Humphrey Appleby

They must have exceedingly thin skin if they take exception to the mild criticisms that occur on rare occasions in the Star.

Will there ever be a day when you know anything?

I doubt that 'supremo' would ever be an official job title.

There's a side note in the Spar today that seems to question whether the Melbourne GP will continue. Of course, the Victorian government seemingly not being willing to put up enough cash is highlighted, but then maybe that's down to the crowd levels at the last round. The AFL may also be more pragmatic owners than the last ones.

Yes, but with respect, are you working with new businesses and/or ones with good products, or trying to work with old declining family businesses? I don't disagree that the sport couldn't be turned around so some extent, but I think you're up against too many hobbyists and egotists that find it hard to come to agreement on anything, too many vested interests, and a sport that's so under-capitalised that it can't think anything more than a season ahead. Even the SGP, which is supposed to be the top level of the sport and is much more straightforward to package and sell than league speedway, struggles in all but a couple of countries and has found it difficult to find substantial sponsorship. I don't claim to have the answers and good luck if you think you can take it on, but until the sport tries to move forward together instead of the better promotions trying to shaft everyone else, then I think marketing efforts are largely futile because the basic product isn't right.

To re-iterate that promotion is something of a waste of time without a reasonable product. People will quickly realise it and never come again, and you've done even more damage. The problem of course is how to improve the product when there's so little money around, far less talent to work out how to improve it in the first place. I think no-one would disagree that the marketing efforts at every level of the sport are pretty poor, the use of social media and viral marketing is pretty non-existent, and anyone even trying to push the sport on the back of their own efforts is hamstrung by the 'commercial rights' holders. Okay, the latter isn't unusual in mainstream sports where the commercial rights holders have a string of marketable products they want to protect, but quite laughable in a sport that hardly anyone has heard of and has virtually nothing to market. The reality though, is that for most promoters the sport is pretty much part-time hobby, and what credible marketeer on earth would would want to touch speedway for the money the sport could afford? A sport watched by an ageing demographic with down-at-heel image - if it still has any image left at all. The best hope is for some young up-and-coming individual to chance upon the sport and see it as a way of making their name, but then you'd still have to deal with the establishment and the rights holders.

I don't think the problem is so much getting new punters through the door, the problem is keeping them. If the product doesn't come over well when they turn up for the first time, they'll never come back, and that's quite aside from pitching things at a suitable price that will encourage them to return regularly. I think getting people to try a poor product is worse than doing nothing at all, because you'll never persuade them to try it again.

I'd suggest that most people started liking cakes because their family and/or friends introduced them to them. The cake shops never felt they had to advertise their products because enough people bought them to make a living, and couldn't really afford it anyway as they only rented their premises. In fact, most cake shops didn't plan to be around for long, and for the others if the occasional cake shop went under, well they felt that was less competition. Over time though, less and less people bought cakes and there were therefore fewer people to introduce others to cakes. Young people also found the cakes a bit old fashioned with a lot of dirt and grit in them that got on their fashionable new outfits, not to mention that the shops and packaging hadn't really changed from the 1950s. They were just not cool places to be seen in. So the industry became under capitalised and by the time it realised that 'something must be done', it could no longer afford the necessary improvements or the high fees that would be charged by a competent marketing agency to encourage the public to eat more cakes. The industry also couldn't agree on when to open its shops, what they should look like, and what type of cakes it should sell. It would change the ingredients every year, and move some of them around from shop-to-shop so the customers never quite knew what they were getting (assuming the shop actually opened that week). So even if the shops could afford the marketing, they'd put off most of their new customers from buying cakes again...

I think it's more likely that people just don't like cakes anymore because of changing tastes, or not enough to go out of their way to the store which only opens occasionally and then not at regular times. The stores should really have closed by now, but a few manage to keep going thanks to volunteers and charitable donations. However, a few old people still reminisce about when the stores had the best cakes, and can't understand why they still can't make the best cakes. The problem is they're not prepared to pay any more money or change their routine as to when they go to the store. And young people just don't like cake anymore because they prefer fizzy pop sold by a grinning American in one store. So the only way to get better cake is for the volunteers to keep putting their hands in their pockets until one day there's no more money, and no-one prepared to run the store anymore. So the store closes and no-one has any more cake ever again. Amen...

They should take a balanced view - critical of the sport when it deserves it, but try to better explain to fans the realities and difficulties of running the sport. At the moment though, there's far too much cosying up to the 'establishment' position - the Melbourne GP being a notorious example.

I have a vague recollection that former promoters could retain assets for up to 3 years, or at least could benefit from any transfer or loan fees. That might be incorrect though, or even have changed.

If you want the answer to these sorts of things, you have to do your own investigations. You surely didn't expect a speedway magazine to report on business matters related to speedway, did you? It's only a few people on the Internet who're interested in this sort of thing - not the average reader.

Not sure how that can be contrived to be name calling. There are (or were) several Phillip-related names on the forum, so as a humorous nod to Private Eye, I came up with an easy to identify moniker for Lord Gnome of Pinegen.

Neither am I.

There are reasons why people chose pseudonyms, not least because unfortunately there are a few people who can't discuss things nicely and start making personal threats. Is your first name 'The' or 'White', or is 'White Knight' a double-barrelled surname?

I sometimes have criticisms of how the Spar reports things, although I accept a trade magazine has to tread a fine line, especially in the Belle Vue case. However, I always kept my comments non-personal until you started to directly disparage my credentials in defence of some quite indefensible reporting, which numerous others also felt was the case. Well that's fine, but then it works both ways.

In the real world, construction projects sometimes (often?) overrun so there should always be a contingency plan. That along with ensuring one is informed about process towards delivery is just common sense and hardly being wise after the fact. Did I mention that's it's normally good practice to do acceptance tests as well? Yes, the delay in delivery (of the track) was unfortunate and beyond the control of the promotion. However, trying to run the opening meeting after the warning signs from earlier in the week, and then having to abandon it with a crowd in the stadium, just massively compounded a less than ideal situation. I can fully understand the pressure of getting the opening meeting on after taking the money, but equally most speedway fans are well used to meetings being postponed/cancelled and would probably have more likely to have been forgiving than as events transpired. There's only so many times people will be taken for mugs, and speedway has stretched that to breaking point down the years. And there's presumably a story there as to why those backers choose to withdraw, quite aside from the fact that I thought the point of an escrow account was to ensure obligations were met by all parties.

It's also not unrealistic to expect snags, especially those projects with an optimistic timetable for completion. And penalty clauses would presumably depend on what the contract price was in the first place. If you're paying a premium price then you might reasonably insist on timely delivery. If you're paying a bargain basement price, then expectations have to be managed.

Where did I say the Star should be a tabloid newspaper? I fully appreciate that the sport leads a precarious financial existence and that an injudicious article could be the tipping point between a promotion continuing and one where the debts are called in. However, Belle Vue is something that's already happened, not something that may happen so I think it's entirely appropriate to analyse what went wrong. Regardless of whether you think most of the Star's readership uses the Internet, there are many speedway fans and I daresay Manchester City Councillors who do. They're perfectly able to find out rumours, gossip and indeed financial information, and then will talk about it. I therefore think it's far better to lay out some of the facts which at least gives the opportunity to mitigate the situation rather than have rumours spiralling out of control. The sport continuing to brush problems under the carpet just gives it a shoddy image, and I'm fairly certain has contributed to the loss of tracks as well down the years. There's only so many times that landlords and suppliers are prepared to get shafted, and eventually they come to the conclusion that housing is more reliable not to mention more lucrative. There are a number of people on here who openly questioned the business plan from the outset, but were assured by an eminent speedway journalist that everything in the garden was rosy. Now what should have been a rare positive development in generally depressing downward spiral for the sport, is not only looking like yet another nail in its coffin, but fingers of blame are being pointed anywhere but towards those responsible. Hopefully as you assure us, the situation is not irretrievable, but it would seem inevitable that MCC will want more guarantees next time around. On a more general note, it's obviously not a pleasant task to haul a long-standing servant of the sport over the coals, and one who was undoubtedly involved in the project for well meaning reasons. It's also easy to be critical of those who get off their backsides and no doubt stake significant amounts of money in a sport with very questionable returns, but there seems to have been some completely unrealistic expectations from this venture compounded by a serious error at the start of the season.

Well we're little the wiser from the reporting in the Star. Possibly a failure on the initial delivery of the stadium/track, but that was compounded by the promotion not postponing the first meeting when that became apparent. Beyond that, what else? If there were significant mitigating circumstances, why would the BSPA have terminated a promoting licence?

I think the bottom line is that Manchester City Council did speedway something of a favour by funding the construction of a new speedway. Speedway almost never even enters the thinking of authorities planning new facilities these days, so MCC deserves some credit for supporting what is not only a minority sport, but one that hardly features in public consciousness these days. And it seems they're rewarded for this by a bunch of unpaid bills, which just reinforce the image of speedway as a fly-by-night enterprise. So I really can't see that it's as simple as the previous promoters winding-up, and someone else in the sport coming along and expecting to start with a clean slate. I wouldn't accept that as a landlord, especially if governing body of the sport was endorsing the enterprise as a 'national stadium'. I'd simply think about hiring out the stadium to another sport.

Speedway attracted more people once, so could presumably do so again. How you do that is the big question of course, but it's currently a poor value-for-money sport with an old fashioned image and ageing demographic. Until and unless that's addressed somehow, then I do think it's basically finished as a professional sport. Unfortunately, so many things count against it. The 'playing surface' is expensive and requires skilled labour to maintain, meetings are heavily affected by the weather, the necessary equipment and consumables are proprietary and very expensive as a result, and there's little opportunity for conventional merchandising. That's even before you get to the rundown stadiums where it all takes place, and the sheer undercapitalisation of the sport that makes it very hard to invest in improvements. I feel ultimately the sport in Britain needs to rebuild from a much lower level and lower cost base, and try to appeal to a completely new audience with maybe a completely refreshed format. It probably wouldn't appeal to the traditionalists, but they're becoming fewer and fewer as every year passes anyway.

Looking at the picture, that's to knock the old stadium down...

There may be reasons to introduce two tactical subs in one heat, such as to cover injuries. Also not sure why you'd want to have a cut-off as if you make the points gap enough, then the cut-off will effectively be 2 or 3 heats before the end anyway. If you want to limit the impact tactical subs, then make it 8 points down (so at least two heat maximums to catch up) and limit to 2 or 3 substitutions in total.

Whilst I agree with many your points, I don't really think there's a inherent problem in it being a team/individual multi-format thing. I don't have much interest in individual racing and I think it's bad for long-term continuity. It's okay occasionally though, provided the riders still have links to teams. Being able to watch a league match, 4TT, pairs or whatever was part of the appeal for me and is what originally made speedway more interesting over others. In addition, whilst the sport can be watched at a simple level (4 riders 4 laps), the multiple levels of complexity also add intrigue once you've got beyond that. You can draw parallels with cricket which is a much more popular sport globally. It's simple at a basic level, but you spend a lifetime learning the nuances if you want. And it has multiple formats as well - T20, ODIs and Test matches - all played in different ways. There's even an individual format - single wicket cricket - which is almost unheard of nowadays but which every kid has played and which used to be popular professionally. Yes, riders competing for different teams (and the SGP/SEC) isn't ideal, but it's currently necessary because of economic realities. Furthermore, even cricketers are now competing in multiple T20 competitions, and even years ago would overwinter playing in Australia, South Africa or wherever. I don't think the corporate team idea is such a great development, but it's hardly unknown in other forms of motor racing, cycling or even football in some places. And don't tennis players use their own equipment?