mikebv

Great idea... Just what you need to do when running a failing business and you make a conscious corporate decision to lower the quality level of your product.. Put the price up.... That'll work.... (Inflation busting obviously, goes without saying)... Its the only way.....

I am 'bemused' the way 'going to Leicester' is being used as a possible outcome for Cov.. Imagine the BSPA asking DH 'can we use your track to help bail the sport out of the rubbish it is in'?... He would have i would say 'all the Aces'.. (Except the Belle Vue ones of course)... His feelings towards the BSPA would mean he could drive a hard bargain I would suggest... You can hope though that the fact the council leader has got involved so quickly maybe has lead them to see the potential 'sh1tstorm' ahead for themselves if they are seen 'doing business' (as they appear to be) with someone who appears to do his business via 'stormtroopers'... Doesn't reflect well on them giving planning permission to someone who takes such action which ultimately effects the emotional state of rate payers and therefore voters.. Time for Bees fans therefore to get out and put pressure on the council. A few photos in the local rag of young Bees fans having their Xmas 'ruined' and much older lifelong Bees fans looking suitably 'devestated' taken outside the stadium/building site would be a start.... A real opportunity maybe for some 'orchestrated emotional blackmail' if done properly by Cov to maybe secure Speedway for a longer time if they get their act together.. Throw some mud at the councils current working relationship with Sandhu and who knows how much will stick...? 'Wrecking the joint' publicly might just be the worst tactic Sandhu has employed.. Bees fans should pounce on it...

Lets hope that Cov Council get made aware of the wanton damage done to the facility.. Maybe will sway them in their dealings with Sandhu? Time to get organised Bees Fans and bombard your councillors with your disgust at his actions.. And as mentioned, maybe get the Police involved too... Makes for good copy in the local rags...

Obviously Klindt missing meetings through fixture clashes may or may not happen but the very fact it could is one of those reasons why you cannot take the sport seriously... Sign a Dane and you ride on a Wednesday? Sign a Swede and you ride on a Tuesday or Thursday? Then no guests should be allowed when they are missing riding in their home league on those nights.. The sport is Mickey Mouse enough, blighted by guests, with the vast majority used for non injured riders.. Causing them to be used by inevitable fixture clashes that that will occur, and you know this months in advance, is simply ridiculous, and for the integrity of the sport just shouldn't be allowed...

Think all BV's assets are all the BSPA's now....

Spot on.... If Speedway (in Britain) is to continue as a team sport then it has to stop all the guest/select team nonsense... By running 'team speedway' you are asking the fans to make an emotional attachment to 'their team'. Swapping riders around between different teams ad nauseum does nothing to deliver this attachment, therefore wont engender the 'tribal loyalty' that other team sports deliver... Dont deliver emotional loyalty and you, quite simply, will never deliver a successful team sport.. To a fan with an emotional attachment, whether their team is successful or not is often irrelevant as they will be there. If 'your team' isnt really 'your team' I would suggest you would question why you bother attending at all... And with the current situation of too many team places to fill with not enough riders of the required quality, delivering a 'team with integrity' week in and week out will continue to prove virtually impossible.. The irony is if speedway went 'individual only' in this country I would suggest it would become much more successful.. eg. Running once a month at the NSS with a good prize fund, decent level of rider and properly marketed, would deliver six meetings with 3-4,000 in attendance I would suggest. Maybe for the image, publicity, sponsorship levels and overall growth of the sport it would be better to run 6 meetings in front of 24000 fans in a 'full stadium' rather than 18 meetings in front of the same total amount of people scattered around 'half empty' terraces..? Dont think anyone is in doubt that the sport (in this country) is at a critical point in its evolution. If its to be ran as a 'team sport' going forward then many radical changes are required. Be interesting to see if those who run it have the vision and capability to deliver them..

I think they would be better getting all the other Companies who compete in the same market place to allow them to use their cakes and pass them off to the public as if they were their own..😀

Will be missed at the NSS, should the Aces ride again... Committed and a good leader of the team... A smaller circuit will be ideal for him and I presume a DU role somewhere? Ipswich maybe? All Aces fans will, I would think, wish him all the best...

Glaring difference of course is that these will be 'one offs'.. Speedway needs a family of two adults and two 12+ year old kids to pay £48 at least 19 times a year.... Simply doesnt happen in anywhere like the quantity needed sadly....

Several fans paid £1000 for 'lifetime membership' (good luck with that?).... This got you a saving 'for life' of 25% on a season ticket, a brick with your name on it in the Peter Craven suite and a seat in the Grandstand with your name on.... The last two things didnt happen for several people!!!! "Where have all the flowers gone?" Is a very poignant refrain at this time of year... "Where has all the money gone?" Is maybe also pertinent for BV? Certainly worth looking into I would suggest....

Correct... And given the standard of likely opposition you would expect him to score 12 to 13 a night at least off his usual five rides... 12 points is over 25% of the way to victory off one rider so well worth a team place with the total average now being 50...

You would still have to follow the '4 Poles' rule I would think as that is how they configure the teams.. And you would struggle to afford two good Poles and two good Polish reserves, and you would need them I would suggest with the best top three Brits (ex Woffy) making up your team.

Thought something similar however, I think you would still struggle to get a competitive team given the amount of cash paid in Poland as you are in the market for the same riders and would have to offer at least parity to make them want to ride for you. £10 - £15k (at least) per home match for three to four riders (and double that for the away meeting you pay for) would not be a money maker I would suggest. You would have to charge at least £20 and hope for a 5000 - 6000 minimum attendance every fortnight. Maybe given the initial novelty value the first matches may attract that kind of crowd at somewhere like Poole but not sure if those crowd levels would be sustainable ongoing even there... I thought maybe entering if possible the Swedish League as lower costs but often the same riders Poland use...? Maybe that could attract enough of a crowd and sponsorship to be financially viable for a track to take the risk? And maybe become a precursor to a Euro League? A good radical proposal though Knightime..

Has the 'new foreigner' assessed average been agreed? Might need a few to reduce the amount of DU's.. Would imagine somewhere around 7.5 - 8 looking at the quality of riders around those figures? And how will any returning (not going to happen I am sure but just in case...) previous World level riders eg NP, Hancock, Emil etc be assessed? Presume x1.4 from their last average? Or re-assessed like Lindback's was and then x1.4? Time is cracking on to build the teams given the points limits and number of riders needed so presume all this is decided but not released?

Why did the timeline change from 60 years to 24?? Would have had huge implications to the numbers involved...

Or five like Denmark?

Be interesting to see DG's next move... I am sure he would have expected some considerable recompense re the opening meeting fiasco yet it does appear that the council and contractors are still working together which would suggest litigation is a long way off between them. Maybe it has been agreed to blame BV for the opening night disaster? The BSPA too may also have left a sour taste in his mouth. There did appear to be some jealousy that DG and just a few others had the rights to promote at the 'National Speedway Stadium' and there was almost indecent haste in disassociating themselves from the opening night. And subsequently it is clear there has been dialogue between them and MCC over the past few weeks... DG is definitely not one for lying down and being walked over so you can imagine this has a long way to run....

To build Gorzow and Torun for less than £9M is some going... I could do with getting them lads round to do my extension!! To be fair, its a good job they didn't build a 'Torun' or a 'Gorzow' as 1500 fans each week would certainly have looked a 'tad' sparse...

Cramming in over a quarter of a seasons home matches in around three weeks due to a ludicrous national fixture list doesnt help people attend.. Add to that 'select teams' regularly turning up (Hougarrd and King seemed to be there every week!) and the standard of racing becomes sadly 'peripheral' in the context of a professional sport. Again not persuading people it was worth attending.. Throw in an admission cost of £25 for an adult and a 13 year old kid to attend a tiny minority sport and you will struggle to get people to attend every time you eventually get a meeting on....

Spot on.. Guess who go a text advertising this years event? And with an offer of a saving of a fiver for me and the lad v the normal entry cost as they obviously knew I attended the year before...!! Not difficult to make money from a 'captured market' if you know how to... Or maybe, more pertinently, have the desire and drive to do so...

One possible revenue driver for me is NOT to sell season tickets.. They sell so few anyway that it cannot make a huge difference in providing cash up front pre season and all it does then is prevent 'special offers' being run through the rest of the year as it will p1ss off the ST holders. (And don't forget by definition your ST buyers are your most loyal so will attend anyway!) For me, much better to do individual meeting 'specials' or say blocks of four matches for say £50 in the top league, or even better maybe use a loyalty system where you get tokens in the programme and for every four you collect you get a half price ticket,(or even FREE ENTRY) for the fifth meeting? MUFC used to do tokens in programmes in the seventies and eighties which you collected to be eligible for Cup Final tickets etc. If people bought extra programmes for their mates the programme got opened and the token marked through so couldn't be used! Programme sales were much higher in those days than today as we simply HAD to buy one so Speedway would also benefit from increased programme sales I would suggest.. Doing a loyalty scheme will also maybe encourage people to attend matches that currently they wouldn't due to opposition/TV etc...? Maybe also teams should raffle season tickets instead? Say ten tickets released one at a time over the first ten matches? £2 a ticket (or 3 for a fiver?) would generate well over what they would get selling them individually. Last year if BV had done this with an opening night crowd of 2000 and more I would have thought at least half would have bought at least one ticket at £2.. An easy £2k for ONE season ticket and probably in reality, much, much more... Another revenue driver is maybe buying a Speedway bike and raffling that all through the year? I went to a Supercross event where on the night you texted in your number (for a Fiver) to win a kids MX machine hanging down on display from the ceiling. The machine was approx worth £1k. They must have had at least 3000 entries looking at how many of the 7000 of us in attendance were texting in at the given moment to do so during the interval... One lucky Dad walked off with a great Xmas present for his lad who he had took with him. And the promoters walked off with a very conservative 10-15k profit I would suggest...! There are lots of revenue drivers if promotions were bothered to work them. Or pay someone on commission to drive them...

Half and Half Team Kevlar's mate....☺ From the camera on the centre green they would look like they were riding for one team and on the outside cameras the other..😲

Having more teams in the top league than both Poland and Sweden does seem strange when people then state it's a struggle to get riders!! Surely an eight team top division would mean more riders to replace injured or underperforming team members without the need for guests and loads of DU's? Same for the second division. Why ten teams? Again eight would have released several riders to be available to replace others.. The current 19 team situation means you need to fill 133 positions.. A sixteen team two league structure would only need 112.... Even better possibly would be to run with six man teams and only need 96 riders in a sixteen team structure..? No DU's (particularly with promotion and relegation), and No Guests would mean real credibility.. Wouldn't that be good to see in (British) Speedway? You can guarantee that there will be teams who will struggle from day one due to their team strength. It will adversly effect attendances at both their track and when they go away, and this time next year they will be facing an uncertain future. Simply because they were allowed to compete in a league their infrastructure couldn't afford and had to use 'anyone who looked like he could ride a bike' to fill some of their seven places. Seems a strange plan to set teams up to fail thru a lack of riders at the start of the season and then even less being available to replace underperformers and injuries.

Interesting comment re "our partnership with the BSPA".... A collective thing now is it?

You would hope that there would have been several hypothetical teams discussed at the pre AGM and AGM to show how the system would work...