Ben91

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.”

The waters muddy a little I guess as to whether the spectator aspect is classed as physical attendees or eyes on the product through TV viewers. The Crucible only holds 900 odd but World Championship Snooker is far more popular than World Championship Speedway in terms of TV viewers I’m sure.

I guess it depends on whether you mean solely for viewing or for participating too. In terms of viewing, if not cobbled in with “motorsport” then I imagine Speedway isn’t even on the radar of many people. Football, Rugby, Cricket, Golf, Boxing, Darts, Snooker, MMA, Horse Racing, Athletics, Tennis, Touring Car, Superbikes, F1, even American Football off the top of my head would all draw a bigger crowd/interest/TV audience. Then there are the likes of Basketball and Ice Hockey I wouldn’t be surprised to see being as, if not more popular. One thing is for sure, if you went into the average British high street and asked the general public “Do you know what (insert a sport above) is?” and asked the same question with Speedway as the sport, more people would know the first sport.

I think if such an event happens it has to be held every four years and not every year as it is currently. To make it yearly would dilute the prestige and fan interest in my opinion. If it is run over a two-three week period then fans could travel abroad for it and take in the whole tournament. We certainly have the infrastructure to run such an event, as do Poland, Sweden and Denmark. There are potentially other countries who do too. We have staged World Cup events before Belle Vue’s new stadium was built although it would be an ideal place for a final. As for the press coverage I believe that is a two way street. People can be quick enough to criticise the mainstream media for not covering the sport but in reality is the sport reaching out to the mainstream media and saying “something worth covering is happening here.”?

International competition every year, absolutely. But I’d keep the World Cup name for the team event solely. You could also stage the Under-21 World Cup on an odd year and make a bigger deal of that event. This is a big digression from the thread of course though!

I’d personally like to see an actual World Cup. Run once every four years, with perhaps the Speedway of Nations style pairs event run every four years also and staggered so that there is a big international tournament every two years. By a proper World Cup I mean the entire tournament staged in one country with groups and team meetings. It would take an innovative format but I’m sure something could be done if some thought was put into it. Although I appreciate the Poles would potentially clean up in any such event.

Yarmouth and Brafield (Northampton) are both operated by Spedeworth I believe, who also run bangers out of Eastbourne, Ipswich and Mildenhall. Which means there is a working relationship at least potentially, and also surely opening a Speedway track in a venue that already hosts motorsport should make the noise complaints an easier hurdle to cross. Whether the venues would draw a sustainable crowd is another matter altogether.

I think this would be a success or failure on a club by club basis. Depending on how valued fans of each club feel. I do wonder how much money Speedway is haemorrhaging in the current climate anyway? I can’t imagine any clubs employing full time staff and thus needing to furlough them. If meetings aren’t being run then there are no outgoings at all. At worst the tracks who own their own facilities will have to maintain those facilities to keep them ticking over. I guess clubs have already paid signing on fees to riders for the season but would these not roll over to next year as the party line so far looks like we could just be picking up from where we left off at the start of this season in 2021.

Forums are for debate Rob. So as fans we should fight because the people we would be fighting for seemingly couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery? It isn’t the job of the fans to save the sport, it is the job of the people running the sport to save the sport. For. The. Fans. No fans, no sport. It amuses me that anyone who doesn’t agree with your opinion is apparently trying to “be clever” and trying to put people off the sport. How about some reasoned debate as opposed to toy throwing.

Again, those things mean little. More experience and better backing doesn’t mean better on track. Just in the same way that one day things could just click for a very experienced rider who isn’t a top level performer and they could really kick on, look at Leon Madsen and Jason Doyle.

Over the last two decades I would venture (without doing too much research) that we’ve lost a lot more tracks than we’ve gained. Due to a variety of reasons, opening a track now is a lot harder than it was in the past. Noise concerns, lack of interest from fans, Speedway being a black hole for money being just three. Opening a new Speedway track ultimately is more trouble than it is worth. That isn’t cynicism, I wish it was. But it’s realism. Blind positivity helps nobody in the same way that criticising for criticism’s sake helps nobody. What is becoming ever more apparent on this forum recently to my mind is that more and more fans are growing disillusioned with the way the sport is run here. But change seems to be a long way away, or non-existent. Supporters are customers. They don’t owe the promoters a thing. It is the promoter’s job (and business) to get numbers through the turnstiles. If those numbers are dropping off then they aren’t doing their job properly. If a promoter can’t promote then why do they deserve for supporters to support them?

Age has no bearing on when a rider reaches their peak. Holder seems a different rider this year so far but whether he can keep it up remains to be seen. I think Lambert is the better rider now and has the higher ceiling potentially but he needs to get his starts sorted out to mix it on the GP stage. I half expect us to be on the cusp of a Zmarzlik era however, and for any other rider to get much change out of him could be tricky.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t held late despite having months to prepare for it.

Shouldn’t have taken those years away from the GP when he was arguably the best rider in the world.

Indeed. The connotations in the west have changed however since the Nazi party picked it up. I think the main issue here is more people getting offended on behalf of other people than anything else. Somerset made a smart business move because some people will be offended or complain about it because they need to have something to complain about. Whatever way you want to look at it they’ve saved themselves potential criticism and a headache.

The swastika was originally a religious symbol. Things can change.

It isn’t. In a few places there may be proactive promotions. Note that of the five teams you have listed three are relatively new promotional teams. The IOW have always had to make hay with holiday crowds too, although granted their new promotion are doing a great job undeniably and we need more promotions like theirs. I’d suggest you read Barry’s post again also and read what he is actually saying. Proactively promoting is all well and good. The product on track is an incredible one, that is why we all love the sport. But the way the sport is run overall it is tantamount to polishing a turd. People complaining about having to shuffle along a few steps on the terracing will be an issue as long as there’s terracing and isn’t anything to do with Speedway or old timers. It’s an inherent part of any sport where there is terracing or unreserved seating and people who like to watch from the same spot week in, week out.

As I’ve said elsewhere, a big issue here is that we insist on running the leagues to a higher standard than the riders that are available. If we cut cloth to measure people would complain that the product is being “watered down.” The other excuse is that there “aren’t enough riders.” There are enough riders, just not enough willing to ride here who are of the unrealistic standard British Speedway is trying to run at. Look at the top tier teams due to race this season. Realistically I would say there are five riders we would definitely lose from that league should we cut our cloth to measure. Ironically they’re five who don’t need to double down to make the sport pay, Doyle, Pedersen, Iversen, B. Kurtz and Kildemand. The main issue I guess is that landlords are still going to want the same rent from their tenants whether the sport is part time or not. However without so much money going out on wages it wouldn’t be an insurmountable hurdle. The die hards will attend whatever is served up. They’re pretty much all we have left in terms of boots on the ground in stadiums anyway, so to suggest a league of a more realistic standard wouldn’t work due to fan numbers is a lazy excuse. It wouldn’t be that hard to reset Speedway on a better path here but nobody is seemingly interested in doing so. To do so we need to take a step back, instead we keep trying to build a palace on the sand. But at least each Premiership track would have got to see Nicki Pedersen twice across the year eh.