Humphrey Appleby

If you reduce the size of the teams to fit the supposed number of riders, then you reduce opportunities which in turn means more potential riders simply won't bother with the sport. It simply becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the rider pool will just continue to shrink. 6-rider teams are just about viable for a league match with 14-15 heats. 5-rider teams would require riders to not only have too many programmed rides, but too closely spaced together as well. Almost certain that some riders would also have to have two programmed rides on the trot, which does nothing for timekeeping. Teams have been 7 riders for much of the sport's history (although there have been 8 and 6-rider teams at times) because it's an optimal number for various reasons, including the possibility to run rider replacement.

If I were a promoter of a GP having to invest many thousands of my money to install a temporary track, there would be no way I'd do it if there were any chance of a cancellation due to the weather. That tells you why over 70% of GPs with temporary tracks have been staged in roofed stadia. Going back to the World Final days, probably far fewer television and sponsorship contracts riding on the event. But I actually only count 3 World Finals that were staged on a temporary track - Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Munich (possibly Malmo as well). Granted some Wembley Finals would have been staged on what was effectively a temporary track for some of the years, but there was some sort of existing circuit for much of the time.

Sadly I'd probably have to say yes. To quote the ghost of GPs past (may he rest in peace)... One does wonder how many more lessons there are to be learned...?

Well not really. The issue is GPs that have the expense of building temporary tracks. Since the SGP started, I count just 6 stadiums where temporary tracks were installed and there wasn't a roof. Berlin and Sydney were used once, and the Stockholm Olympic Stadium was used 3 times back in the early days. The other stadiums were Gothenburg (9), Horsens (4) and Tampere (2) - none of which are still used. So a total of 20 GPs. By my count, 7 roofed stadiums have been used - Cardiff (20), Warsaw (5), Stockholm Friends Arena (5), Copenhagen (12), Melbourne (3), Hamar (3) and Gelsenkirchen (2). So a total of 50 GPs.

Odsal got something like 17,000 for its last World Final, and I don't think it was even full (although close). The previous year, the Munich Olympic Stadium - whilst the track was rubbish - managed to pull 50-odd thousand, despite Germany not really being a major speedway nation. Cardiff even in its first year got something like 30-35k. I think the moral of the story is that small provincial stadiums just don't pull the crowds.

I got the impression that IMG largely gave up on the SGP at some point, and just went through the motions to fulfil their necessary contractual obligations. They may have started out with some bigger ambitions at some point, but a combination of poor promotion, poor choice of location, declining interest in speedway in general, competing interests of the Polish Leagues in particular, exhausting the pool of local promoters willing to 'do a wedge', and other distractions (e.g. bidding to run the London Olympic Stadium that cost them a fortune) meant these ambitions could never be fulfilled. Having said that, the SGP organisers also seemed to be fairly amateurish in their approach, so maybe it was cause-and-effect. Discovery is a much bigger organisation than IMG with far more money, so perhaps they can better speculate to accumulate for a while and/or leverage better sponsorship and media deals. However, apparently outsourcing the British GP to the former promoters and attracting the lowest crowds possibly ever doesn't seem like a great start. I do think speedway is a hard sell for anyone though. It has a very limited geographical base, poor spectator demographics, gets limited mainstream media coverage, and has high overheads on top of that.

Well if Cardiff is only pulling 19,000 then the British GP will soon have to be held at Belle Vue. Belle Vue is decent for domestic meetings and even smaller international events, but it would be totally a backward step to move the premier event there whilst somewhere like Cardiff is still financially viable. I hold no candle for Cardiff which I don't think is especially convenient to reach and has appalling overpriced accommodation, but neither do I think moving the GP to a small venue in a less than salubrious suburb of Manchester is really where speedway wants to be going, no matter how good the track. I was quite critical of the former SGP promoters who didn't particularly move the series forward in 22 years, but I don't think trying to take some GPs to premier stadiums in city centre locations was really the wrong thing to be doing. In the case of the GPs it isn't just about the racing but the annual experience - plenty of World Finals had poor racing - and having experienced the charms of Pocking, it wouldn't attract me back for that sort of event.

Wembley also has good transport links, and there's quite a few hotels, restaurants and bars on-site now, as well as several shopping malls nearby. I admittedly haven't been for about 3 years, but the Olympic Park didn't have a lot in it from memory. And a fair bit of it was already looking unkempt and somewhat rundown. Erm, I was talking about Wembley. However, if a GP was to be held in London it wouldn't be at Wembley and far more likely to be in the Olympic Stadium.

Yes, but Vojens is a permanent track so has a better chance. I don't think any of it is insurmountable with sufficient effort, but it undoubtedly comes down to cost at the end of the day.

Neither is the London Olympic Stadium in the best of areas, but there's not a chance it'll be held at Wembley. Quite aside from the cost of renting a stadium (reputedly 500-750k per day + 10% of gate receipts + costs) that would never be filled, it would be a squeeze to get a track in without substantial and expensive modifications. It's also why there's never been an athletics event held there.

If they have permanent tracks then their overheads will be substantial lower so it'll be easier to take the financial hit on any postponement/cancellation. Whether it's staged by a third party promoter will also have a bearing as they'll take the hit.

Since when has Cardiff supported a league team? I suspect a London GP would get the crowds, possibly more than Cardiff (although wouldn't be difficult if only 19,000 turned up this year), but the staging costs and lack of subsidy from the Welsh authorities (although Visit Wales no longer seems to be listed as a sponsor) probably wouldn't justify it. The Olympic Stadium is probably the only realistic option and that doesn't have a roof, so you're running the gauntlet of high staging costs with the possibility of cancellation. If you're having to spend a fortune to adapt a venue and build a track, then you need the certainty that the event is actually going to happen.

The obvious issue is that F1 and MotoGP are held on tarmac circuits that don't require much preparation, don't change much from race-to-race and are also largely driveable/rideable when it rains. With the best will in the world, a speedway track takes much more preparation and can only take so much pounding before it needs significant reconstitution work. I daresay different events could be held on different days, or even with enough time in-between, but it all adds to the costs and is it really going to pull significantly more fans to justify this?

I thought we heard in the past that the shale was being stored in scientific pyramid shapes. I thought lessons would have already been learned by now, considering it's pretty the same promoter.

Probably down to the cost.

Erm... Jim'll Fix It, Val Doonican, Little and Large and I'm sure many other terrible shows...

Probably not, but as others have pointed out it may be the only way to prove stadium capacity has not been exceeded. In the old days, sports venues had turnstiles with counters, but I don't think they've been used at Oxford for years.

Sadly - and whilst I don't wish to impune anyone - you still have to supervise volunteers when it comes to cash. A combination of laxity - if it's not your money - temptation, and letting in your mates for nothing, means any promoter should be maintaining a high degree of supervision over the cash take.

As I said, it's harder to argue if there's cash involved elsewhere, but the difference between checking QR codes and taking cash is somewhat different. With pre-paid tickets the money has already been taken, so it's just a matter of ensuring someone has paid so the level of trust and supervision can be lower. The last couple of 'large' events that I did were probably in the order of couple of thousand people each. I personally spent the entire day trying to find a bank that could provide $5k in $5 and $10 bills as a float (this wasn't the UK), supervising the cash collection at the gates, counting the cash to ensure it matched the entries, and then guarding the cash until the end of the event. That basically meant I couldn't do anything else, so effectively added one person to the payroll. With bigger events and more entrances, you'd need more people involved in the cash supervision. The problem with one entrance is that everyone tends to turn up at once and with bigger crowds causes confusion and creates congestion which is critical at the start of the event. It's not insurmountable if you have the resources, but you have to balance the number of volunteers you have or the wages you'll have to pay against what you think you might lose if you don't take cash. For the rugby events only about 10-15% of people paid cash anyway (and that was 3 years ago), whereas for the motorsport events it had already dwindled to 1-2% before we insisted on online payments only. [In practice, if someone turns up on the day and offers cash then I do accept it, but I just don't advertise it.]

I count precisely three people complaining about it on here, including one who probably isn't likely to go regularly. I'm nothing to do with the Oxford promotion and certainly don't know why they'd have a no-cash policy on the gate but not in the stadium. I could suppose though, that in-stadium sales are easier to manage as they'd go through a till and are more easy to reconcile. Back to the point though, I have organised events, including sports events, and not having to handle cash greatly simplifies administration and allows you do things with fewer staff. And in a sport with fine margins that can be the difference between running and not running. You might be losing out on a handful of customers as a result, but the extra money you might gain probably won't cover the wages of the extra person(s) you need to supervise, guard, reconcile and then bank the cash. Been there, done that, and it's wasted effort when online payment options are available. I appreciate it may seem like an inflexible policy, but just to give an promoter perspective...

Very simply because paying cash is potentially open to fraud from employees, can get otherwise get lost/stolen (which itself means you need to assign someone to look after it), and then needs to be physically taken to a bank assuming you can actually find one that's still open these days. In short, it's a pain to deal with now most people (including my 91-year-old Aunt) have a smartphone and are well used to paying for stuff online.

The 1970s was full of game shows that I seem to remember being denounced as dumbing down television. And of course most of the time you were looking at that girl with the creepy clown on the test card anyway...

I think that gives you the answer as to why speedway was once (relatively) successful. I do think speedway is quite difficult to market for a number reasons, not least because it's just sunk so low in so many ways. Incoherent and at times farcical organisation, poor facilities that potential spectators and sponsors wouldn't want to go anywhere near, an almost non-existent wider public presence, and a rapidly ageing fan base. There's no money to try to improve facilities, little collateral to borrow money against, and very much a hand-to-mouth existence that makes any sort of longer plan difficult to implement. But I think the sport does need to consider what price point it can realistically pitch itself at, work out what it can afford to pay, work out what riders are prepared to ride for what it can pay, and then base its structure on that. And that also means riding when people want to want, putting itself out on social media, have paid streaming for all teams and meetings (not just half of them). There should basically be a two-tier structure - one regular league where costs are pitched to ensure there are always 12-16 teams, and a more flexible developmental league for everyone else. A 6-team top league is a joke, just screams that sport can't get its sums rights, and no serious sponsor is going to want to get involved. I also think you need to consider central contracts to control rider costs, try to ensure the same 6 or 7 riders ride in each meeting (barring injuries), and offer longer meetings with some sort of meaningful 'gimmick' competition after the main match to try out different concepts. Quite simply, maybe 4 riders going round in circles all the time is boring and it needs 8 or even 12 riders in some sort of F1-type configuration. It might be unpalatable to some existing fans, but they won't be around forever...

Yes, I don't doubt you're largely correct. But if you're doing your best and it's still not good enough or in fact you're making things worse, maybe it's time to throw in the towel. There's really nothing worse than well meaning people who think they're holding things together, when in fact they're actually discouraging better people from getting involved.

Yes, but why is F1 a worldwide phenomena and speedway isn't? F1 isn't actually very spectator friendly, taking place in fairly remote places with poor viewing, whereas with speedway you can see all the action. But it was clever enough to make sure it was one of the first regularly televised sports. Cricket for some reason, has always attracted high rollers (originally because of gambling) although it's always had participation across the social classes. If you look at the sponsors and adverts during cricket, they tend towards investment and trading companies rather than used car dealers or panel beaters, and that tells you everything about who's following the sport. Moreover, its following knows how to leverage the media, sponsors, financing and government support for the sport, which is why we still have 18 first class cricket clubs despite most of them living a quite marginal existence. At a test match, look at all the politicians, celebrities and captains of industry who turn up, none of whom would be seen dead at speedway. Rugby Union largely has a similar sort of following - maybe less so in Wales - but again look at the type of sponsors that it attracts. Rugby League probably has many parallels with speedway. Historically a bit hand-to-mouth, but arguably rooted deeper in its core communities than speedway, so there was more willingness from local media and businesses to rally round during tough times. It was also clever enough to get on television early, which is perhaps what attracted Murdoch to 'buy' the sport and raise it out of the dark ages. Having said that, I still don't think it's really ever made the expected inroads that you'd have expected from the massive investment, remaining a largely regional sport in both Britain and Australia. Ice Hockey - again many parallels to speedway and arguably sharing a similar fan base historically. Also had it's ups-and-down and massive instability over the years, before seemingly finding its current moderately successful format. Again, it's probably survived because ice hockey is a major sport in a few other countries and it can benefit from that, although you'd have to say British ice hockey is still not very high profile or featured prominently in the mainstream media, and that's again reflected in the type of sponsors it has. Football is just the great God that's followed pretty much by everyone to some extent. Easy to play, easy to watch, a whole soap opera around it, and plenty of rich fools willing to throw around their money to demonstrate their munificence... Mainstream television has always been quite banal. You're just getting old and only remembering the good stuff from yesteryear...