Theboss

I always think the weather has an influence on the crowd levels and no truer saying than 'There's nothing better than sunshine speedway'. I also believe that add ons such as car parking and programme weigh on peoples mind when deciding if the night out was VFM. Overall I believe a few clubs will buck the trend such as Belle Vue and Rye House, but for the rest they will see a decline in crowd numbers whilst costs are clearly going up for both riders and clubs.

Scored 2 points from 4 rides. A second place and 3 lasts

I am not an EU fan but i understand why this is being brought about. The picture is much bigger than just speedway, for example motorised mobility scooters that travel at 10mph on pavements is one of the reasons why this directive is being introduced. Personally i will not be signing it as i believe insurance for speedway bikes will be extended onto by the current club insurers at not a great cost.

Who is or was Julie Lewis?

Personally I think they look quite smart, certainly better than last years!

You should be a politician.... they believe everything is hunky dory and treat the public like mugs! This is being made worse by your responses, I would suggest you get on the blower to your buddy Cecil and tell him he still has time to save bit of credibility by phoning Darcy and asking him if he agrees with offering a 50% refund to those who want it.

Heard no refunds, which if is the case is not right. Even if for the benefit of Darcy Ward people should be entitled to at least half their money back!

Nice attempt at fishing but not leaving myself open for libel.

Seeing that i was a central part of the negotiation my memory is certainly more accurate and vivid. It certainly wasn't 10 pieces of silver, just a guarantee that we could loan riders for three years and not forced to buy them. No other special treatment. However i can imagine it would be easy to blame the stars for what was a massive miserror of judgment by others. Don't get me wrong, massive problems have always been prominent in the sport and it needs sorting. But i believe it was unfortunate that the wrong moves were made that winter to fix them I agree on your other comments.

Do supporters also remember when promoters go bust and are left panicking over whether they will have a club to support the following season? Or maybe supporters remember when their wealthy owners get fed up playing with their toy and decide to walk away?

During the two years I spent in the Elite League before leaving we did not win any. However we did make the play offs twice, and whilst that is not mind blowing I would say it was a pretty good achievement considering we kept things profitable and wasn't throwing away money hand over fist whilst trying to buy ourselves a title..... just as some promoters you may know have in the past

So you choose to make your comments personal,well done for bringing a good discussion down to the level that is not productive. However now you ask my days as promoter ended very successfully thank you, 10 major trophies in total plus increased gates year on year. A successful re launch of the shared events which produced a 300% increase in profits year on year. Also won promotion of the year as voted for by the riders. Sure their is more success stories to add but don't want to bore you.... Hope that clears everything up.

I am struggling to understand why you think people are not allowed to talk about their overall experience of the meeting rather than just the performances of riders, which was overall very encouraging for the British ones on show.

This is a good point, however many people are happy to stand and could the club actually be missing a trick here as i believe they would earn more from offering free parking and charging a pound for the grandstand.

You see it as 'knocking' and i see it a as 'feedback on my experience'. Thank you for your feedback, saved me a journey to Edinburgh because out of principal i would have turned my car around at the gate and driven home again. £2 is a complete rip off.

Even if it is down to the showground that would be because it has not been negotiated in the rental terms to be included in the price, therefore it is within the clubs control and they have chosen to get a reduced rent knowing the fans will have to pay. Obviously this is something they are happy about but short sighted in my opinion.

For a couple of years at Lynn I wanted to keep the costs of programmes down so decided to produce in house an A3 full colour print out which was folded twice so it looked like a normal programme, and sold this for just £1. I basically cut out all advertising (apart from race sponsors) so all nearly all the content from a 16 page programme was squeezed in. Because it was printed at the stadium on the day of the racing the team line ups were right 99% of the time. I measured success in the amount we sold which was around 700 for every 1000 people attending compared to 450 previously. Feedback from hardcare fans was negative because they like the traditional programme, however the numbers did not lie and I felt it helped keep costs for fans down which could also have been contributing to the growing gates. Not sure what format was reverted to after I left the club. It was a shame Speedway Star review always placed it last as they clearly had no commercial awareness and never asked me once the reasons behind the design. ps Sheffield used to produce racecards many moons ago to give away for free with admission, a great idea by Machin at the time! That is the point Lukas, we live in a world where people DO post their reviews on their experiences and have every right to. I have noticed a significant improvement in customer service at restaurants over the years and I put this down to the influence of reviews on sites such as Tripadvisor, basically managers know they can not risk a bad review so bend over backwards to make sure EVERY customer has a good experience. In my opinion supporters are constantly blackmailed by clubs to bring friends along or the club may not survive another season, shame they do not get things right so we are bringing friends along for the right reasons, just like when you invite friends out for a meal at a good restaurant. Big Cat, in response to those comments may I ask if 'well they did it so that makes it ok for us to do it' is really a good argument for anything in life? I do not expect to pay for parking anywhere except where land/space is at a premium eg a city centre. I can not comment on anything at Lynn in past 4 years as I have not been there but before that the queue always moved fast and only a small handful of occasions was a start delayed by 10 minutes because of it. The crowd was not as big as you make out and fact is they failed to plan otherwise they would have had the other windows prepped and opened before the queue developed. Lets hope they learn from it.

I would imagine PK went to town of his one.... however everything has a value and obviously you felt that was not good value so you didn't buy one. Promoters need to learn that it is better to sell more of something at a lower price than it is to sell less of something at a higher price!

I had an enjoyable afternoon due to the effort all the riders put in to produce some great racing, although the rest of the package emphasised why Speedway is not moving forward: 1. Car Parking - No reason to charge for this, I can guarantee this is included in the rent the Panthers pay the showground and whilst it may only be £1 it annoyed me and I am sure many other's would have been also. 2. Queues - First meeting of season which to me means they had 6 months to prepare for it so NO excuses. Ged may have walked along the queue for 10 minutes to apologise but his time would have been better spent getting the other 2 turnstiles open. I watched with bewilderment as 2 people closed 2 of the turnstiles to help open the extra ones before returning ten minutes later.... sort of going against logic. Bottom line is they should have known the Bees would be well supported and should have been prepared. Failing to plan is preparing to fail. 3. Programme - Why charge £2.70? Surely speedway has learnt by now that £2 is the MOST you can charge without making people feel overcharged. At £2 I would have bought 2 but at £2.70 I bought none and instead kept check of race line ups on the 'speedway updates' website from my phone. I know some will point out that if I was happy to spend £4 on two why didn't i spend £2.70 on one, but bottom line is I hate feeling like I am being overcharged and want VFM on every pound I spend. 4. Food & Drink - Probably not directly related to the promotion but again prices were OTT and not VFM. 5. Presentation - I was actually impressed with the quality of the sound system in the main stand and found the interviews not too bad (although many rather depressing), however the music playlist was shocking. Here we are in 2017 and yet I thought I felt like I was in a 1980's social club. 6. Information - For whatever reason we was all left wondering what the hell was happening between heats 14 and 15 and for that there can be no excuse, it certainly annoyed me and many others around. I want the Panthers to succeed and felt overall I was happy to spend my money on the afternoon, however they need to up their game if they want to encourage newcomers to return.

I remember (not sure what year) when the launch of the speedway season was set up at the MCN show at the excel in London, I arranged the stand, promotional material and the attendance of the Super7even girls. After the show we held a press conference on board the SUNBORN yacht (moored up just outside the Excel) where a special season preview was produced by the team at Sky Sports and shown on a large screen projector with a full volume sound system rigged up..... it certainly put hairs on the back of my neck. It was a well attended and gained lots of national press for the sport, but unfortunately members of the BSPA (led by the promoters up in Scotland) voted it out the following year due to it NOT representing 'Value for money' for all the clubs (think it cost around £10k all in). I think this highlights the problems the sport has faced in the past, and as this years MCN show was held on the weekend of 17th February and the season starts in 4 days time, we can only assume that things HAVE NOT changed. Looking back at the potential this sport has had at numerous points of its life it is very sad to see it so lifeless and relying on the attendance of the remaining hardcore supporters to keep it going.

If this is true then good news all round, no one has to worry about clubs running out of money half way through the season

Ah yes Steve but why would promoters care about costing fans money when their focus would have been on getting sponsorship deals tied up before the cat was let out of the bag? Even if this wasn't the case it is hard to understand the logic in the sport not being more open and transparent.... after all wasn't that what the fans were promised?

Or maybe they just want the dust to settle on what has been a very eventful winter, and ensuring any further issues are ironed out before they start to show the sport.

In that case the figure is much higher than £500k, all in the broadcasting costs are about £1m over a season and then if they have wrangled out of the contract then that is a further saving of £1m or possibly more.

Savings for who?