Humphrey Appleby

I don't think most promoters would get into speedway for their personal wellbeing, nor financial gain. The sport might be run in a totally amateurish fashion, but why anyone would want to promote speedway in return for a load of grief is quite beyond me.

Some were talking about having a GP at an old Latvian gulag, but that happened err.. almost.

If the scoring system in speedway simply awarded points for beating opposition riders, it would more accurately reflect a rider's ability and solve the problem of bonus points. I've also always thought it nonsense that teams should get a point just for finishing a race, or awarding a bonus point for third place when there are only three riders. Of course, it still wouldn't take into account the relative strengths of opposition riders met during a meeting, especially with a format where certain riders meet more often. It would certainly be possible though to devise some sort of rider rating that have a higher weighting to points scored against other heat leaders compared to second strings and reserves.

There are plenty of people who'd want to do it - whether or not they'd be suitable for the position is another question. Salary wise, you'd need to evaluate the market for comparison and it would depend on whether it was a full or part time job. However, I see a few commissioner type jobs in minor sports advertised around the 40-50K mark, which is low in my opinion, but I'd think you might attract some reasonable quality for 60-70K. Not everyone is in for the money. You might get a young enthusiastic individual on their way up in sports administration, or someone looking for a job for a few years before retirement. Appointment has already been dealt with - the BSPA would appoint, but it's different to having matters dealt with by a Management Committee full of self-interested promoters.

Yes I know, but I didn't want to over-complicate things even more. Yes, but that's ridiculous and is one of the reasons why the sport has gone down the pan. I remember when 15 heats was done and dusted in an hour-and-quarter, leaving time for an interval and then another 5 or 6 heats for the juniors. All usually before 9.30pm. Things started to get strung-out when the junior matches got abolished, and they had to start making meetings appear better value for money than they actually were. In my view, there should be 20 heats per meeting. Say 14 heats for the main match (maybe with 6 rider teams) and then a 6 heat individual competition (including juniors) counting towards a cumulative seasonal competition. Maybe you could even award bonus league points for the 'second half'.

Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to run a heat, including two minute warnings and allowances for re-runs. So that's 140 minutes, and even if you add in some time for grading, it could all be done and dusted in under 2.5 hours.

How is it less sensible? People then have an idea roughly how many points a rider scores each outing, rather than a notional 'match' score that just seems to confuse a significant number of fans. How would it be 6? It should be 10.5 or possibly 8.5, but the points limit doesn't bear much relation to match scores anyway. Happiness is not 43-41 and never was...

A per-ride average would be more sensible.

My memory is that guests were fairly rare in the NL, and rider replacement was more commonly used. I also seem to recall that at some point missing riders of equal status cancelled each other out, with no facility allowed for either team. Even in the BL there was stricter application of the guest facility, and it was not uncommon to see replacement juniors having to be used. I suppose the rot started when the BL started allowing guests for reserves, but that was also partly due to the falling out with the NL where using replacements from there was banned. It just sums up how speedway constantly shoots itself in the foot. Of course, in those days it was much less common for riders to have multiple league commitments. I think a few BL riders were riding in the Swedish, Danish and German leagues in the 80s, but that was relatively few fixtures and usually on days when BL teams didn't race.

Possibly less, as most of us would probably fall over and not score

How many times does it need to explained? And to think somepeople have the idea that fans should be running the sport.

That's with hindsight though. You don't necessarily know team make-ups before the fixtures have to be drafted.

The promoters appoint a Commissioner or (say) three Commissioners for a contract period (say 5 years) to run the sport. The Commissioner(s) should have no connection with any existing promotion. The BSPA determines the general rules for running the sport, but the Commissioner(s) are empowered with the day-to-day implementation and interpretation of those rules, as well as dealing with disciplinary matters. At the end of the contract period, the BSPA is free to hire or fire the Commissioner(s), but that decision would need to be made on the basis of their overall performance over their period in office. It's how most North American sports work, although whoever would want to take the job in speedway is a more pertinent question.

When can you arrange the fixtures though? There's always some sort of international meeting, and it's pretty impossible to avoid all the clashes. Yet people on here think British league riders should be riding every international event going, including mickey mouse pairs competitions. It's unfortunately impossible to reconcile all these things, and the question needs to be asked what's more important in the long run.

It's not really a fair comparison. The Grand National is a one-off event itself, and one that's something of a lottery in terms of who comes out the winner. I think it's reasonable for people to have different views on the righteousness of 'playoffs', even if they work very well in highly successful sports like the NFL, but I don't see they're the reason why fans have drifted away from the sport in droves. This is the problem with fan forums - the focus ends up on minutiae which are not the primary reasons for the sport being in an ever decreasing circle.

And yet we're constantly told the SGP is good for the sport. 1 meeting in 5 weeks is a terrible business model, regardless of who's fault it is, and in fact a lot of speedway's problems are beyond its own control. However, it needs to find a model where fans can be reasonably assured of at least one meeting every couple of weeks, where all the advertised riders turn-up unless injured (and I mean really injured). Well I hate 'playoffs' because speedway isn't played and its a misuse of the English language. However, plenty of sports have a Championship Finals system and I don't really have a objection provided higher placed teams get given some sort of advantage - whether a bye, home advantage or a second chance if they lose in the first round. In speedway it would also be possible to give some sort of handicap score.

Yes, but is that 1.5% new business or just people switching from the paper version? I subscribe to the electronic version, but wouldn't bother with the paper version. Call it what you will, but some of us simply don't subscribe to the view that BSI and SGP is great for the sport - something that has become increasingly obvious this season. A journal-of-record should be reporting objectively on these matters, not reporting nonsense and blaming social media because they happen to have a business relationship with the organisers. I would say there's recently been more critical comment of the SGP in the pages of the Spar than is traditional, but still largely as reported opinion rather than any editorial stance.

The last thing the speedway needs is the fans making decisions on its future. You only have to see the lack of consensus on here about anything, far less some of the crazy ideas that get suggested. It's pretty obvious what's wrong with the sport - a poorly presented and overpriced product held in rundown stadia, no consistency in teams from week-to-week far less year-to-year, daft overcomplicated rules, and then those daft overcomplicated rules not even being applied consistently. Plus there's a changing population and economic demographic, people having less predictable working times, and more choice of entertainment. How you address these issues is the bigger question, and answers are unlikely to come from the few hardcore fans that still go. It's the ones who don't go that need to be asked.

Possibly varying according to how crap a particular GP was. Doesn't pay to have too many rider interviews where they're all slating the organisation, eh...?

The report doesn't say they didn't take anything else. Equally though, are two old Weslakes really worth 3 grand each unless they had some specific history attached to them?

The English football pyramid is made-up of separate entities, but that doesn't preclude promotion and relegation between leagues at different levels (even if the system took over 100 years to evolve). The difference between football and speedway though, is there are more than enough teams wanting to play at the higher levels, so promotion and relegation is the only fair way to allocate places. Promotion and relegation is pointless in speedway, and each of the leagues could easily accommodate 18-20 teams before you even need to start worrying about a competitive entry model. However, the leagues (and their respective fans) should all understand they're complementary to each other, and that the health of the BEL is ultimately dependent on the BPL and vice versa.

I'm sure that most Championship fans want their team to play in the Premiership though.

So this is the organisation that openly says it pays poor prize money, but provides the platform for riders to go out and get sponsorship? A competitor is seriously expected to go out and buy a DVD of himself?

I think the point is that you can't balance the books at EL level, and the model of fan-promoters constantly underwriting the losses has led speedway to where it is today. However, speedway does have to be one of the few sports where fans have no aspirations of being in the top flight, and indeed claim that the second tier is better to the top tier.

The only way promotion and relegation works is if the top league is operating at full capacity and there's demand from other teams to join it. Otherwise it's just an artificial construct, and you're forcing teams to compete at an economic level that's beyond them. Not good for them, and not good for the sport. Plenty of serious professional sports don't have promotion and relegation - just about all the ones in North America and Australia for starters. In fact, promotion and relegation is actually terrible for planning and running a business, and if you don't actually need to ration the teams competing at higher levels, then why have it? Football gets away with it because there's a huge pyramid structure underpinning the top levels of the sport, so when one club falls by the wayside, there's always another one to take its place. Speedway does not have that luxury though. The fact that so few teams want to ride at Elite League level merely indicates how wrong its cost structure is, and how it needs to be pitched at a much lower level. However, that just leads to howls of 'watering the product down' and how you'll never get the crowds back without the top riders, when in fact they never pulled the crowds even when they were riding in Britain. Promotion and relegation won't solve this problem.