly went towards subsidising the running costs. Running a speedway team is really no way of making money, and very quick way of losing it. There are fewer meetings in Poland and arguably more likelihood of being dropped if you don't perform, so perhaps riders are willing to take a lower rate in Britain in the expectation of more earning possibilities, or better guarantees. Possibly sponsorship comes into it as well.

The issue seems to be the permit fees payable to FIM Europe compared to FIM Global, and the event fees demanded by the series organisers from the host track, except where the series organisers is the promoter themselves. Phillipe has previously been on here complaining about it on behalf of his lieges. The size of the event fees demanded by BSI got leaked by Gorzow a few years back, and I seem to recall were several hundred thousand euros. BSI were also able to obtain financial support from local governments or tourist boards for some events - again I can't remember the exact amount without going back to check, but I think the Welsh Government is supporting each GP to the tune of GBP 150k. Possibly OneSport does a similar thing, but being Polish-based maybe has lower overheads and isn't so reliant on high staging fees and local sponsorship.

They are the effect, but not the underlying cause.

I think it's an open-ended question because you need to take the series where it's financially viable, where it generates enough interest to attract broadcast, sponsorship and local government cash, and in a location and venue that provides a decent experience for the fans (which is also linked to financial viability). Ideally, you wouldn't have more than one GP per country either, as you're essentially diluting your product if you hold two, let alone three GPs, but you'd be struggling to find 12 countries where a speedway GP is viable. Of course, BSI (and OneSport) will probably also say where they can maximise the licence fees from local promoters, although I'd say there should be more of a shared profits approach to that aspect. And I also think speedway is a fairly unique situation compared to other motorsports, and the SGP needs to have a more symbiotic relationship with national leagues. However, I'd say in the current environment, you'd probably want to have 1 or 2 GPs each in the core speedway markets of Poland, Sweden, Britain and Denmark that operate professional leagues. I think it's a real worry that the bottom seems to have fallen out of the Danish and Swedish markets, but I still think you need to be focusing efforts there as that's where most of the fanbase is. I'd think you'd then look next to the Czech Republic and Germany that have some resemblance of professional speedway, although there's always been something of a mixed response to events in Germany. Russia also has a professional speedway league and should really be a permanent fixture on the calendar, but always too much intrigue and dodgyness there to be involved with. So that basically leaves 2 or 3 rounds to fill, so you'd probably go to smaller speedway countries but where you can draw a half-decent crowd - so you're probably looking at Latvia and Slovenia currently, although the likelihood is these GPs would move countries from year-to-year. A World Championship also realistically needs to have a round outside of Europe to have credibility, so your choice is basically Australia, New Zealand, the US and Argentina. You'd think Australia is the best option out of these, but you need to stage the GP in a decent stadium to have any hope of drawing a decent crowd to pay for it. It seems Melbourne hasn't paid off, and there's only a couple of other stadiums you can try that aren't too big and maybe closer to areas where speedway is still run. The other countries have similar issues. A US GP would really have to be in California where most of the speedway action happens, but even that seems to have significantly declined nowadays, and not sure there's many medium-sized stadiums that can accommodate oval racing there. Really don't know enough about Argentina, but probably not enough money around to host a GP, even if a suitable stadium exists. The Middle East (presumably the UAE) also gets bandied about occasionally, but local interest in motorsport is just about zero, and whilst Bernie Ecclestone might have persuaded the Emirs to cough-up some cash to subsidise the whole affair, they're not so stupid as to not expect a return from the increased tourism and focus on their country that F1 brings. Speedway unfortunately, would bring nothing of the interest and cachet that F1 does, plus how attractive is a dirt sport held outdoors in temperatures of over 40 degrees? So I don't think I'd come-up with a radically different list of countries to have GPs, but the important factor is where they're held. In the core markets you'd probably want one prestige venue and one regular race track, because otherwise it's going to be a hard sell to sponsors who generally don't want to be entertaining clients in a muddy field in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately though, it seems most of the prestige venues just aren't paying off, so it does indeed look like the sport is going back to the 1990s when GPs were held in obscure Danish, Swedish and German towns.

Phillipe also said somewhere that the Ethiad Stadium was only available in October which practically means it has to be the last GP. So if you're going to big it up, you can't then claim that you didn't think it was a good idea to end the series there.

Can this be the same Phil Rising who said back on 9 October 2014 that... "Know a few people there who wouldn't normally cross the road fro watch speedway but attend just about everything that is on at the Etihad." and... "IF anyone turns down a trip to Australia to ride in one of the world's greatest stadiums in a great city they shouldn't be riding anyway." and even... "They say that many people in Melbourne will come along regardless of whether they know anything about speedway because it is at the Etihad.' http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=77991&page=2&do=findComment&comment=2528969 http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=77991&page=8&do=findComment&comment=2683145 Shurely shome mishtake? Then I think you have to ask why they're leaving of their own accord. Some tracks are invariably going to come and go, but if you look at 5 years ago, just 5 of the venues then are still in the series (Cardiff, Prague, Torun, Gorzow and Malilla - and it's questionable to count Malilla as that dropped out for a year in-between). Go back 10 years, and there's also only 5 venues from then, 3 of which havent held a GP continuously. So it's just Cardiff and Prague that have held a GP every year. Now look at F1, and despite all the new tracks being added, 13 of the current 20 tracks were holding GPs ten years ago.

BSI is a UK-registered company over a certain turnover, so is required to file detailed public accounts every year with Companies House which are all available online.

Big crowds? Well maybe in Poland and at Cardiff, and one what you might call big name sponsor (who wouldn't seem to be paying big bucks looking at the revenue figures). However, how good or otherwise the SGP is, wasn't really my point. How is the rest of the sport benefitting from these plus points, because it looks like it's mostly dying on its a*se outside of Poland? And is the apparently inability to sustain most of the prestige venues, really a positive thing for the sport?

Of course, there were always riders who pled poverty, and in the next breath were telling you about how they went off jet skiing during the week!

Have you not noticed the sport is on its knees? And part of the reason for that is because private promoters have been allowed to skim off what little cream there is, without having to have any stake in the grassroots of the sport that they actually rely upon for their business. Not just BSI, but also OneSport and potentially others if they could get their act together. It's all very well claiming the SGP raises the profile of speedway, but what does speedway actually have to show for it after 20 years? Declining interest, declining revenues, still no new markets beyond a handful of countries, and the distinct possibility the entire sport could be dead within the next decade. How much money has the SGP generated for those actually running speedway on a day-to-day basis, how have crowds improved, and what sponsorship has been brought into the wider sport on the back of it? Maybe things would have been worse without the SGP, who knows, but no way is it the saviour of the sport. And in most sports, the elite competitions are run by the stakeholders of the sport primarily for their benefit, yet not in speedway. Around GBP 3 million is being lost to speedway every year, which whilst small beer by the standards of major sports, would be enough to keep many tracks in business for a bit longer. Unfortunately though, none of this is ever questioned by those in a privileged position to do so, yet they're otherwise happy to ridicule mentally ill people in print. I actually do have some ideas about what needs to be done with the sport if it has a chance of surviving, and I'm not completely without experience in motorsport organisation. However, I'm not involved in running speedway and therefore not in any position to enact changes, even I wanted to be involved in a sport where vested interests are leading to its self-destruction. It's all very well being supportive, but don't be naive. Why do you think the SGP went to Melbourne - do you really think it was to give a struggling sport a shot in the arm in its oldest market, and in a city that hasn't operated a speedway track for years? Or might it be because an old mate is running a struggling and unpopular stadium and needs to fill it with events, is willing to do a cheap deal, and the competition needs to run a certain number of GPs including one outside of Europe?

Then it's hard to understand why the SGP would want to take-on new prestige venues in untried markets, like Melbourne, rather than just go to existing race tracks in Poland. If you read the latest BSI financial report though, it's clearly stated they're reducing the number of self-promoted events in order to reduce their operating costs, and have local promoters assume the staging cost and therefore risk of GPs. Those local promoters though, are going to be asking what they're getting out of it. Surely that's self-defeating? An opportunity to generate some interest in a particular market, but let's annoy the local journos who'll ignore the sport from now on. I don't doubt there's some hangers-on after freebies, but it's hardly surprising there would be more interest if a rider from a country that isn't normally represented in the SGP is riding.

I actually wasn't specifically referring to yourself, but you're either complicit in coming-up with excuses why one prestige venue after another never works out, or you're completely unquestioning of the reasons provided by the series promoter. I don't think it should be beyond the realms of a sporting journal to actually investigate why these venues never seem to work out, and question a little what all promoters involved are actually doing. You managed to marshal some resources when a rival promoter appeared to threaten the status quo (albeit that it was complete fantasy), but are strangely disinterested in asking why the current promoters never seem to manage to sustain new venues for very long, or indeed why revenue has declined over in the past few years. I think it's reasonable to acknowledge that speedway is probably something of a difficult commercial sell, and different viewing habits combined with more competition with other sports may well be part of the explanation. Equally though, I'm currently in Australia and you wouldn't have a clue a GP is being held here in a couple of weeks. The AFL didn't take ownership of the Ethiad Stadium until October 2016, so you can't blame them for the promotion of the GP last year. The reported 25,000 for the first year was probably a reasonable effort given the generally low levels of interest in speedway in Australia these days, but it was the familiar story of not building on that platform.

Perhaps I'm just more a realist about how these things work, and don't believe everything I'm told by vested interests.