Ben91

It’s all well and good adding perspective but you have to add both sides to that perspective. Watching a meeting on the TV when you’ve been starved of Speedway is one thing. When it comes to £12 a week it’s a different kettle of fish, especially if you’re already paying for Sky/BT Sport (or whatever other sports/entertainment TV packages you may have). Especially if there is a televised meeting each week on Eurosport that you’re already paying for. Even if that £12 becomes even better value for money should you be watching at home with your family and thus splitting that cost further. Streaming isn’t the future of British Speedway. It is doing a job for now. If anything if we begin to lean on streaming live meetings it will damage the sport further. As is the case with football in the lower leagues, it is the next best thing to actually being in the ground but a lot of fans would rather keep their money in their pocket. There is no comparison to being at the event live, even if it costs a little extra.

I watched last night and the quality of the stream was generally not bad. My only grip is that it was hard to make out some of the commentary over the sound of the bikes at times. I watched last night but I wouldn’t make a regular habit of paying almost £13 to stream a meeting. When the viewership figures come in I hope the fact that it was the British final and the fact that we’re in unprecedented times come into play. I certainly wouldn’t have paid £12.50 to watch the challenge meeting from Belle Vue last week, perhaps a fiver would have piqued much interest.

Last three letters were right, first two should have been S and H.

Not really my point.

Who in their right mind thinks Speedway is an elite sport...

Just read this and it’s really annoyed me. Cynicism played no part in the demise of Rye House, the track where I watched my first meeting, the team I supported. You don’t have the monopoly on feeling hard done by Rob, neither are you any better of a fan because you play the tune that you tried to help. Rye House has died because the club was run beyond it’s means. Any other explanation is false. The team ran out of money mid-season. There are further reasons for that of course but that is the black and white.

Maybe people would be more forgiving if they did a good job the rest of the time...

You’d be wrong to think that. We’re constantly served up sh*t, it’s been like this for decades. That said, given the current circumstances I can’t see any reason to complain about any meetings held this year. People are, of course, allowed to voice their opinions on the price of entry/streaming and the line up though.

Britain have two top level riders, Lambert and Woffinden. I have no issue with Crump riding given the circumstances, but there is no doubt in my mind that 16 British riders could have been found who would have been willing to compete. If I was one of the young lads who went out to ride in the youth meetings on the continent recently and I was overlooked for this despite Australians being called into it I’d feel pretty hard done by.

Woffy’s definitely in the mix I’d say. A couple of better semi-final results over the weekend and he’d be sitting even prettier right now. I still make Bartosz favourite.

I see what you’re saying, my point was more aimed at the fact that the winner of the meeting now gets the most points, on a meeting by meeting basis. Which isn’t a bad thing in my eyes. Of course we’ve had four rounds and four different winners. Out of those winners Freddie has been the most consistent in getting to the final in the other meetings so is rightly top of the pile right now. Without doing the sums I’d assume under the old system that Zmarzlik would be well clear now? If that was the case I’d dare say the series would be a foregone conclusion already. As it is, we could have a completely different complexion this time next week. As a neutral fan that is exciting.

Not true. Because of the importance of gate choices in the semi-finals. Tai wanted as many points as possible and for Zmarzlik to be put into the situation where he has to race it would be more dangerous for him to back off, so the fact that they raced hard doesn’t surprise me at all.

The more I see, the more at ease I am with the new points system. I wouldn’t say I’m for it or against it, it is what it is. I don’t think it has diminished the on track action one bit. It changes the dynamic a little perhaps but it is still in a rider’s best interest to finish as high up the score chart as possible to secure the best gates for the semi-finals. It also places more emphasis on winning the meeting, which there should be. There was some good racing last night, Doyley coming good was enjoyable to see after a rough start to the GP series too. I’m enjoying two GPs back to back as well.

Great to hear. Berwick’s promotion do seem to be one of the more proactive around currently. Perhaps the BSPA should try put a package together to offer schools en mass around the country.

Which tracks that you visited are sending a rider into local schools complete with their bike and kevlars to promote the product? I’d like to see the proof that this is happening but I doubt it is highly.

The graphic was wrong and he was reading from that I can only assume. Had Laguta in fifth on 20 points for some reason.

Half of the beauty of those big names in the league was also that you only saw them once or twice a season. As a Rye fan it was an event when Stoney or Topinka came to town for example, because it didn’t happen every week. These days you see every team visit you at least twice and the novelty of seeing a different set of riders each week isn’t there. No doubt bonus points being included in averages made a difference in a way but there is no chance a rider like Howarth could have held a torch to the riders you’ve listed above. There actually was a worthwhile quality difference from league to league.

I can’t agree with that last sentence. It isn’t the job of the fans to make the product look good. They should be the sounding board for the people running the sport to know whether they are running a product that is entertaining or not. Imagine watching a Premier League match between Spurs and Leicester for example on Sky and the commentators trying to explain how Winks and Dier are playing for Spurs, Barnes and Albrighton are playing for Leicester but next week in the Championship Winks and Barnes will be team mates for Watford as they play against Stoke who will be fielding Dier and Albrighton. It’s an instant credibility drainer. And that’s not on the fans, it’s on the rules and rule makers.

It’s worth noting that Speedway in Poland is cheap for us but not necessarily for the Polish. The average national wage in Poland is just shy of £10,000 less than the average national wage in Britain (from a quick Google search). A night at the speedway for a Pole may still be better value for money than for a British fan attending in Britain but it isn’t cheap when compared to the living wage. I’m not too sure what the costs of going to a league meeting are in Poland but I know the individual meeting at Bydgoszcz the day after the Toruń GP last year only cost £5 to get into and the field looked roughly Championship standard to me. You’re looking at over three times that price to watch second tier Speedway here. When I went to Ostrow a few years back a beer was less than £2.

Called KK as a possibility. Berntzon is a turn up for the books, one season wonder probably.

It works in Rybnik’s favour having Lambert as their number eight as within reason they can put him in as and when they want to. I think Fricke is another who is over rated but who knows what the next few years could hold for him.

It has always seemed widely accepted that when a club is on TV they will get a lower crowd because fans would rather sit at home because they don’t have to shell out their entrance fee. To me that screams out the lack of value for money there is in attending Speedway. I support Stevenage FC. If we are ever on TV (it has happened a few times) I don’t decide to sit at home and watch, if anything I’m more interested in going to the match live. I’m reluctant to draw comparisons to Premier League football as it is a completely different beast but the majority of games are covered live or given extensive highlights yet it is rare to see many empty seats at these games. There is no substitute for attending a live sporting event, yet the numbers watching Speedway on TV don’t seem to correlate to the numbers who appear to walk through the gates to watch meetings in the flesh. I can’t see that being anything other than a promoting and cost to the punter issue. WWE use a technique with their TV shows when they have empty seats in which they move as many people as possible to the seating that their hard (main) camera faces. This gives the impression of a packed arena. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for Speedway tracks to do something similar when the TV cameras are in town. A track like Sheffield, or Wolves, where fans can’t stand on the back straight would surely be better served having the cameras set up facing the main stand where the crowds are packed in as opposed to in the main stand facing a desolate, empty area.

I’m not surprised with the recent Boxing figures for BT. The cards have been almost full of home fighter vs “journeyman” bouts. Anyone with half a clue about boxing would have been able to predict those results and know the events haven’t really been worth watching. Matchroom on Sky on the other hand have at least thrown in a few 50/50 bouts. But that is a digression from the topic at hand of course.

Interesting. Assuming this was nearer the beginning of Speedway being on Sky Sports? Would like to see your source of these figures, and the figures the sport has been doing on BT in relation to other sports such as boxing which has had a resurgence in recent years to see just how much things have changed.

After 13 pages of good debate/discussion I’d suggest there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the title. If anything it probably piqued the interest of more forum users than had the title been “Time to have an inquiry into the problems facing British Speedway.”