arthur cross

Are you sure that if the meeting on any particular day is called off and set for a new day (even if it's just 24 or 48 hours later), that a practice session for what's turned out to be that day's non-event remains an official way of trapping its riders from any other action until the new date ? !! As far as I'm aware, anything connected with today is deemed not to have happened once the meeting itself is called off so that everyone makes a fresh start in terms of practice, scrutineering, etc on the new day. Where the rule you're thinking of has come into play is when practice is on the afternoon of one day with the meeting itself on the next afternoon or evening ... hence any rider involved in Cardiff's Friday afternoon-practice can't then nip off to ride in that evening's Premier League Pairs at Somerset. Meanwhile, Berwick have NEVER had noise-permission from their local council to race speedway bikes around Shielfield Park on a Sunday yet both tomorrow and Monday appear as rain-off dates in the FIM supplementary regulations for this meeting !! Berwick only have a degree of flexibility with the local council for weeknight meetings to allow for live television coverage or emergency catching-up of Bandits wash-outs ... however, within that limited flexibility, the council have always been helpful when necessary in recent years. Certainly the supplementary-regs for Berwick's FIM-debut with their 2012 GP-qualifier made it clear the rain-off jumped straight to Monday if that Saturday was abandoned ... I don't know whether it was the same case for their round of the 2013 World Under-21 series or why tomorrow's managed to appear in tonight's supplementary-regs. Thankfully, with Monday already being German-track Abensberg's traditional Bank Holiday date for an FIM-meeting which this year is another of these GP-quailfiers, there's only the Belle Vue v Lakeside meeting in the Elite League rather than a fuller schedule now being affected by Monday's action at Berwick where only Craig Cook in the main field, plus both reserves Richard Lawson and Lewis Bridger were expecting to be at Belle Vue instead ... also, there's a meaningless catch-up of a League Cup group meeting at Glasgow (Theo Pijper) against Berwick (Matej Kus).

Nottingham's all-year-round betting-shop weekly greyhound schedule of Monday-evenings, Tuesday-lunchtimes and Friday-evenings brings in about £1-million a year on its own for the tv-rights, never mind any profits from the trackside crowd. Speedway's track rent and catering profits would do well to bring in £100,000 a year based on the rent for 20 home meetings plus the food-&-drink demands of an average 1,000 crowd. Providing someone else is paying to install a speedway track into a greyhound stadium (or a new greyhound promoter inherits an existing speedway track when buying the stadium), then yes it's bonus profit for the greyhound promoter but only really in pocket-money terms rather than business-changing terms. But if the current greyhound promoter doesn't want the cost or the upheaval of introducing speedway, that's no surprise either.

And an astonishing U-turn in comments from William Hill chief executive Ralph Topping in the space of 7 days !! Last Saturday, I posted his quotes from the Racing Post in this thread in which he was unsure whether William Hill could commit to this year's £200,000 first prize again because of the wider agenda for his company of savings needed to be made including shop closures. Now he's quoted (by the same reporter Jim Cremin), as saying: "We were delighted with the reaction to our £200,000 Derby, with a Wimbledon record entry, and one of the most competitive events ever." Cremin (always quick to crawl up to people if it keeps him on the gravy train), even has the nerve to write that this news is "making a nonsense of talk that the company appetite for sponsorship was waning" ... well, it was Cremin quoting Topping a week earlier that was the biggest aspect of such talk in the first place !! What's caused the U-turn ? ... going into last Saturday's final both the favourite and second-favourite were heavily-backed Irish challengers only for 16-to-1 outsider Salad Dodger (a 500-to-1 no-hoper at the start of the competition) to claim one of the Derby's all-time shock victories having been a totally average A3 runner at Romford as recently as Janaury (that's the 3rd-highest of Romford's 8 grades of local runners with any serious Derby contender usually well-established in its own track's top grade) ... Salad Dodger had actually been a beaten-favourite twice last November at Romford in A6 races !! Still wondering why William Hill suddenly feel they can afford to bump up their Derby sponsorship ? = = = = = = = = = Anyway, the whole story about the boosted Derby prize fund that "racers and royals" has already linked is understandably the Racing Post's main greyhound article today but there's not even a hint of anything on the front greyhound page about the Wimbledon Stadium planning report. Instead, tucked a couple of pages inside (and not yet on the RP website), there's the following ... "All to play for" at Wimbledon by Jonathan Kay ... Planning inspector Robert Yuile has done the expected and announced that both the Paschal Taggart proposal for the redevelopment of Wimbledon as a greyhound venue and the competing AFC/Galliard Homes football stadium scheme are suitable to enter the planning process. Yuile held a public meeting into the Merton Council's Sites & Policies Plan in January and ruled the Plough Lane site can be developed for "sporting intensification" with enabling housing. Diane McLean, of the We Want Wimbledon campaign group, said: "The inspector's report has brought no surprises for the greyhound fraternity. We knew it would be a hard battle to get greyhound retention language into the document given the council's support of AFC and Galliard's proposals. However, the inspector did point out that the Mayor's favoured option was the retention of a greyhound stadium but that if this was not viable then other stadia uses will be considered. "What any promotor who puts in a planning application needs to focus on is the local residents and the effect any large stadium with the resultant significant extra footfall will have on their lives. "We, Paschal and I, have been working with the residents for the past year and continue to do so to ensure that any application we make will meet with their approval and also with the approval of environment and transport agencies as well as the London and Merton plan." Quoted by the Wimbledon Guardian, Merton Council leader Stephen Alambritis said: "We are pleased the inspector has gone with us for the greyhound stadium - it is right for sporting intensification. Planning permission will be given for flats, the number of them is to be decided. It is all to play for, for any sport." If that sort of downbeat response to the inspector's report is the best that either the Racing Post or We Want Wimbledon can manage, no wonder AFC Wimbledon are getting their interpretation of the report across more enthusiastically to the general public.

AFC Wimbledon have consistently been miles ahead of either Paschal Taggart (prospective future greyhound operator) or the Greyhound Racing Association (current greyhound operator) in getting their slant across to the general public as well as their own sporting public. Probably because there's a Racing Post published every day, greyhound (and horse racing) fans become so used to what appears to them to be a significant media bubble because it covers all their fellow racing fans as well as themselves ... what they forget all too easily is that the vast majoirty of the public are nowhere near that bubble at all (or, at best, join it briefly for just a few days of the year like today's Derby at Epsom, April's Grand National or March's Cheltenham Festival). I've pointed out on this thread before that the We Want Wimbledon campaigners have drummed up remarkable support from all corners of the often-argumentative greyhound industry but seem to have made little impact within the wider media. On the other hand, AFC Wimbledon are too far down the football ladder to get daily coverage in any general media but their ups-&-downs and controversies over the past 30-plus years mean they will get attention when they've got any scrap of headline-info worth flagging up ... and that's certainly the case here with the inspector's report confirming the greyhounds won't be regarded as the automatic sporting aspect of any future use of the Wimbledon Stadium site. There's still enough in the inspector's report for the greyhounds to spin their own positive line that it gives them a chance of their own plan being acceptable ... for example, the report clearly states this site deserves a sports-based future as it's the best sporting site available in the London Borough of Merton and the inspector's admitted he's sitting on the fence at this stage regarding the merits of either the AFC Wimbledon or Taggart plan when he could easily have favoured one of them or slagged one of them. But whether the greyhound folk can get their message across to the wider public as well as AFC Wimbledon started doing within minutes of yesterday's report being published seems doubtful to me.

The web link I mentioned a few posts ago now includes the much-anticipated report that was published today by the planning inspector following the January hearings ... once you've clicked onto that report, the key paragraphs about Wimbledon Stadium are paragraphs 74-to-84 on pages 16-&-17 ... http://www.merton.go...und_stadium.htm The inspector reckons it's not his duty at this stage to favour either Galliard's AFC Wimbledon football proposal or Paschal Taggart's greyhound proposal. However, the inspector has noted Boris Johnson's muddled comments as the Mayor of London which have sometimes indicated the Mayor wants greyhound racing to be retained for cultural as well as sporting reasons (it's now the only dog track left with a London postcode rather than a suburban postcode like Crayford or Romford), only for the Mayor to also say at a later date that another financially-viable sporting use could also be acceptable. Hence what's being understandably celebrated over at AFC Wimbledon is the inspector's view that he doesn't consider it necessary to specify that greyhound racing must be retained on the site. The one big thing that seems to be missing from this inspector's report is any guideline as to what happens next (or when) !! AFC Wimbledon have clearly interpreted this report as a good impetus towards presenting their full planning application for the site. It looks to me as if nobody's a complete winner yet from this report but it's forcing greyhound racing deeper into a battle with AFC Wimbledon while also taking a swipe at Boris Johnson's inconsistent comments.

More than 20 years' experience of various sorts of media work (print and broadcast) including coverage of a couple of very successful stadium developments. Last spring's farcical postponement of the Belle Vue v Poole meeting probably qualifies Dave Gordon and Chris Morton for "clown" status on its own but on top of that, there were also two separate occasions a few years apart (and involving different riders) that I was involved in that highlighted their incompetence. By the way, I grasped a long time ago (though not from any information from Belle Vue's end), how much the National Speedway Stadium's wrapped up in a wider development of its proposed site ... that wider angle still isn't anywhere near a good enough reason for me to explain Belle Vue's sluggish and poorly-presented progress.

Dear, oh dear, oh dear ... for the 3rd time in less than 24 hours !! As I explained earlier this morning on this thread, although no local team currently calls it their home, the Ricoh Arena isn't "vacant". Instead, its current financial status and its future use are right at the heart of a High Court judicial review in just 4 days' time that's a 3-way tussle between its owner, its city council and the football club that used to rent it !! Good luck knocking on Birmingham High Court's door to ask if a speedway team can move into a venue that's wrapped up in such heavy legal circumstances !! While this judicial review is hanging over the Ricoh Arena, it's immaterial how many noisy events it's already held well before becoming bogged down in this current legal struggle. Any future regular use of it, for speedway, football, rock concerts, tiddlywinks or anything else is totally dependent on what happens in Birmingham High Court from next Tuesday onwards. Far from the Ricoh Arena not having "any of the faff Belle Vue have been dealing with for the past few years", it's actually one of the very few sporting venues in this country that's still having MORE faff than Belle Vue are trudging through so slowly !! !!

On this thread as well as previous ones relating to this project, I've consistently stated that I support the idea of a National Speedway Stadium, especially if it's to be situated in a city with as much speedway heritage as Manchester. However, I've also consistently stated I've no confidence whatsoever in the ability of Dave Gordon or Chris Morton to oversee this project's development or be involved heavily in its successful operation should it ever be built. You may think that's a "cowardly and negative stance" ... I reckon it's a realistic view of where the project's reached (or more often, not reached) so far along with information I've weighed up from various angles. We'll gradually find out who's right and who's wrong ... what's more, I won't be afraid to congratulate everyone if it turns out we're enjoying an English Grand Prix or a World Cup Final at this stadium in a few years' time. Right now, and based overwhelmingly on the evidence I've seen so far, I don't expect to be making such congratulations.

And you're perfectly entitled to confirm such a belief. Mind you, the opening 4 paragraphs of the forum-thread you've quoted from mid-August 2013 are as follows ... BELLE Vue chief David Gordon has unveiled the stunning team of international business big-hitters who will play a major part in the club’s new era. He named an awesome consortium of top British businessmen who have invested in the club’s future and the new stadium at the new Belle Vue Sports Village. It was recently given the green light by Manchester City Council who have appointed international construction company ISG, who have a base on Salford Quays, to develop the site in Kirkmanshulme Lane, Gorton. ISG, who built the futuristic Velodrome for last year’s London Olympics, are now pursuing planning permission and hopes are high the Aces will race into their new home in 2014. Given we're already nearly halfway through 2014, are those hopes still high that the Aces will race into their new home this year ? !! There's a repeated theme here ... the MEN-article from Feb-2012 targeted the 2013 World Cup for the new stadium ... then the forum-thread and press release from Aug-2013 targeted 2014 for Belle Vue racing into their new homw ... now, on the first page of this thread in Jun-2014, we had "Phil The Ace" reporting that "Diggers won't be digging until next year at earliest." There's only so long you can credibly keep raising hopes for "next year" and then switch without any shame to another "next year" when the calendar moves on.

You seemed reasonably bothered about it 10 hours earlier !! 28-months (from the MEN-article I quoted back in February 2012 which headlined the hosting of the 2013 World Cup Final) to reach the "massive step forward" according to Dave Gordon yesterday of showing the stadium-skecthes to the locals doesn't fit many textbook descriptions of anyone who "CAN get things done".

I've spent plenty of time over the past 7 years looking into the National Speedway Stadium ever since it was first mooted by Belle Vue. I fully understand what's been going on in Manchester thanks to material available from Manchester City Council, the Manchester Evening News and other more unlikely sources like BBC-1's excellent feature on Football Focus a couple of months ago explaining the link-up between the council and Man City FC regarding the plans for community facilities near the Etihad Stadium. In comparison, I've also paid full attention to the pitifully poor amount of worthwhile information (rather than waffle) that's emerged from the Belle Vue Aces themselves over these past 7 years, culminating in yesterday's hopelessly low-key announcement of the stadium-sketches tour of local libraries and community halls. By the way, I notice you've made no effort to reply to my question about the Ricoh Arena after I'd made the effort to bring your ignorance neatly up-to-date with that current situation ... not very good at debating anything, are you ? !!

Dear, oh dear, oh dear ... again !! The Ricoh Arena is nowhere near being "on a plate" for the Coventry Bees to plonk down a speedway track to save their future. Instead, next Tuesday at Birmingham High Court there's a judicial review involving Coventry City Council, SISU (the owners of Coventry City FC who are so deeply unpopular with that club's fans) and the company called ACL who own the Ricoh Arena. Trying to sum up a few years of football controversy in one post on a speedway forum isn't easy but here goes ... When Coventry City decided it wasn't worth further upgrading their Highfield Road ground in the late 1990's, they were still on a run of more than 30 years in the top division. But that ended with relegation in May 2001 while delays in demolition work to clear the site for the Ricoh Arena meant it didn't finally open until 2005 and, by then, Coventry City's crowds had started dwindling with little sign of them being promoted back to the Premier League. Hence the late-1990's financial planning between the football club and their new stadium owners was utterly wrecked by the time Coventry City actually began playing in the Ricoh Arena. As Coventry's results (and crowds) sank even further, including relegation to the 3rd-level (League 1), the new controversial owners of the football club SISU fell out spectacularly with ACL over revising the stadium-rent to reflect the club's poorer circumstances with the result that Coventry City began borrowing Northampton Town's ground for home games last August. In the meantime, Coventry City Council (not wanting to see a relatively new venue risk becoming obsolete like the recently-demolished Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield) granted ACL a loan of £14.4million to prop up the stadium's finances. Tuesday's Birmingham High Court judicial review centres on SISU accusing Coventry City Council of giving ACL "illegal state aid" with that £14.4million loan so that ACL didn't need to drop their stadium-rent to a more realistic level for League-1 football that would have enabled SISU to keep their team in its own city instead of reluctantly borrowing another ground 35 miles away. Reading between the lines, it appears Coventry City Council and ACL both want to make life as difficult as possible for SISU so that SISU eventually sell their ownership of the football club ... then, the new football owners triumphantly bring their team back into the Ricoh Arena and everyone except SISU lives happily ever after. Do you still think the Ricoh is "on a plate" for the Coventry Bees ? !!

You're misunderstanding why speedway would find it much harder to crack the betting markets of India or the Far East compared to a sport like football. It's not a question of whether there are big Indian football teams or big Chinese football teams driving that region's interest in football betting (although domestic football in China is making considerable progress). But it is a question of famous clubs around the world like Manchester United or Real Madrid or Juventus having had significant fan bases in this part of the world for at least a couple of generations so that in the more recent expansion of betting opportunities, it's been a simple step for Asian fans of those clubs to want to bet on their games ... they're betting on teams with whom they (or their parents and grandparents) are already familiar just as fans rather than as gamblers. Look at how keen so many of Europe's top clubs are to squeeze Far East exhibitions into their pre-season schedules to cash-in on those fan bases even though the travel-time and the humidity don't do the whole concept of pre-season training any favours at all ... Manchester United are even exploring the idea of September or October friendlies during the midweeks they're not involved for once this autumn in the Champions League or Europa League. But you won't find many families with 3 generations of Swindon Robins fans in any Asian city ...hence why speedway's on a much tougher path when it comes to unlocking any lucrative aspects of the Asian betting market.

Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Where have I commented about whether this forum is a place for big stories ? !! All I was commenting upon was Mr Rising's ridiculously overhyped description of what turned out to be such routine information betraying his inability to accurately weigh up what's a big story (and what isn't) despite his role as a professional journalist. If his "positive and concrete" news had turned out to be significant new funding for the project (maybe a million quid injection) or confirmation of any dates for a planning hearing, I'd have agreed it was a big story in the overall scheme of creating a National Speedway Stadium. But, instead, Mr Rising's "positive and concrete" news turned out (by his own admission this evening) to be the dates for a tour of local libraries and community halls by the set of smart sketches of what the stadium might eventually look like. The housing estate in which I live is currently being expanded from its original 45 houses (built in 2001) with a further 190 new houses ... the builder's plans for this expansion went on display for a couple of evenings in our local arts centre but they didn't feel it necessary to hype-up such a routine part of the building process before putting leaflets through our doors inviting us to those viewing nights. Underwhelming doesn't start to do justice to how Belle Vue's actual news today matches up to its preview hype.

By confirming today's news about the display schedule for the stadium sketches was indeed the cue for your "positive and concrete" comments that kicked-off this thread, you've just also confirmed your frighteningly low level of journalistic skills regarding what's a big story and what isn't. If such a desperately routine development of this project counts as "positive and concrete", will you be able to cope with the excitement of any ground-breaking digging by either the Aces management or riders without having a quiet lie-down halfway through it ?

No Southern bias ... I grew up inside the M25 but have lived in a totally different part of the UK for more than 20 years. Based on dealings I've had within speedway with Dave Gordon and Chris Morton as the front men of Belle Vue (rather than Morton's distinguished career as a rider), I'd regard "clowns" as the best way of combining a description of them while also rightly remaining within any guidelines of decency on any internet forum.

The fun really starts if/when the stadium's finally built because then clowns like Gordon/Morton either have to run it successfully themselves or successfully find the right people to run it for them. Based on the way they've fumbled their way through the first 7 years of this project, don't hold your breath about them making the most of such an important development should it become a reality. As I've said plenty of times on this forum before, I'm fully supportive of the idea of a National Speedway Stadium being established in a city with a speedway heritage like Manchester. But I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever in the folk like Gordon/Morton currently being speedway's figureheads in this project and the overhyped trumpeting today of such a routine stage of the planning process by themselves and their lackeys utterly reinforces my opinion.

As "Oldace" has pointed out above, British speedway's time difference with the Indian sub-continent or further east into the Asian markets means it would have to alter its meeting times to cash in on the most conveninent time for those regions to bet ... it's the only reason why both the top Spanish and Italian football divisions a few seasons ago introduced a lunchtime kickoff in their own country every Sunday (12-noon in Spain, 12.30 in Italy) to suit mid-evening Far East viewing because it's totally alien to Spanish/Italian fans to turn up for lunchtime games. But for speedway to make inroads into that region's betting markets, it would have to fight for any foothold of that region's betting companies' sporting interests. Good luck trying to persuade any of those companies to even dip their toe into something like speedway when there's no existing awareness of the sport among the general public compared to the widespread media coverage of cricketing legends or big football clubs. Betting's big on cricket and football over there because it gives the public an extra buzz to their viewing of something they were highly likely to watch anyway ... actually, that's pretty much a worldwide principle for recreational betting (as opposed to professional gambling) in that most bets come from people who'd be watching the event anyway but like to spice up their viewing a bit further. But your average punter in Karachi, Bangalore, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur is going to need a huge amount of encouragement to want to bet on the Swindon Robins and Leicester Lions going round and round in circles within a set of rules completely new to them. I agree with you that they'd bet enthusiastically on your example of 2 flies climbing the nearest wall because they know already what a fly looks like, they know already what a wall looks like and, beyond that, the only rule they need to worry about is that the first fly up the wall wins !! ... if the format's that simple, it's an easy step to generate betting enthusiasm. Most fly-climbing races I've seen haven't developed into an argument between the flies' managers just before halfway whether it's too wet or not to continue that race far enough for it to be declared an official result, only for more heavy rain to abandon the contest a few inches away from it becoming offical ... which in speedway terms is what happened at Perry Barr on Monday night !! The meeting steward on Sky has an impossible job already in dodgy conditions without worrying about whether a bunch of gambling triads will come looking for him afterwards if he makes a decision that wipes out their profits !! = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Tremendous post by "The Voice of Reason" while I was writing my post ... no surprise that you've had to adapt and niche-market your travel agency to successfully adjust to so many more people self-booking their holidays. You're right about free-nights packing out speedway tracks compared to usual-size crowds but they're only fully useful to clubs who can cash-in on what's known as the "secondary spend" of the extra crowd purchasing programmes, food and drink once they're beyond the free turnstiles ... sadly, most British clubs rent their stadiums so they're limited to the extent they can grab that secondary-spend rather than it heading towards the stadium landlords. But the bigger problem is how very far you have to discount the normal admission price before the "freebie crowd" turn out in their thousands ... the relationship between price-tag and size-of-crowd is nothing like as simple an equation as "halve the price and double the number will turn up to create the same total gate receipts". I'd reckon you need to go well below half-price to start seeing reasonable upturns in crowd-size ... for example, around £5 instead of £15-to-£18 ... but even then, the total gate receipts are probably down because the upturn in numbers isn't big enough to cover the huge discount. Back in 2004, in the early days of internet streaming, I was involved with a media company streaming British ice-hockey not just for viewers in this country but also to North American viewers watching our evening games in their daytime with the interest of all the British clubs having a few USA or Canadian imports. We began by offering free access to drum up a customer base that appeared comfortably profitable in due course but got a hell of a shock when trying to charge just £3 a game (or the US/Canadian-dollar equivalents) was enough to frighten away almost 90% of that customer base who simply moved onto anything else on the internet that was free instead ... and that's still the sort of problem speedway faces now in that loads of people like watching it but far too relatively few of them want to pay enough for it !!

In that case, you're living in cloud-cuckoo land about how much value any individual betting company would put on the right to show any individual British domestic speedway meeting. Working on a profit margin of 10% on all bets taken, you're reckoning there are 8-to-10 bookies somewhere in the world that are each confident of attracting £5,000 of bets on, for example, tonight's Swindon-v-Leicester meeting to justify each of them stumping up their £500 rights fee. Sweet dreams in your worldwide search given that there's no speedway in two of the world's most lucrative betting regions (Indian sub-continent and the Far East) and hardly any speedway in the country that's home to all the Las Vegas sportsbooks. Yes, a few of us on this forum like having a bet on speedway and discussing whether particular odds are good value or not ... we're a drop in the ocean to any betting company as far as its overall business plan in concerned.

If you're wondering why there's some cynicism and negativity hanging around, have a look at the following article ... http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/other-sport/speedway/belle-vue-hoping-to-host-2013-681359 In other words, it's taken 28 months of "making substantial progress" according to Dave Gordon in that article from February 2012 just to reach the stage where he now reckons it's a "massive step forward" that the locals can have a quick squint at what it might eventually look like. Back in the 1990's, Durham cricket took only 5 years to go all the way from being a minor-county needing to build a suitable stadium to apply for first-class status (1990) ... to gaining that upgrade and becoming the 18th first-class county while still using club grounds for home matches (1992) ... to start playing home matches at their Riverside ground in Chester-le-Street (May 1995) that's gone on to host plenty of innternational matches including its first Ashes Test last year. Yet Belle Vue, despite already being at its sport's top domestic level, has already used up nearly half of that Durham timeline just to showcase its sketchpad. And you're still wondering why there's some cynicism and negativity hanging around ?

Easiest to reply to both "greyhoundp" and "Reliant Robin" in one go rather than a lengthy use of bandwidth quoting both their posts above ... I don't think it's quite £10,000 a meeting that the dog tracks receive from BAGS ... it's probably nearer £6,000 to £8,000 in the current 5-year-deal that runs out at the end of December 2015 so we're not far away from negotiations beginning to gather pace for the next deal from 2016 onwards. But BAGS (the Bookmakers' Afternoon Greyhound Service) has always been about a partnership between the bookies and dog tracks in a sport where betting is such a fundamental aspect of that particular sport's business plan ... in its earliest years (well before the UK's first all-weather horse racing track opened at Lingfield in 1989). BAGS dog racing was also the bookies' saviour in terms of keeping some live action available during the harshest spells of bad weather because far fewer greyhound meetings are lost to rain/snow/frost. The fee paid for each meeting reflects that the coverage is being shown in around 8,000 shops nationwide so it works out that each shop is paying roughly £1 to show each meeting to its punters ...given each meeting involves at least 11 races and sometimes 14, you're talking about each shop paying a few pence per race ... meanwhile, the track uses about a third of its BAGS-fee on the prize money for the races and can use the rest of that fee to prop up its general costs of running its stadium. But speedway hasn't a hope in hell of commanding such generous funding from the bookies because betting simply isn't anywhere near being a fundamental aspect of the whole business model for speedway ... instead, it's a niche activity within speedway as a whole and it's never going to be much bigger. Think about it ... how many people attending a horse racing or greyhound meeting have a bet, and the answer's nearly everyone ... now consider a speedway crowd and even if there was betting readily available to them at the track, the proportion of them getting involved would still be way below the percentage for a horse racing or dog racing crowd. The speedway promoter has just as good a case as the greyhound promoter for needing a hefty fee to compensate for spectators watching the action away from the track itself ... but you're only to get that fee if whoever's paying the fee can also justify it being worthwhile within their own business and that's why the bookies will stump up several thousand quid for a dog meeting at the same venue as a speedway meeting for which they'll then only be prepared to pay peanuts. The speedway authorities have tried to grab their small slice of the betting market without having much clue about how their own sport does (or more accurately, doesn't) fit into the wider sports-betting world ... as a good guide, most Speedway Grand Prix meetings merit a few paragraphs in the Racing Post tucked into the corner of a page whereas every dog meeting shown on Sky gets 2 pages for its racecard/formbook and at least another 2 pages by the time you add up the space for the tipsters' comments and betting previews attached to that meeting. It's all very well saying this season's streaming is "short term pain for long term gain" providing there's a realistic hope of a big enough long term gain on the horizon to justify any earlier deficits ... more likely, there's some pocket money just about visible on the horizon that's unlikely to cover the shortfalls suffered on the way to reaching it. And I refer you back to my post earlier this morning ... as far as I can work out, the speedway authorities reckoned this season's streaming would be "bet-before-you-watch" rather than what's effectively free streaming providing you're prepared to lend bet365 £5 of your money to activate an account with them.

And expect very slick and dreadfully dusty conditions when it's "Scorchio"

Is today's press release from the Aces what you trailed as "positive news" ? Because if it is, this project has reached the giddy heights of regarding people being able to go along to their local library to see some sketches as "positive news" or as Dave Gordon refers to it, "a massive step forward". More accurately, one of the most basic steps within any planning process (letting the locals have a look at it) is going to take place in a few days' time. If the clowns that run Belle Vue are getting so excited about this basic step, no wonder they're going to be so far out of their depth if they ever have to actually run this project should it ever get completed.

Correct ... but where a big problem appears to have occurred is that when the BSPA or GoSpeed agreed to include AtTheRaces streaming in the new Sky deal, the speedway folk got the impression that anyone would have to place a bet on a particular race (or at least place a bet on the result of the whole meeting) before they were able to access that betting company's live streaming which that company was receiving from ATR. In that way, the more people that connected to the stream, the more money would be getting bet on the action and, therefore (unless the bookies got their odds horribly wrong), the more profitable it would be to stream the action. I don't know whether BSPA/GoSpeed get a one-off fee from ATR-streaming within this part of the new Sky deal or whether there's a sliding scale of the fee depending on the volume of betting ... equally, I don't know whether the speedway folk misunderstood ATR's explanation of how it would work, or whether ATR just explained it rather vaguely. But what is clear is that once ATR's streaming department had access to speedway meetings, they offered this feed to their well-established bookmaking customers with seemingly no restrictions (like "bet-before-you-watch") on how the bookies used this feed once they'd ordered it. Thus, since this season started, bet365 have been streaming ATR's speedway feed in the same way they stream countless foreign football matches, tennis matches and all sorts of other sports at all sorts of times of the day while operating a policy that as long as you've stuck £5 in an account with them, you've access to all the streams regardless of whether you place a bet with them or not. The logic of such a policy at bet365's end in that by letting their customers see things like weather conditions before requiring them to have a bet, it builds up their customers' confidence that they're making a really good selection when they place their bets ... also, while you're enjoying watching something they're streaming, you're also only a click away from having a bet on other events as well as the one you've intended to watch in the first place. All perfectly understandable from bet365's end and, also for example, no problem either for a tennis promoter in Austria who wasn't expecting any spectators from Leeds through his turnstiles so can regard even a tiny slice of profits from their bets as a complete bonus. But while it's still perfectly understandable from bet365's end on a speedway night, the trackside promoter now needs any tiny slices of betting profits (or any flat fee for streaming the meeting) to overtake the missing turnstile money from anyone who's elected (most likely on a damp night) to settle for the "really cheap while accepting it's not as good as being there" alternative of watching via bet365. Providing enough speedway fans (both in this country and abroad) are actually betting on the action rather than regarding it as a free way of watching something they used to pay at a turnstile to watch, then the British speedway promoter joins the Austrian tennis promoter in giving the whole deal the thumbs-up. But when it came to weighing up the pros-&-cons of any streaming deal a few months ago, any estimations within British speedway about the amount of "missing turnstile money" while under the impression of "bet-before-you-watch" may well be uncomfortably different from what's proving to be the amount of "missing turnstile money" while under the actual scenario of "transfer £5 from your bank and then watch as much as you like even if you've no intention whatsoever of having a bet" !!

You're overlooking one thing ... Rosco's too big a numpty to ever have any hope of acquiring something as useful as "diplomatic" skills.