The Pedaler

Maybe the Brummies could be sponsored by Dara Ó Briain and his school of hard sums?

Now that they know roughly what the season's wage bill is likely to be, they had better see about financing it...and not make it reliant on people walking through the door, because 1) there will be fewer of them, and 2) judging by the fans in the promotional video (on the web site and YouTube), the average revenue per fan won't be much higher than £10 which is the basic discretionary admission price. Actually, if it wasn't such a desperate situation, this could have been the acid test of the oft mooted theory on BSF that speedway admission charges should only be £10 per adult. That's what the Brummies will average from their fanbase, let's see if they can make the business sustainable at that level of revenue. What would of course help is if some serious sponsorship could be found or someone who can acquire sponsorship can be hired so that he can get on with it straight away.

I dare say that others picked up on it as well, but you only have to look at how this thread has gone over the winter, to see that no-one else was really that bothered about it...look at those who were contributing to the Brummies 2013 thread and none of them can be bothered to be here any more (barring cameo appearances above from Moorski and Crazy Jack)

Talking about ideas in forums is all well and good. You at no risk are you? It's never your money that gets spent is it? What I take more notice of is when a promotion tries new ideas, tries to do things their way, and meets resistance from the establishment both in terms of the BSPA with their cartel co-horts Russell/GoSport and the Pearson/Povey media alliance, in such a way that they are forced to do things "our way or no way" that I am forced to conclude that no amount of hot air ideas in forums or money wasting ideas tried in practise will work. The whole sport is corrupt from top to toe to such a degree that nothing short of evicting the lot of them from their comfortable ivory towers and starting again with a clean sheet of paper will ever work. That's how tightly the people in high places in this sport have got everyone involved in it by the balls. Defeatist? Maybe. Inevitableist? Yeah, probably! Borne out of seeing people who have paid the price and tried to be different suffer the consequences.

Here you are, I've done some journalistic digging into the matter and come up with this...see what you make of it then. Probably just another non-story, not to be covered in case it upsets someone at the BSI Press Pass issuing office no doubt?. http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/399917/sajfutdinow-porzuci-grand-prix-suskiewicz-bsi-traktuje-zawodnikow-jak-malpy-w-cy "BSI treats riders (players) like monkeys in a circus" - according to Google's translation service. Allow something for the quality of translation but you get the drift. So there you go.

So what if it is? So is most everybody's occupation. As a self-employed contractor of course a rider is in business. Nowhere does it say that riders are supposed to be a Social Service. Which illustrates how the money and the power is now in Poland, and how insignificant Britain has become You mean I offer up points of view uncomfortable to the establishment? Well, so be it! "Discussions" are supposed to allow for alternative points of view and not just choruses of "here here" Yes I do, as the amount of money I have and will continue to spend in going to watch it will testify. What I don't like is what British speedway has become and where it is going.

The quantity over quality argument eh? Get enough National League meetings on to bump up the numbers and somehow that brings Britain onto the big boys table? Seriously? Why is the number of meetings a good thing? Ask any of the big name riders (Holder's been quoted saying as much recently) and they'll tell you that it's the number of meetings that's driving the stars away from this country and killing the sport here. And why is it that a country with more meetings than anyone else on earth, with more tracks of various shapes sizes and characteristics than any other country on earth produces a team to compete in the SWC that gets trounced by a quartet from a country like Latvia boasting only one track, no league of its own, a population a quarter the size of London, and featuring riders all living within a short drive of that track? - Maybe investigating THIS point would make for a good Speedway Start article as well!

You would have thought that if they had accepted their invitations there would have been a happy announcement by now wouldn't you? It's been a long while with no news of anything. Not the way to fire up interest really is it?

What annoys the rest of the world is that the EL in particular can't organise a p-up in a brewery. Why should any foreign organisation pay a blind bit of attention to the EL fixture calendar when it is 100% guaranteed to change again and again? http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/other-sport/birmingham-brummies-boss-blasts-chaos-6694692 And what the hell does the EL matter in the global scheme of things anyway? Britain is no longer a force in world speedway. Britain no longer has an empire. Britain no longer matters any more. Anyone who thinks that Britain is important is living in the past.

You mentioned the protagonists, you mentioned the riders, and you mentioned the fans, but you forgot to mention the Speedway Star who are too scared of upsetting those who give them free access to their meetings, to tell the whole truth of the situation and to expose the shambolic situation for what it is.

And who has accepted their invitations? Sounding like a glorified Practise and Press Day, only in the evening. God help them if the Kings Lynn meeting is on telly that night.

And what's wrong it it is because of money? Also it may have something to do with the SEC having a round in his home country, whereas there is no SGP in Russia And of course what Emil has always said in the past, that he (and other riders) get treated badly by BSI and are treated with a lot more respect by OneSport.

The date has been set for 31 August 2014, and the venue will be Zielona Gora. No news yet about participants other than of course the hosts. Three TV stations are apparently competing for the rights to broadcast the event, SkySports NOT included. Would anyone care to speculate whether the BSPA will send the EL Champions to take part? National League reserves in the in a "Champions League" team! Should be interesting. With it being the Poles taking the initiative again no doubt one person in particular will be telling them where they can Shovlar this competition, if the BSPA don't do it for him. I'm assuming that Speedway Star will be providing us with all the updates and information about this tournament so that we won't have to rely on Google's translation of the Sportowefakty site all the time? http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/417543/trzy-telewizje-chca-pokazac-zuzlowa-lige-mistrzow

FIM - BSI - FIM Europe - SEC - SGP - OneSport = a broad ranging topic, one fermenting as we speak, one that goes to the heart of the sport and one in need of some investigative journalism to delve into the facts and figures to tell us what is really happening, and what it could all lead to. Great potential story don't you think? The question is whether Philip Rising and his staff will risk upsetting BSI, FIM, etc, etc, and having their SGP free-passes revoked for doing their journalistic duties and publishing the truth? Or is it like Jack Nicholson said in "A Few Good Men" - "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

What a fantastic wind-up posting! Excellent. Everyone doff your caps to SS for this brilliant bit of comedy prose. So the whole world has to be run around British race days does it? ha ha. A part of every speedway track will forever be British will it? Chortle! This is like the Parks Football League telling FIFA and UEFA to avoid Saturdays and Sunday afternoons when they organise their tournaments. because in world terms, British speedway really IS the parks league when compared to where the power is today. For that reason, this post simply can't be taken seriously and has to be viewed as a simple wind up. Well done Steve. Top form again. It has to come from somewhere. Those eggshell walkers at Speedway Star won't have the guts to investigate and publish the hard hitting facts about the issue.

One minute it's complaints that British Speedway Promoters can't promote for a toffee...the next is a complaint that someone else wants to give promotion a bash! Just like all the complaints about "Poles coming over here and taking our jobs" - what it really is, is that those jobs that the British can't or won't do, the Poles are prepared to try their hand at. And just watch, they'll probably be very good at it too!

Interesting...the SEC will now unashamedly be better paid than the SGP by the looks of this article - http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/418001/dodatkowa-motywacja-dla-uczestnikow-sec-sponsor-daje-100-euro-wiecej-za-kazdy-pu

The season opens in 4 weeks from Wednesday. Still an incomplete team. Still not a sniff of who's going to be in the Selco "Classic". Still nothing to hype up the sport in the city in readiness for the season opener. Birmingham are falling back to the good old "norm" of British Speedway, of not bothering to promote themselves any more. Nothing on their web site about a fans forum. Where did you get that info from R&Y?

Is there an internet forum like BSF in Poland? I'd love to see what they have to say on the matter. I'm sure that there will be plenty of people willing to do 15 x 5-minute rounds (of debate of course) with Mr Appleby!

When FIM Europe and it's predecessors ran the European Championships (for at least the last 12 odd years) no-one in Britain cared about it, if they even knew about it. It was considered by the authorities as a "Mickey Mouse" competition, in the same way as other European events are treated as "Mickey Mouse", why? Because they had no bearing on (speedway) life in Britain. Now, an promotional organisation grabs the European Championships by the scruff of the neck, puts serious money into it, and attracts riders to it, and everyone is up in arms. Why? Because it's happening in Poland. Plain and simple. How dare they? Much of the sponsorship money for international speedway comes from Poland, or at least before Fogo and Nice pulled out, it did. Many of the competing riders are Polish and other East Europeans, Why on earth should the Poles NOT benefit from their investment in the new competition? Why should the Poles be happy that BSI (Bellamy's Speedway Investment) demand millions of Zloties from the cities of Gorzow, Torun and Bydgoszcz, in return for the SGP being run there? Why should Polish (amongst others) TV companies pay royalties to a British company to show the racing that's happening in their own back yard? Why should Polish riders, if Emil Sayfutdinov is to be believed, be treated like cattle by Bellamy & Co and be made to travel to far off places like New Zealand for little net benefit? And who can blame Emil Sayfutdinov for choosing a competition that has a round in his own country when BSI don't? Now say for instance if Barry Hearne had got control of the SEC instead of OneSport. Would there be any of this xenophobic claptrap then? Everyone in Britain would be saying that it was a great thing that Hearne was going to be able to promote a speedway tournament, It would have been seen as the best thing since sliced bread. My god, someone who knows something about promotion would have been out there promoting speedway. Fantastic, There's another thread lauding Barry Hearne up to the heavens. However, apart from being British, which would have made everything alright, does anyone really think he would have done anything much different to what OneSport have done?

Well it's certainly not very British is it? Maybe that's the British definition of a Mickey Mouse event - one that's not governed by a British organisation. After all, we won the war! Two of them in fact. And a World Cup! Who has the right to argue against the British? How dare these Polish upstarts start up another tournament. Who the hell do they think they are? Bah!

Is the Selco meeting in doubt in the same way that Selco's continuing sponsorship of the team is in doubt?

Will BSkyB be offering discounted subscriptions for their SkySports packages that include speedway for the next 5 years to the elderly, disabled, disadvantaged or vulnerable? It seems from reading their web site that their pricing policy is somewhat different to the York Barbican Theatre. Is anyone going to criticise them for the morality of their position on the matter? As for the matter of free travel on buses, that's a matter of Government policy, paid for out of taxation, because they think that getting around is one of life's essentials. Speedway isn't one of life's essentials, it's a choice that the individual makes. It's very sad if the price of admission stops people from going as often as they would like, however it's also very sad for the people who work night shifts that they can't go either. Whilst arguing vociferously over who the compassion king is on here amongst people who can't do much to change the situation, has anyone written to Len Silver, Matt Ford, Jon Cook, Terry Russell, Alex Harkess, Alan Philips, David Gordon, etc etc, asking them to dig deeper into their pockets to subsidise the disadvantaged more...because they can afford it, can't they? Speedway is flush with cash, just waiting to be spent on spectators subsidies, isn't it? On another thread people are arguing that speedway is only worth a tenner, and that's for the able bodied adults. God knows where the clubs that have a 40%-50% aged and infirm supporter base will get their income from if everyone and their carers are supposed to get in on free or discounted admissions below that £10 mark. I'd love to know how some fans think that speedway will ever be made to pay with these ideas. Sad fact of life is that in these harsh times, it's not just the disadvantaged that can't afford everything that they want, but those who are trying to make a business out of speedway can't afford to hand out the subsidies that maybe in an ideal world they would want to. Sad but true.

The one thing that most disabled people that I know share, is an ambition or a desire to be treated equally as "normal" people. They don't want pity or sympathy, just dignity and respect for them as human beings as much as anyone else gets. I think that all this "compassion wars" where everyone on here tries to impress everyone else by how charitable they are (with other people's money) and how outraged they can be by others not sharing their so-called values, shows no respect whatsoever to the people who they are debating about and is nothing more than an ego trip to try to impress others on here of what "nice" people they are. Well if you are so nice, then maybe instead of pontificating about what is a decent thing to do or not, in an effort to shame your promoter into discounting their prices for the disabled, why don't you stand outside the turnstiles of your track and pay these people in out of your own money? That'll be real charity. And don't worry, I think you'll find that most disabled people will decline your offers as they will have more dignity and self-respect for themselves than the respect that you are showing them. So you won't be too far out of pocket!

Not really. With all the other teams (except Leicester) being complete, you deduct who's signed up from the riders of available average and what you have to choose from today will be what you will have to choose from in a month's time. The big trick will be in persuading anyone to come to ride for the Brummies. The non-payment of riders and staff last year is a very visible stain on the clubs reputation. Now we hear that the main sponsor may pull out. How will that further encourage anyone to want to ride for the Brummies? Maybe the next signing should be another miracle working commercial manager that can get advertisers and sponsors to generate the money that the team needs, like the last one did.