arthur cross

To reflect the likelihood of "home track advantage", how about just 2 golden heats (each rider can take part in only one of them & that also means each team has one heat of "odd" and one heat of "even" gates) but include a rule that the away team wins if those two heats finish 6-6 ... in other words. the home team must get themselves ahead over those 2 heats to claim the victory.

You're absolutely right to maintain that view ... Crayford dog-track is 334-metres ... I've seen Mildenhall listed as 325-dogs & 250-speedway (although I've often wondered if the speedway track's a bit shorter than that official figure judging by the gaps between dogs and speedway measurements at other shared stadiums) ... Plymouth speedway-track is 216-metres. Probably, you wouldn't be able to transfer Plymouth directly into Crayford because I suspect you'd have to slightly tighten Plymouth's bends and lengthen their straights for the correct fit ... but Crayford should be able to accommodate a speedway track of around 220-to-230-metres.

As far as I know, any previous speedway tv-deals with Sky (including the current one) would have been negotiated with Barney Francis's long-serving predecessor Vic Wakeling and there's been a consistent difference across many sports between Mr Wakeling's approach and Mr Francis's approach in the past couple of years. Back in the 1990's, Sky's policy under Mr Wakeling clearly included signing up a wider variety of sports to support their main attraction which has always been their partnership with football's Premier League (and in due course, the Champions League once the European courts ruled against terrestrial channels like ITV maintaining the monopoly on their country's coverage) ... speedway fitted really well into that policy. Two decades later (along with all sorts of audience research and a much bigger back-catalogue of memorable highlights of major sports they can show), it's now clear Sky's policy under Mr Francis is to hang on to their really major events at almost any cost (the Premier League, the Champions League, Formula One, cricket's Ashes, tennis's US Open & golf's Ryder Cup). If that squeezes the funds available to cover more minor sports, then they don't mind wheeling out more of those legendary highlights as a cheap alternative (look how many more re-runs of last season's live Premier League games they showed during the recent close-season) or trying to see if those minor sports themselves can help to fund retaining their place in the Sky schedules (this year's Sky greyhounds deal being the prime example of that trend). In these circumstances, the only surprise about Terry Russell getting nowhere fast with Barney Francis is that Philip Rising feels able to report that on this forum ... many thanks for doing that, even if it's grim reading. The greyhounds clung onto roughly two-thirds of their previous programmes (albeit with more basic production) because the Greyhound Board of Great Britain has teamed up with the bookies to reckon it's worth using a hefty chunk of the bookies' expected profits from greyhound's big races to help fund the Sky coverage ... it soon became apparent that was probably the only way to ensure plenty of those big events could still go ahead (otherwise, with a much lower tv-profile, they'd only have been run with savage cuts in prize money). Given the lack of progress for Terry Russell so far, unless he or the BSPA can find a group of people within speedway who are prepared to team up in the same way as the GBGB did with the bookies, it's hard to see how there can be any progress with Sky ... I suppose speedway's engine tuners wanting to maintain their business might be the closest equivalent to the greyhound bookies but can you really see those tuners helping out with any tv-negotiations ? !! And while the greyhounds have clung on to most of their Sky coverage for the time being, it'll be very hard for them to climb back up to the previous years' value and production level now that they've settled for this year's standard of coverage. Overall (and plenty of other sports are also finding this out), it's only now that sports like speedway are discovering how relatively good they've had it for tv-money for many years compared to what's likely to be on the table in future years.

Thanks for lots of useful info, especially BT's ability to effectively save production costs within its sports department by using its own company's fibre network, bandwidth, etc However, if there's a sizeable company keen to sponsor a speedway club or the whole league just to get its logo on tv, then why hasn't it been doing so this season (or even earlier) when there's been a well-established tv-contract already in place rather than looking ahead towards a much vaguer tv-future ? !! The bigger problem about waiting to see whether Sky, BT Sport or anyone else want to do a 2014 tv-deal (and how it would compare financially to the existing deal) is that the tv-companies won't be in as much of a hurry as the clubs to get the deal done. Sky or BT or another-tv-channel can easily wait until the New Year to reach the deal that suits them and still have a couple of months to organise their coverage and work out how it will then fit into the rest of their schedule. But in the meantime, where does that leave the more careful Elite clubs in November & December trying to budget for the year ahead and sign the appropriate riders (never mind the clubs who don't appear to budget at all) ? ... in turn, where could that leave Premier clubs being uncertain how many of their riders might be needed for doubling-up duties (or whether they could yet be swallowed up into one big league) ? ... and in turn, where does that leave riders (both Brits & foreigners) trying to weigh up how much British racing they'll be getting (and for what level of points-money) in 2014 against more clear-cut plans and offers from the rest of Europe's domestic leagues ? It could easily end up with a reasonably lucrative tv-deal being signed just a few weeks before the new season only for the bigger-name riders that can then be afforded by the British clubs having already committed themselves to club schedules that were much clearer-cut in Poland, Sweden, Denmark, etc ... hence, it's then difficult for them to fit into a British fixture-list that can only finally be settled now its tv-deal has been struck ... and, hey presto, we're heading straight back towards this year's bugbear in the Elite League of too many riders missing too many meetings because of their commitments elsewhere !! There won't be any tv-deal struck until the BSPA can actually show its format for how British clubs will compete against each other in 2014 to any interested tv-companies (or at least show a few sketches of the format depending on different amounts of tv-income) ... just a couple of weeks ago (as far as I'm aware), the BSPA had still only reached the stage where club promoters were being asked to put forward their ideas for next season's format. Given that we're currently in the last season of the existing tv-deal with clearly no guarantee of renewal, that sort of consultation with the clubs about next season should have been done and dusted midway through this season instead of still bumping along at play-off time. Good luck trying to get from "any ideas please" to a nailed-down tv-deal in the space of just the next couple of months !!

For those who haven't read the threads on this forum that have covered "marketing groups", here's the list of definitions as used by advertisers to help judge whether the products they want to advertise will match up well with the usual audience of the programmes (or other media) into which they're thinking about putting those adverts ... National Readership Survey (NRS) demographic categories A upper middle class, higher managerial, administrative or professional B middle class, intermediate managerial, administrative or professional C1 lower middle class, supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional C2 skilled working class, skilled manual workers D working class, semi and unskilled manual workers E lowest level of subsistence, state pensioners/widows (no other earner), casual/low-grade workers

Part of BT Sport's arrival has been its takeover of ESPN's UK rights and schedules ... for the time being, BT's 3 channels are called "BT Sport 1", "BT Sport 2" & "ESPN" but there's little doubt the ESPN tag will eventually give way to "BT Sport 3" (especially if BT don't prioritize the renewal of ESPN's various UK rights deals for North American sports). Clearly, there are only a few weeks so far of BT's viewing figures to compare against ESPN's figures for the same sports but the early indications are that BT is delivering a sharper improvement for rugby union viewing-numbers than for football viewing-numbers ... given that rugby union attracts far more of the marketing-style ABC1-viewers beloved by advertisers, that's certainly a boost to any "quality rather than quantity" tactic BT Sport might be employing. Worryingly for speedway in those circumstances (as debated in various threads on this forum in recent months), it's all too easy for a messy sport in mostly older or ramshackle stadiums to be perceived as being dominated by C2DE-viewers ... if BT Sport want to add more motor sports coverage to their schedule (even if only as a summer-filler), I suspect something like Touring Cars would be a better fit for them than Elite League speedway.

I can understand plenty of folk within speedway reckoning BT Sport could be interested in using British domestic speedway in 2014 & beyond to fill its rather thin amount of live summer sport in the football/rugby off-season and I hope BT Sport do indeed show an interest in snapping up the Elite League (or whatever next season's top division is called) if Sky don't renew their current deal. But if BT Sport get on board with British domestic speedway, the BSPA/SCB (along with all our clubs) had better be prepared for how fussy BT Sport are determined to be to make sure what they're showing looks as smart and well-organised as possible. Their deal with the production company for their Premier League football matches includes far stricter guidelines (with hefty financial penalties written into the production company's deal) than Sky have ever felt it necessary to impose ... BT Sport are so determined to make sure that the live action takes priority over any slow-motion replays that there's even a fine documented for the live taking of a corner being missed, never mind a much bigger fine for the live scoring of a goal being missed. BT Sport don't mind showing events with small attendances as they've taken over the live coverage of the Skrill Conference (English football's top non-league division) and the Hyde-v-Grimsby game they showed on the August Bank Holiday Monday attracted a crowd well under 1,000 ... but that still didn't stop them wanting to do an "access all areas" style of coverage which included interviewing both teams' fans on the terraces as well as the usual pre-game and post-game manager & player interviews. Can you see the BSPA coping well with letting a BT Sport reporter wander through an Elite League crowd ? !! ... and I can't imagine BT Sport would put up with speedway's current rulebook that has required two of this country's brightest young riders, Craig Cook and Richie Worrall, to miss different live tv-meetings this month because another meeting in this country on the same night but at a lower level had to take priority (Cook missed Belle Vue-v-Poole to be Edinburgh's number-1 at Workington while Worrall missed Birmingham-v-King's Lynn to be Newcastle's number-1 at home to Plymouth). I suspect "filling-up our summer gaps" won't be a good enough reason on its own for BT Sport to strike a deal with British domestic speedway ... they'll also want to ensure they're showing something with which they really want to be associated.

Three things ... firstly, as snooker's an indoor sport it's able to guarantee its action going ahead when it's allocated several hours of live tv-time so it's much more friendly to tv-schedulers than speedway (especially if it's a tournament with 2 matches taking place simultaneously either side of a mid-arena dividing-screen to reduce the risk of rapid victories ending that session's live action too early for the tv-slot). Secondly, snooker's events require daytime as well as evening sessions so they're an ideal daytime-filler for sports channels with more expensive rights (especially football) later in the evening ... alternatively, given the Far East interest in snooker, their tournaments offer the double-attraction of evening-attending for the locals and daytime-fillers for our tv-companies. Thirdly, it attracts plenty of betting interest (admittedly, a little bit of that is dodgy betting interest like the Stephen Lee case in recent weeks) which makes it attractive to any gambling-related company for sponsorship that includes plenty of tv-exposure. Speedway can't guarantee its action for tv-schedulers unless it steps up to the expense of hiring an indoor-option venue like Cardiff's Millennium Stadium (and even then, it came far too close to being called off at Cardiff a few months ago) ... it isn't a daytime-filler with new live action for the tv-companies (only re-runs of the previous night's action providing that went ahead ok with the weather) ... and despite various attempts, it's not a good betting medium for the general gambling public.

Oops ... I'd forgotten the Mayoral election is midway through the local councillors' term ... thanks for the correction. Meanwhile, here's the report from Jim Cremin in today's Racing Post rounding up Wednesday night's Merton Council meeting ... http://www.racingpost.com/news/greyhounds/merton-council-open-to-persuasion-over-wimbledon/1529228/top/ As usual, various things to note ... most significantly, Cllr Alambritis only refers to NAMA as the site's owners with no mention of Risk Capital or Galliard Homes which speaks volumes for who's now truly in charge of the Greyhound Racing Association. With regard to Cllr Alambritis's reference to "greyhound racing, the AFC, rugby, whatever" eventually being the sport(s) at the site, the only rugby clubs I can think of who might be remotely interested (presumably in a partnership with AFC Wimbledon) are London Irish and London Welsh who've both moved from their traditional homes in recent years to football grounds at least 40 miles outside London in order to meet their sport's Premiership ground requirements. London Irish used to play at Sunbury (just the other side of the start of the M3 from Kempton racecourse) but are now well-established by renting Reading's Madjeski Stadium ... London Welsh's ground at Old Deer Park (close to Richmond Park) was nowhere near Premiership standard so they used Oxford United's Kassam Stadium for their debut at the top level last season and they've chosen to stay there this season despite the relegation that meant they could have used Old Deer Park again. There's no local rugby side attracting enough supporters to justify moving into a new stadium ... Wimbledon RFC play in the London-1-South division which is part of rugby's 6th-level where the crowd can easily be accommodated along the touchline. Overall, I'd say the most fascinating angle (at Oxford as well as at Wimbledon) over the next few months is going to be the changing relationship between NAMA & Risk/Galliard rather than the continuing slow-process of any council matters.

Totally agree about the PolyFoam fence being much preferrable to any sort of "bouncy castle" air fence because it appears to make a vastly better job of absorbing the energy of a crash's impact into it rather than rebounding that energy back into the traffic of any riders racing behind the crashing rider(s) ... clearly, the PolyFoam design simply dulls the impact instead of rebounding it (or even worse, letting the crash victim slide under the bottom apron of a bouncy castle). I've haven't been to King's Lynn since the installation of their PolyFoam fence but I've seen how well it works when Sky have been there .. I have seen Berwick's PolyFoam both in person and on Sky. Crucially, both those tracks have no other circuit outside them as there's just the concrete infield at the Norfolk Arena and Berwick Rangers' football pitch at Shielfield Park ... hence the PolyFoam can be fixed permanently onto the fence separating the speedway track from the crowd. It doesn't seem to be so easy (or practical) to keep setting-up and then taking-down a PolyFoam fence for each meeting at any tracks that share their action with greyhounds ... at these venues, the requirements of greyhound spectators along with betting-shop or tv-viewers mean the speedway safety fence must be either fully removable or a mesh-fence that enables the punters/viewers to see the dogs racing round the 2nd and 3rd bends. I'd still prefer to have a bouncy castle rather than an old-style safety fence because I've no doubt the bouncy castle still does a very good job of cutting down the number of broken bones as well as reducing quite a lot of the damage to the bikes ... it just seems to me that the Polyfoam is an even better solution. I can think of 3 crashes which resulted in very serious injuries despite a bouncy castle being set up ... Chris Holder's season-ending smash at Coventry in July as well as Luke Priest's horrible accident at Stoke a few years ago both showed how badly it can go wrong if the moorings of the air fence are wrecked upon impact ... meanwhile, Ales Dryml's crash at Oxford remains the closest Sky have ever come to live coverage of a speedway fatality and, as far as I can remember, his lengthy coma was more the result of being hit by someone who couldn't avoid him as he bounced back into the traffic. One other aspect of any sort of air fence that has always really puzzled me ... why does speedway pad just the outside horseshoe of the bends themselves without gradually tapering that padding for the first few metres down the back straight or home straight ? !! Given the speeds involved, surely the first section of fencing going into the each of the 1st and 3rd bends would be far better use if it was adapted to provide protection beyond each of the 2nd and 4th bends when riders gallantly fail to regain control as they try to straighten-up from getting out-of-shape while cornering ... think about it folks, how many crashes do you see finish up as early as the first couple of panels of the fencing on the 1st/3rd bends compared to how many crashes you see finish up with riders sprawled 20 yards down the back/home straight !! Motor racing and motor cycling circuits worked out a long time ago to shape their gravel traps beyond their curves to help catch their crash victims ... so much of their vital research into safety depends upon working back from where crashes finish up to make more safety improvements instead of simply working forward from where the crash started ... going right back to the hideous days of Formula One in the 1960's & 1970's, they made huge progress once they fully understood the initial collision on the track was bad enough but it was nowhere near as dreadful as the trees, telegraph poles and other clutter only a few feet beyond the barriers.

While the Racing Post's Monday Column did confirm it wouldn't be a "decision night" at last night's Merton Council meeting, both that column and a further report from Jim Cremin in yesterday's paper was still strongly recommneding that this council meeting remained an important occasion for the future of Wimbledon greyhounds. Cremin's article from yesterday hasn't yet appeared on the Racing Post website so I've typed it into this post so you can all see how the paper was previewing Merton Council's meeting yesterday morning ... in the light of gustix's update (and, as I write, the total absence of any news from the council meeting on betfair's greyhound forum), it may well be that the Racing Post has hyped up last night's occasion way beyond its true significance in the general scheme of things (maybe to keep itself in the good books of Paschal Taggart). = = = = = = = = = = For a start, the headline was "Wimbledon top of the agenda at council meeting" and then Jim Cremin's report went as follows ... Diane McLean, the We Want Wimbledon campaigner, will tonight receive the answers to eight questions the WWW committee has posted to Merton Council at an eagerly awaited council meeting at Morden's Civic Centre (starts 7.15pm, open to the public). The WWW questions put to the planning committee and council cabinet members were: 1) Has the committee, and have the councillors, taken into consideration the financial viability of AFC Wimbledon (the "club") actually paying for a football stadium to be built on the Plough Lane site through careful consideration of any costing or financial plans submitted by the club, if any have been submitted ? 2) Has the committee, and have the councillors, taken into account the effect on the local community of thousands of football fans descending on the Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium site if permission to build a football stadium was granted, and the cost of policing matches ? 3) Has the committee, and have the councillors, considered the financial benefits, such as higher rates than currently it receives from the site, and the job opportunites for local residents (hundreds of interesting and well-paid jobs) which will benefit the borough under the proposed multi-sports complex plans of Paschal Taggart ? 4) Has the committee, and have the councillors, taken into consideration that the plans proposed by Paschal Taggart for a world-class greyhound stadium will bring thousands of tourists every year from all over the world into the borough bringing revenue to the council and local businesses ? 5) Has the committee, and have the councillors, taken into consideration that the plans of Paschal Taggart will not only transform what is an eyesore and embarrassment to the borough but will also provide a world-class greyhound stadium, international standard squash and fitness club and up to 500 subsidised secure parking spaces for staff at St George's NHS Hospital ? 6) Has the committee, and have the councillors, taken into consideration that not only has greyhound racing taken place at Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium since 1928 but that the prestigious William Hill Greyhound Derby has also taken place there since 1985 and that the prize money for the winner of the 2014 Derby has been set at £200,000 ? 7) Is the committee, and are the councillors, aware of the support for greyhound racing at Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium ? 8) The Mayor has shown his concern over the loss of the greyhound stadium on the site and is keen to retain greyhound racing in the capital. Given Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium is the last stadium in the capital shouldn't this form part of, and be written into, the Sites and Policies Development Plan Document ? McLean said more than 3,000 separate e-mails of support have gone to Merton Council and the Mayor "plus there is a signed petition of 4,832, organised by Tony Gallagher of Greyhound Data". She added: "Paschal and all those working so hard to secure a long-term future for Wimbledon would like to thank everyone who has helped so far - it is most heartening. It's also going to be interesting to see if there are other questions raised by any other groups." McLean explained there will be no decisions as such taken, or debate held, and that tonight "is a taking of the temperature of where the council sees the future". She added that last week she held a "positive" meeting with Cllr Stephen Alambritis, the leader of Merton Council, who "indicated that he appreciated the beneficial nature of our plans for the community as a whole. I took that as most encouraging." = = = = = = = = = = Various things to note from that article ... the local squash players and fitness fanatics as well as car-driving doctors and nurses are being included in the WWW-campaign's questions, but speedway isn't. "The Mayor" refers to Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who like all the Merton councillors is only 8-months away from the next set of London local elections in May 2014 ... unlike much of the rest of the country (where there's a local election every May for separate portions of local council seats, usually meaning each individual council seat is contested every 3 years), the system in London is that every 4 years (easy to remember as World Cup football year), both the Mayor's election and the whole sweep of council seats across all 32 boroughs are contested in one go. It means that if plenty of council seats change hands next May, any big council decisions taken in the next few weeks in Merton could sit very uneasily if enough of those new councillors don't like them and therefore don't want to implement them. All in all, given the grip NAMA (the Irish banking debts agency) has on the current owners of Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium, the lack of speed in any council decision-making and those looming elections next May, it makes me wonder if this whole saga won't make much progress any time soon. As ever, I hope all the above info's useful.

This is the article that went into the greyhound section's Monday Column in the Racing Post at the start of the week ... Jim Cremin, now semi-retired, is the former greyhound editor of that paper having previously worked in the racing office at several top dog tracks. http://www.racingpos...ww/1527233/top/ Sorry for not posting it sooner but it wasn't put onto the Racing Post website until late on Tuesday night (the paper's comment-style pieces are usually held back from the website for a day or two) and I'm just catching up now. Following on from the posts "salty" & myself have swapped in recent days, you'll also see Jim Cremin refers to NAMA/Galliard as the owners of the site ... he's one of the two different Racing Post writers in the last few days who've blatantly identified NAMA (the collective debt-agency for Irish banks) as effectively having a direct ownership of the stadium via their long-standing debt-collecting pressure on Risk Capital and Galliard Homes to repay more of the multi-millions which were borrowed from Irish banks around a decade ago ... previously, NAMA had always been a lurking shadow in the background of Risk/Galliard's finances rather than having such an up-front identification. With a big Sky night for greyhounds last night at the final of Sheffield's Steel City Cup competing for space in today's Racing Post with any news from the Merton Council meeting, it's most likely the main coverage of what happened at Merton Council will be in tomorrow's (Friday's) paper enabling today's reaction from all parties to be included along with anything that occured at last night's meeting.

Thanks for the reply and it's encouraging if you feel the live streaming hasn't really affected the crowd revenue for the Blaze ... however, I'd still be a bit concerned, especially in borderline weather, that speedway could see more of a local switch to the streaming compared to what you've experienced in ice hockey.

Are you easily able to break down the geographical spread of your live stream viewers into maybe 3 categories - for example, a local category within 20 miles of Coventry, then the rest of the UK in a 2nd category and then overseas viewers in a 3rd category (especially USA/Canada who'll be watching Coventry's games around lunchtime their time when there won't be so much of their own domestic action in progress). The reason I ask is to wonder if you've been able to gain enough useful revenue from overseas viewers to wipe out any lost revenue from local supporters paying for just the live stream instead of coming through the turnstiles ... if that overseas angle is working for Coventry's ice hockey, then live streaming UK speedway meetings with plenty of foreign riders taking part for our clubs could pick up useful revenie from Polish, Swedish or Danish subscribers wanting to watch speedway on nights which don't normally have any of their respective domestic meetings.

Yes, there could be what you refer to as a "psychological boost" ... but whether that boost can be turned into a financial boost from bigger crowds is another matter entirely. It's only a very few Grand Prix names like Darcy Ward that make a serious difference as away riders to the size of a home crowd ... it doesn't take much of a drop down from that superstar level (perhaps to someone like Davey Watt or Martin Smolinski who might end up as a new top league's highest-rated rider) and the "wow factor" fizzles out rapidly for attracting extra home fans to watch the away team's top riders. Your contrast between the populations and crowds of Sheffield and Swindon is a really good question, especially as they're both long-established Thursday tracks sharing greyhound stadiums a few miles away from their city/town-centre. But Sheffield has a much bigger range of sports teams and activities all chasing the same catchment area of supporters and (probably more importantly) the same amount of space in the local media. I can fully understand you thinking it would be a great benefit from having the bigger population to aim at, but there are plenty of good examples to show that's only really a great benefit if speedway's managed to keep itself high enough up its local pecking-order to make the most of that bigger population. In Sheffield, the speedway Tigers are up against football's Wednesday & United (as well as Rotherham only a few miles away) plus ice hockey's Steelers (one of their sport's biggest clubs in the country) so it's harder for the speedway to be top of the local sports headlines. I don't know Swindon that well (a 1998 visit to football & a 2003 visit to speedway) but I can't recall hearing/seeing much about any other pro-sports clubs beyond the football & speedway ... hence I'd reckon the speedway Robins have a much better chance than the Sheffield Tigers of getting themselves well-known as a local place providing a big sports night out ... in fact, it's so much a better chance that I'd reckon it cancels out (maybe even overtakes) Sheffield's benefit of having the bigger population in the first place. Unfortunately, across the country as a whole, speedway often doesn't seem good at persuading its local catchment area that it's a better night out than going to wider ranges of other sports nearby (or big city-centre nightlife away from sports) ... however, speedway seems to do much better than might be normally expected as soon as the competition dwindles. Look at towns like Berwick (population 12,000), Workington (25,000), King's Lynn (40,000) & Eastbourne (100,000) where speedway attracts bigger percentages of the local population than in Swindon, never mind Sheffield ... in fact, the total population of those 4 towns I've just mentioned is about the same as Swindon on its own but I'm sure the total of their 4 home crowds would comfortably beat Swindon's home crowd. There are exceptions ... notably, the past history of a large workforce in motor manufacturing in the West Midlands maybe helping to explain why big towns and cities in that area have remained greater supporters of a mechanical sport like speedway. But a bigger population is no guarantee whatsoever of bigger crowds ... otherwise, we'd still have a few teams drawing on London's 8-million potential customers !!

Easiest to reply to both the above posts in one go ... The "winter of discontent" in late-2010 & early-2011 proved how it was nearly impossible for various Elite clubs to reach agreement over the average of just one rider in particular (and slightly wider implications of how that could affect team-building in the future) ... that's why I'm so sceptical of the biggest egos among Elite promoters being prepared to agree to a points-limit that would almost certainly be much nearer the current Premier level than the current Elite level (as an example, let's say the Elite drop their limit three-quarters of the way towards the Premier instead of meeting in the middle). As Halifaxtiger nghtly points out, it's easier financially to drop down rather than move up ... Ipswich's decision to drop down from 2010-Elite to 2011-Premier just before the "winter of discontent" erupted proved to be magnificently well-timed for them but they'd been among the poor relations of the Elite for a while by then. Several wealthier Elite clubs will have big concerns that their crowds will nosedive faster than the costs they're saving if they agree to a points-limit pitched really heavily towards the current Premier level. Meanwhile, the Premier clubs have to judge a very narrow balance to find the right points-limit that's not too much more expensive that they have at the moment but still leaves room for number-1 riders whose names are big enough to attract enough extra fans to cover any extra expenses. Effectively you've got a much larger-scale situation like the problem that's always been very awkward in the Conference/National League over the last decade trying to find the right mix between the small clubs who can only operate at that level and the reserve sides of bigger clubs ... this time, you're trying to mix clubs who can only operate at Premier level with a few clubs feeling they're taking part with one hand tied behind their back because they've had to drop down well below their ideal Elite level. Look at the turnover of clubs in the Conference/National since 2002 and that's a really good example about why I think it'll be so difficult to bring all 23 Elite & Premier clubs together into one big league, That's why I stick with my earlier reckoning that getting even 18 clubs into one big league will be a fine achievement ... and while I appreciate Halifaxtiger is one of the best supporters of the National League's ldeals and level, I can't see how it can remain unaffected by such a hefty upheaval of both the levels above it. Hence, in answer to sidney's question, I think we should start with around 18 Elite/Premier clubs in a new Top League but I suspect only some of the leftovers would feel able to fit into the current National League ... looking maybe 5 years down the road, I'd expect the Top League to settle down at about 14-to-16 clubs as some of its original members realise the National's clearly their more realistic level, especially if the National's prepared to be upgraded a bit to help accommodate them as well as any of the original leftovers who didn't want to drop straight into it. Do I think that's what will actually happen ? ... probably not because judging by the BSPA's past history and decision-making, there's little hope of reaching any sort of tidy merger to start with ... and even if that did happen, I'd also doubt any original friendliness and agreements would last more than a year or two before enough bad bickering rose up again to start another round of knee-jerk decisions.

Every greyhound track has a very settled weekly pattern of meetings (only a few of the big events shown on Sky require any one-off adjustments) so it's always easy for speedway clubs sharing with dog tracks to work out on which days the speedway track's available. Personally, I think it's going to be too difficult to find enough common ground between the wealthier end of the Elite League and the poorer end of the Premier League to establish one big league of all the current 23 Elite/Premier clubs plus any ambitious National outfits like Dudley. In fact, given such a wide range of ambitions to merge together, I reckon it would be a fine achievement to bring as many as 18 clubs into any new top division ... however, I fear that would still have the gloomy side-effect of some of the leftover clubs closing down unless the National League could be pitched at a slightly higher level to help absorb them. Closures did happen in connection with the last "one big league" era of 1995 & 96 ... for example, Newcastle still had horrible memories of how much it cost them being a top-division club for just one season in 1984 so they closed when the 2nd Division ended in 1994 but always wanted to return if that level was revived ... sure enough, the Elite-&-Premier format began in 1997 and Newcastle have been a Premier club for all of that level's 17 seasons. Meanwhile, even if England do qualify for it, the 2014 football World Cup in Brazil (generally 4 hours behind the UK, a couple of its venues 5 hours behind the UK) might not be quite as big a problem for speedway as either the 2006 or 2010 versions (Germany & South Africa each 1 hour ahead of the UK). That's because there will be late-night kick-offs UK-time that won't clash with speedway during the first couple of rounds of group games (10 matches will start at 11pm/UK, 1 match starts at 2am/UK to round off the only day with 4 matches squeezed into it instead of 3) ... however, for the last round of group games and the whole knockout, everything's 5pm, 8pm or 9pm/UK ... the full set of venues/dates/kick-offs has been on FIFA's website for a few months already and the teams will be added into it when the group draw's made on Fri-6th-Dec.

Can you please start being realistic in what you'd like to happen instead of hoping for the downright impossible or economically suicidal !! Let's say we had the one big 24-team league next season, requiring 23 home and 23 away fixtures to satisfy your ideal wish of bringing every team to Swindon while also taking the Robins to every other track in the league (presumably ideally on each of those tracks' regular night so that all the other fans also have as convenient a home schedule as yourselves at the Abbey Stadium) ... I'll also be generous and let you have the last fortnight of March to give you 28 weeks in which to squeeze in all those fixtures. Given Swindon race on a Thursday, you're going to need 27 weeks to fit in all your home fixtures plus your trips to Birmingham, Ipswich, Redcar and Sheffield as they're all Thursday tracks as well. Add in just an average amount of grim weather when setting-up a fixture-list like one rainoff every 2 months and that's another 3 Thursdays you'll be expecting to need to catch-up those rain-offs, making 30 Thursdays in total. Ok, you can ease the pressure a little bit with careful bits of Bank Holiday scheduling between "same night" clubs but those meetings are the biggest nightmare of all to reschedule after a rain-off ... in any case, I've already shown how easy it is to use up 30 Thursdays with only average rainfall so that means a choice between ... 1) letting the regular-season run into mid-October to make it last 30 weeks which seriously limits any title-deciding play-offs (great for the purists on this forum but almost certainly bad news for securing a deal from any TV-company) 2) having playoffs to suit any TV-deal and therefore relying to a ludicrous extent on good weather so that everything's tidied-up in a regular-season that can last only the 28-weeks until the end of September. And as it stands at the moment, there would be 6 Friday tracks - Coventry, Edinburgh, Lakeside, Plymouth, Scunthorpe, Somerset - making it even tougher for them to avoid using a few off-nights against each other. (Like the set of 5 Thursday tracks I've already mentioned, there would also be 5 Saturdays at Berwick, Eastbourne, Leicester, Rye House & Workington ... 2 Sundays at Glasgow & Newcastle .... 2 Mondays at Belle Vue & Wolverhampton ... 1 Tuesday at Dudley ... 2 Wednesdays at King's Lynn & Poole ... and 1 "mish-mash" at Peterborough due to them having to work around various one-off agricultural events at their showground.) If England qualify for next summer's football World Cup, you've also hardly any spare capacity in the speedway schedule to let clubs dodge round the nights of England's games. Whatever league format is served up in 2014, I doubt any current Elite or Premier promoter would want more than 20 regular-season home league meetings ... any more than that is asking for trouble from the great British climate, regardless of how much the fans have a regular home-night as their top priority when they're surveyed.

It's not so much a case of "wanting" a north/south split ... it's just a realistic economic view that some sort of regional groupings may make a big difference towards more clubs breaking-even (or better) instead of still losing money. From your view as a spectator, you've every right to look forward to teams like Edinburgh, Scunthorpe and Berwick visiting Swindon to give you some extra variety among the opposition. But despite the great enthusiasm of a few Monarchs and Bandits fans (the Scorpions' long-distance away support is almost non-existent), your club will get hardly any away fans' money at the turnstiles while you're enjoying watching those meetings ... the costs of staging those meetings remains the same (stadium rent, riders' wages, ambulance, etc) without as much crowd money coming in. Less obviously, but arguably more importantly towards balancing the books, creating one big league without regional groupings would almost certainly lead to more 2-match (or even 3-match) tours to help cut down travelling time for the riders ... for example, there'd probably be far more cases of teams visiting Poole/Wed & Swindon/Thu on consecutive nights or requesting Swindon/Thu followed by either Somerset or Plymouth on the Friday ... tours do save money if the weather's good but they're a financial disaster if the last meeting of the trip is a washout after a club's already paid for all its riders having what's turned out to be a unnecessary night in a hotel.

Given your guidelines for how the fixtures are carved up and given there will then be 4 teams in the West Midlands in the same league forming by far the biggest concentration of rivals anywhere in the country, I'll suggest the following groupings ... Northern Section - Anglo Scottish Group - Glasgow, Edinburgh, Workington, Berwick, Newcastle & Redcar Northern Section - Midlands Group - Belle Vue, Sheffield, Scunthorpe, Leicester & "Any 2 of Wolv-Dud-Birm-Cov" Southern Section - Eastern Group - Peterborough, King's Lynn, Ipswich, Rye House, Lakeside & Eastbourne Southern Section - Western Group - Plymouth, Somerset, Swindon, Poole & "Other 2 of Wolv-Dud-Birm-Cov" I'm not sure if I'd put Wolves & Dudley in the same group (so that they're always battling against each other in the league standings) or put them in separate groups while guaranteeing them cross-section local derbies against each other (making it easier to create the most varied line-up of away teams visiting Monmore). I did try fitting all 4 of the West Midlands teams into the same group but their collective location in the centre of the map makes this very tough without the side-effect of some strange groupings elsewhere .,. you could put Belle Vue and Leicester in with the West Midlands quartet but that would force Sheffield & Scunthorpe into a mostly East Anglian group and, in turn, that would force Eastbourne and either Rye House or Lakeside into a mostly South Western group. The other bonus of dividing the West Midlands quartet into 2 regular-season pairs is that it creates more permutations of a very lucrative all-West Midlands play-off pairing. However, one snag is that guaranteeing too many Midlands local derbies that criss-cross the Northern & Southern sections could lumber the Anglo-Scots and south-west-based teams with too many expensive long-distance trips to each other. And perhaps the biggest snag of all is how well the Anglo-Scottish teams, all of which are currently in the Premier League, could tempt enough top-level riders (whatever that top-level turns out to be) to commit themselves to a full season of lengthy travelling just for home meetings ... alternatively, we might end up with that Anglo-Scottish group having a much different attitude to its team-building as I suspect they'd have to go much more down the "strength-in-depth" route instead of "top-heavy". Any comments / complaints / alternatives will be most welcome !!

Bangers & stock cars seem to have struck a much better balance than speedway when it comes to matching the number of meetings they stage against the demand/affordability of their spectators ... because they're not trying to race at the same venue nearly every week, each of their meetings has a bit more of a "proper occasion" feel to it which can only help boost the atmosphere of the crowd and, in turn, make it easier for those spectators to look forward to the next meeting in a few weeks' time as soon as they get home from the previous one. Maybe it's no surprise the biggest speedway club crowds are in Poland & then Sweden ... both operate a fixture schedule based on each team being "home one week, away the next" instead of the British format of "home nearly every week, away most weeks on a different day to our own" that's now well out-of-date ... Sweden's preference for fortnightly home meetings is even more eye-catching given their climate compresses their season into just May-to-September yet they still don't try to cram as many meetings as possible into that shorter spell. British fans often forget some of the biggest losses on a single meeting for clubs occur towards the end of each season when catching up rain-offs leads to matches being staged in a hurry to beat play-off cut-off dates or the 31st October closedown (or being staged in damp conditions simply to get a result into the record-book) ... the costs (stadium rent, riders' wages, ambulance, referee, etc) stay the same but the income (crowd receipts) collapses if spectators can't afford 4 home-meetings in 12-days or won't turn up on a drizzly evening. Clearly, with a number of British tracks restricted on when they can race by sharing their stadiums alongside greyhounds or noise-regulations (in Birmingham's case, both !!), it makes sense for our clubs to each have a well-known day of the week and start-time for their home meetings. But that doesn't mean having to use that same day/time every single week ... the lame excuse of "too many people will find something else to do if we miss out a week" belongs somewhere in the dark ages, never mind the 1950's or 1960's when it was first trotted out, because Mother Nature's almost certain to force you to miss out a few weeks each year anyway !!

How about turning the above sentence inside-out because maybe as soon as there was a serious risk of Sky dropping speedway, then speedway didn't seem so attractive to Terry Russell.

Well done to GRW-123 for two of the most dreadfully English-blinkered and naive posts this forum's ever likely to see ... I won't waste bandwidth copying the pair of them but suffice to say they misjudge England's (well, actually Great Britain's) current standing and influence within world speedway by such a wide margin that they haven't a prayer of becoming a reality. You're never going to establish a single night every week for running an Elite League in this country ... too many of the venues are reliant on the differently-restricted days of the week available to them once the greyhound landlords have scheduled their more lucrative meetings first (or in Peterborough's case, fitting around the car parking availability once the Showground's other big events have been fixed in their schedule). GRW-123 reckons the SGP has turned the majority of its riders into mercenaries ... well there wasn't any SGP in the 1960's or 1970's but you'll do well to find a bigger speedway mercenary at any stage in the sport's history than Ivan Mauger (and frankly, I don't blame him or any other riders since then for looking after themselves financially given they're risking life and limb in every race). As for relying on SGP qualification coming via performances in the leagues of Poland, Denmark, Sweden & England, how the hell are you going to successfully get the FIM to bring the SGP and 4 different domestic authorities together on agreeing how many qualifiers they're each going to supply for next year's Grand Prix meetings ? !! ... and what do you do when the same rider picks up 2 qualifying tickets from different leagues ? !! (for example, Andreas Jonsson isn't quite high enough in the current year's SGP standings to re-qualify that way but does score well enough in both Poland and Sweden to pick up a ticket from each). And as for BSI's quaifiers for the Grand Prix meetings "not giving a thought, or caring a damn, to the disruption they create by taking the riders away from their league commitments" ... well, football seems to cope with having 3 or 4 "international weekends" each year (one each in September and October with others sometimes fitted into November and March) where every domestic league closes down for around 10 days so why can't the domestic speedway authorities begin to do something similar with the FIM or BSI ? !! Domestic clubs can do their bit as well ... the FIM releases next year's international calendar every October and the more organized British clubs (Elite & Premier) do bother to match their plans for next year's team-building against that calendar before requesting any gaps in their home fixtutre-list. One of speedway's biggest problems at the moment is that too many people within it (administrators and fans) are realizing far too late just how big a mess the sport's tumbled into when the necessary repair work should have started ages ago.

It all depends whether you're looking for "strength in numbers" from the C2DE sector or "financial clout" from the ABC1 sector. Meanwhile, I'll thoroughly agree with you about marketing's ability to make money by offering not much more than common sense ... never forget that the marketing folk do their work for you (and can therefore demand getting paid by you) before you've actually found out whether their work has yielded the extra sales which will cover what you're paying them !! ... everyone's happy providing those extra sales emerge but if they don't, you've still got to pay the marketing bill without any extra revenue !! And as for marketing waffle, you'll go a long way to beat the AEG tumble drier that was recently featured on BBC-1's Watchdog because it featured both a "silent" and an "extra silent" option ... when asked to explain the difference, AEG proudly said the extra silent feature was "quieter than the silent feature" :lol:

Very fair questions Vince so here are a few answers ... For a spot in the same advert-break Mercedes and DHS would probably pay the same amount of money for the same length of time in that ad-break ... where the big difference occurs is that Mercedes's advertising manager and DHS's advertising manager would be wide apart from each other on which advert-breaks they want to use to promote their cars or furniture ... maybe the only thing that's the same for them is they both want to attract more profit from their adverts than they're spending to show them. Mercedes would be looking for the type of programmes that are perceived to attract richer viewers which probably means their adverts don't appear so often but cost them much more money per time-slot when they do appear ... they accept their adverts will be more expensive to show because they don't expect to generate any sales from the types of audiences attached to cheaper time-slots so there's no profit for them by buying any of those cheaper slots. DHS's advert manager would place more importance on their furniture being seen by as many viewers as possible on as many channels as possible with the aim of drumming their products repeatedly into the minds of their target customers, hence buying a load of cheaper slots should be more effective for their adverts ... if they splash out on any expensive time-slots, they have to be confident that's going to generate a big enough amount of extra sales to justify that extra expense. Onto your demographics question about how speedway fits in with other sports ... yes, the bulk of football's crowd probably comes from the same social groups as speedway but top-level football has also invested far more in facilities that appeal to the higher social groups (eg, executive boxes, "restaurant & match" packages) while its players clearly have the spending-power and glamour associated with those higher groups ... hence, luxury advertisers want to be associated with football as well as F1, golf or tennis and also reckon they can drum up enough business from advertisiing around football. You've noted how darts and snooker attract loads of tv-time, arguably despite their demographics ... those sports benefit from being indoors (therefore no rain-offs so there's guaranteed to be something going on !!) and often being staged at times that help to fill-up the quieter parts of tv-schedules (snooker takes care of daytime slabs of BBC-2 or Eurosport, the PDC world darts at Alexandra Palace solves the problem of what to show over the Xmas/New Year period) ... they also attract much more betting from viewers which in turn generates adverts and event-sponsorships from bookmakers. Speedway's attempt to be bookie-attractive was to introduce the green helmet-colour (instead of white) a few years ago so that viewers could bet on its races via their Sky handset because the helmet colours then matched all the coloured buttons on those handsets ... the only problem was "betting via handset & TV-screen" stood no chance of competing against "betting via internet" because punters didn't want to reduce the size of their TV-picture while placing their bets on the same screen ... in fact, right now I'm watching York racing on Channel-4 on my tv while using a laptop to flick between writing this post and placing my bets online and that's much more convenient than betting via my tv. The popularity of the raucous, alcoholic atmosphere at the darts also proves a long-held view within marketing that many more ABC1 folk don't mind "slumming it" to enjoy what might be perceived as C2DE products compared to the number of C2DE customers who'd feel comfortable "becoming posh" within the ABC1 world ... another good example of this is the number of ABC1 people who read the Sun or the Mirror compared to the number of C2DE readers of the Times or Telegraph. My personal view is that speedway makes it very easy for outsiders, including advertisers, to regard it as C2DE (too often it's a mucky sport taking place in out-of-date facilities with what looks like a mostly C2DE cross-section of fans) even if it's actually attracting a reasonable number of ABC1 folk. Hopefully all the above info helps Vince and plenty more of you.