Humphrey Appleby

The toll is (what) EUR 53 for a day return, or slightly more for a weekend return? Fairly expensive, but not in the grand scheme of things if you take into fuel, beer, parking and general Danish prices. I'd think it's far more attributable to the recession and the novelty of Parken having worn off. There's only so many times you can watch poor racing on temporary tracks, and maybe also, Swedish fans were coming from the other direction and are no longer doing so. How are attendances holding up at domestic Danish meetings in the past couple of years?

Allegedly that's because most of the fans come from Jutland and are put off by the price of the bridge. Not that they weren't years ago when they still had to come over the bridge... Maybe they could move the Danish GP to Legoland to be closer to the fans, racing on an experimental surface of lego bricks rather than shale?

Britain probably still has the biggest latent fan base - possibly bigger even than Poland. Poland also distributes it's potential audience across three GPs that are held in limited capacity stadia. Obviously this is done because speedway is largely a regional sport in Poland, and because Polish cities were, at least until recently, prepared to spend silly money to attract a GP. I think as well, Cardiff is marketed as something of a shop front for BSI. Promotion of the other GPs is limited to non-existent, but the British GP gets some attention and is of course the only GP held in Britain. It will be interesting to see how Warsaw does next year.

We can only guess because I don't think the FIM publishes official attendances any more - which probably says something in itself. In any case, the official figures were often suspiciously rounded, so were probably lower than what was published anyway. NZ was certainly down, presumably the same with Copenhagen if it's being moved to a smaller stadium. Riga was a disaster, and I think the Polish GPs saw substantial declines in 2014 (although womens' basketball tournaments will no doubt be blamed for that ).

It's not a matter of whether a suitable venue can be found in Barcelona/Spain, but whether it will get the financial support from the local government, and whether there's a promoter willing to take the financial risks of staging. Spain and Catalonia are going through some tough financial times, not to mention that Catalonia is mired an independence debate at the moment. Barcelona is also a city with virtually no speedway tradition - either locally or in its hinterland - nor a tourist trade that that's likely to know anything about the sport. Who'd want to run the financial risks of promoting a GP with the odds stacked against you before you've started?

What, mug... err promoter would stump up the readies?

Obviously it's fine to require certain professional standards to race at higher levels, but there's nothing to stop an F1 driver competing at lower levels with a Super Licence. Why would you want to?

Restriction of trade and totally illegal, not to mention somewhat pointless. Rugby Union was at the time an amateur game, so presumably private clubs could restrict who they wanted to play for them.

Speedway is officially now in the category of an 'end of pier sport'

I'd have thought it the other way around - work on a 25% profit margin unless you're in some sort of niche market. I'd think very few sports teams work on this basis though, not least because a losing team is almost certainly to lose patronage. And unlike the average competitive market, you can't have everyone doing well at the same time in the sport.

I'm sure the above remark is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the thinking is somewhat flawed. I'm sure the percentage of croquet participants is very high in comparison to the fan base (possibly nearly 100%), but it doesn't mean the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is promoting it well. The more minority the sport, I'm sure the more hardcore supporters remain, but you really want to have a large casual following to be successful as that's what attracts sponsors. I think Rugby League remains the biggest disappointment though, in terms of how much money and promotion has been thrown at the sport in the past 20 years. It seems most people still prefer to see the version where ex-public schoolboys roll on top of each other around in the mud. The legacy of Eddie Waring will never die...

There are some pretty sparsely attended GPs as well. The Silverstone figures are also an aggregate over 3 days, when you'd probably imagine the race day figure is closer to the number of unique spectators, so it's difficult to compare like-with-like. I found an average figure of 161k for F1 in 2009, which is presumably a 3-day aggregate, so that would put the number of unique spectators closer to if not lower than the 69k figure. Silverstone pulls something like 120k on race day, which is somewhere around 40% of the aggregate.

I'd think they've mostly died. The whole demographic of sport watching has changed anyway. Football has subsumed just about every other sport in the hearts and minds of the general populace, whilst for other sports, higher prices and other forms of entertainment has pushed potential patrons to watching on television or not at all. Sadly, speedway was probably always something of a down-at-heel sport compared to the likes of cricket and rugby union which enjoyed the patronage of the rich and influential. Most other (all) sports suffered downturns throughout the eighties, but whereas they were able to re-invent themselves to some extent because they could leverage backing, speedway was just not able to move with the times.

I think the British GP is considered a single event, whilst the Six Nations is a tournament. There are of course many one-off events with larger attendances than 69K - the FA Cup Final being the prime example. I'd imagine that horse racing, boxing and golf would be somewhere behind rugby league and cricket, but ahead of speedway. Boxing probably doesn't really count many live spectators all told, but has a larger following on television.

It depends. In terms of live audiences, television audiences, or just generally following? Football is obviously top in all categories, but I'd think rugby union would be second in term of live audiences (if you include the Six Nations which has highest average attendance of any sports competition in the world), following by rugby league and cricket. Maybe motor racing (non-speedway) might be up next, followed by horse racing, ice hockey and then perhaps speedway. Three-day eventing gets a reasonable following though, and might beat speedway. In terms of television audiences and following, tennis and athletics would undoubtedly rank more highly. Probably snooker and darts too, if you count them as sports.

It's the demographic and image of the sport. Speedway doesn't have much of an active following nowadays, and its supporters are probably not the most cash rich either. Combine that with a down-at-heel image and stadia that sponsors wouldn't want to be seen dead taking their clients to, and that's why British speedway hasn't had a proper sponsor in years. The last one was the Coal Board, just as everyone had pretty much stopped using coal and the pits were being closed. Sums speedway up. Ice hockey is probably a similar bed fellow, but at least ice rinks are indoors and are generally a slightly more pleasant place to spend an evening.

That's what iPads are for.

Although Larry Ross was really a bit before my time, I thought it was a good read. Only concern is that it's somewhat encroaching on the territory of Backtrack, when the Spar should really be more about the here-and-now, but let's not put a dampener on what was a good issue (what with Arnie G's guest analysis as well).

It's not, because Bosman only dealt with international transfers, and speedway doesn't have any restrictions on riders signing for teams outside of Britain. AFAIK, there's never been a ruling on internal UK transfers, although learned opinion appears to suggest it wouldn't stand up if ever challenged.

Wouldn't be unreasonable if the service was good and they were empowered with some executive decision-making.

The EU is only concerned with international trade and movement of labour. The BSPA asset system would be a UK issue.

Nothing more than a gentlemens' agreement. Riders are still assets of a promoter regardless of whether they have a contract or not, and certainly aren't paid for the privilege unless you take testimonials into account. It's little more than indentured servitude, and only survives because no-one has rocked the boat until now.

It's long since been a joke, as hardly any promotions really develop riders anymore, nor transfer fees paid. It's just a merry-go-round of loaning, claiming fees for riders that haven't ridden for their parent promotion in years. I think it would be reasonable to pay compensation to the first team that a rider rode for, and they're in (say) under 21 or in the first 3 years of their career, if they move to another team. However, that should be one-off and with no ongoing rights to the rider, and outside of those conditions, no fees are payable whatsoever when that rider moves elsewhere.

Because the retain-and-transfer system only applies to BSPA members, and only between its members in Britain. It's never applied to riders signing for teams outside of their own countries, although I'm not even sure Poland and Sweden have any sort of transfer system anyway. EU law has nothing to do with it - the Bosman ruling only made transfer fees illegal for out-of-contract players moving between EU countries. In that sense, speedway already complied with Bosman, although even domestic transfer systems are on shaky legal grounds anyway. You don't pay a transfer fee if you want to work for Sainsbury's instead of Tesco, so why on earth does still rubbish still exist in British speedway?

Astonishingly, Shawcross only died about 10 years ago at the age of something like 102. A relative who moved in legal circles and knew him, reckoned his subsequent career never really lived up to the heights of the Nuremburg trials, not least because there was some concern over his political impartiality over the years. That's probably why he was writing reports for speedway. Hard to imagine anyone like that getting involved in speedway these days though.