Ben91

The common thread between everyone reading and posting on this thread is that we are all Speedway fans. Even if our opinions on the whys and wherefores differ, the majority of us, I think it is safe to say, agree that something in British Speedway needs to change. This isn’t a viewpoint driven by the current situation regarding Covid-19 either but a long standing belief held by many of the most important people in the sport. The fans. Each of us have an opinion of what the main problem is with the sport - that one thing we would like to see fixed personally. But in reality the issues are deep rooted and multi-faceted. There is not one quick fix for British Speedway and I don’t think there has been for as long as I have been a fan. I began to make a list of things that could be seen as issues within the sport here by fans. It is not exhaustive, I'm sure we could add to it, but it is very long. These issues are not necessarily my opinion either. Some of the issues overlap of course but that just proves that the troubles within the sport are not black and white: Racing isn’t good enough. British riders aren’t good enough. Too many foreign riders taking spots Brits could fill. Riders want to be paid more money. The sport is too expensive for the fan (no value for money). Meetings take too long. No additional entertainment at meetings. Race night issues, clashes with foreign leagues. Doubling up. Competition and race formats. Guests, R/R etc. Averages and average manipulation. No big names in the top league. Facilities aren’t good enough. The reality of the situation is simple. We must rip it up and start again. Now is as good a time as any to do so. With correct planning we could reboot British Speedway in time for the 2021 season with a model built for the long term success of the sport in this country and aspirations for it to thrive once again long term. 2020 could still be salvaged depending on how much of a summer we are left with, however this could be focussed less around the team aspect of the sport and more around an individual element, with a focus on the British Championship, perhaps being run over a series of qualifying rounds culminating in a small GP style competition.

Anyone can have an Audi, BMW, Mercedes etc. these days if they’re willing to pay monthly and never own the vehicle. Doesn’t mean the fans are affluent, just that they might not have their priorities in the right place. Speedway fans, Speedway mindset.

As I’ve already posted here, that strategy isn’t going to bring new faces in. It is no more than just giving up. The over 50s who attend now are in the main long term fans of 20-30 plus years. A lot of them won’t be around in another 20-30 years, although at the rate we’re going they will outlive the sport anyway. Their contemporaries age wise will more likely than not have been exposed to the sport already at some point in their lives and decided they didn’t like it. And that will have been during a time when Speedway was in a better place than it is now. I’d be very concerned if the thought process of anyone involved in the sport was to market to over 50s solely because they make up the majority of the present, ever dwindling crowds. But then that is a very Speedway thing to do, worry about today rather than having any kind of long term plan.

Businesses maybe. Sport is a different kettle of fish, although I still appreciate the business aspect. Speedway needs to be marketed as what it is, 60 seconds of action, loud, dirty and action packed (sometimes...). Presenting the product that way brings in people of all ages, genders etc. who will appreciate that kind of entertainment rather than saying “let’s target 50+ males.” For example. Speedway’s current core supporters don’t need to be advertised to in brutal honesty. They will show up whatever dross is served up and they know where to find the information they need about events that are taking place. Floating fans also know this information too. My issue with targeting an older audience just because that is the group that makes up the bulk of the current audience is that these people on the terraces did not come to Speedway as 50+ year-old adults. They have been fans for 20-30 years, if not longer in some cases. Their peers will probably have been exposed to the sport already in their youth when it was more popular and decided then that it wasn’t their cup of tea. It’s unlikely that that will have changed now, particularly with the state Speedway is in here.

It isn’t the “scattergun” approach that is failing. It is the lack of good promotion/marketing in general. The target audience for Speedway, as a sport, can be vast in terms of age and gender. The issue is that it isn’t promoted enough and when new fans do somehow stumble across it the way the sport is run and presented doesn’t leave them wanting to come back.

Would be easily done. Although in such a small league play-offs are pointless in reality, over half the league qualify. But that’s not a corona virus driven issue I guess.

In the Ekstraliga there are only 14 rounds of fixtures plus play-offs. The clubs won’t need to race every night to get the season done. Realistically they could start their season in June and still finish up by the end of October. There are ways in which we could take a leaf out of the Polish book in a positive manner. There seems to be a very British attitude that consistency is key and tracks have to have a meeting once a week. In Poland it is once a fortnight as a general rule. One week you are at home, the next away. Still consistent and not bank breaking for the fan. Yet people will say “if I don’t go every week I’ll get out of the habit of going.” People don’t get out of the habit of going to watch Man Utd and they don’t have a home game every week. If we scrapped B fixtures and play-offs the Premiership season could be completed in 12 weeks, that’s with one fixture a week per team (and no postponements).

My experience of watching racing in Poland is just that it’s better. Even when the big names aren’t in the meeting. It is cheaper to get in, the meetings are run at a better pace and the racing is more competitive. That goes for league and individual meetings. I’ve seen seemingly more effort from riders in a “meaningless” individual in Poland than from others racing in our play-offs.

Of course these are valid points but it is symptomatic of standard short term thinking in the Speedway world. My parents are in that age group, they find speedway less interesting than watching paint dry so I don’t think the presentation is necessarily suited to that age group. Just that a lot of the die hard fans of the sport fall in to that age group and don’t care what dross they get served up because they’ll go every week anyway. If you have a business and have the choice of targeting one group - families in their 30s or individuals/couples in their 50s/60s, the logical move is to target the families. They are potentially longer term customers with children who could grow up to be fully paying customers as well. Of course, Speedway isn’t limited to targeting only one group. There’s no reason why the product cannot be promoted and appeal to multiple age groups and situations.

Sport is for everyone. Speedway is a sport and can be for everyone. When I go to football the crowd is predominantly male, yes, but the age range of fans goes from toddlers right up to the elderly and there are an increasing number of female fans also. Appealing to the younger generation is logical. They are the fans of the future. The product now may find most of its audience in the over 50-60 demographic but that isn’t the smartest demographic to target to bring in new fans. Speedway is a strange entity. I am not a huge motorsport fan but I used to love my Speedway. If the sport here was governed and promoted properly I may well love it again sometime. The sport’s uniqueness is its selling point. It is loud and dirty, people like that. It is dangerous, people like that. You can see the whole race wherever you are in the stadium and it only takes one minute. That is a huge selling point for those who get bored easily with other motorsports because they can only see one part of the circuit or because the races drag on for too long. What holds back that part of proceedings in Speedway is unnecessary delays. Track grading and watering, riders having back to back rides etc. These are issues that could be fixed although that is a completely different subject.

Speedway isn’t a big enough concern that people with little to no knowledge of the sport will attend on “name value.” To the uninitiated it wouldn’t matter whether Bartosz Zmarzlik or Ben Woodhull were doing a few laps around their local track, if it isn’t promoted properly nobody will bat an eyelid (or attend). To my mind, there are four main groups of people that promoters should look at. The die-hards - these people will attend week in, week out even if a steaming pile of turd is presented before them. The issue is that they are advancing in age of course and won’t be around forever. The floating fan - they pick and choose their meetings. Perhaps their club has folded but they’ll still attend 10-15 meetings a season, not necessarily at the same track each time but where they deem a meeting to be worth travelling to, be it for entertainment or value for money reasons. A lot of these floaters will perhaps go to watch meetings specifically because a rider who used to represent their club is riding. Those links to the defunct club will eventually disappear as riders retire and those floaters will drop into the next category. These fans already like Speedway, they should be the easiest for their local track to turn into regular attendees. The “oh they still do Speedway?” - Personally I attend 1-3 GP meetings a season now and that is it. I don’t attend domestic Speedway. I reckon there are a lot of people out there in the same boat as me. I would push such people into this group. Those who know about Speedway but haven’t been for a long time or attend very rarely. Harder to draw in than the floating fan but their interest could be piqued with the right promotion of the product because at the very least, they know what Speedway is. Finally, the uninitiated - anyone who doesn’t know what Speedway is. This is the group of which there is the largest number of people to target but also the hardest to draw in. Ironically they are probably the easiest to win over with the correct promotion strategy. We all love the product of Speedway, which is four riders going hell for leather round the track. That is a bug that bites hard and is later ruined by overcharging and politics among other things. It may be a cliche but they say if you throw enough s*** at the wall some of it will stick, if you throw enough people into a speedway meeting, some of them will stick. The key is to getting them into the meetings in the first place and this is where we currently struggle without a doubt.

Remember it well. Was absolutely awful, as was the eyesore of a “stadium-cross” track in the middle of the track.

Speedway doesn’t know it’s identity and that’s half the issue. It is dirt track racing. Yet the riders expect it to be their full time job. Promoters expect fans to pay upwards of £18 at the top level for less than 15 minutes of action (terrible value for money). Fans expect facilities befitting of the price they pay and don’t get them. Landlords expect their rent and don’t care how much money the speedway makes or doesn’t make. The problems are deep rooted. What needs to happen is a proper reset, if that means going back to being a semi-professional sport then so be it. One constant that I always find is that as fans we seem to be bottom of the totem pole when it comes to priorities within the sport. Realistically it should be opposite. There will always be people willing to race Speedway for the love (granted they may not be of as high a standard as some riders in British speedway now) but there won’t always be fans if the sport continues to be run the way it is now.

No. I read your response this morning and did about half an hour of research that you could have done yourself, because unlike some my life doesn’t seem to revolve around Internet forums. Naturally you wanted me to end up being wrong and with egg on my face and you’d have achieved looking like a real big person online. You would have been ignored if I’m honest because of the tone you took but Greyhoundp took an interest in the subject too and made a comment so I took the time to back up my point. That “fantasy” number that I came up with is hard fact. They are British speedway riders. That was the question that was asked, and then answered. End of. I’m done with discussing it with you.

You didn’t specify that. What’s happened here is that you challenged me in a condescending manner, I proved you wrong, which you can’t accept so you’ve now moved the goal posts.

I said there are enough riders to fill every spot. I then proved just that. I didn’t say it would be good, competitive or viable or that I wanted it to happen. Nobody is seriously suggesting such a watering down of the product. Not that the current product is worth travelling miles for anyway.

Perhaps if you asked nicely rather than making demands of a stranger on the internet you'd have got a more polite, helpful, response. There are 26 teams in Britain for 2020 (19 senior, 7 NL/amateur, whatever you like to tag it as). That is 182 team spots and 182 riders needed. A little bit of digging in places where the information is easy to find (BSPA website) shows that there are 77 British riders assigned to team spots across the leagues. There are also currently three team spots yet to be filled in the National League - these riders have to be British. Newcastle also have a National Trophy team adding a further six British riders who are unattached to another club. This gives us 83 British riders that are spoken for for 2020 already. Next, we look at last season's green sheet averages to see the Brits who rode but aren't currently attached to a team for the 2020 season. There are another 20. We're up to 103 British riders who have been active in league speedway here within the last year or are due to ride this season. Lastly, riders who competed in second half league racing last term. This information is readily available on this forum - and adds a further 53 British speedway riders. Our running total is 156 British riders who have thrown their leg over a bike in the last year. At this point I also need to factor in a British rider who didn't race here last season, Tai Woffinden. This leaves a total of 157 British Speedway riders. As an added bit of context here, I have omitted Shelby Rutherford and Connor Bailey here as despite riding NL last season they are from New Zealand and Australia respectively. Rory Schlein is included as he races as a British rider now. Of course, of that 157 there will be some who have retired, but there will also be others who have picked up Speedway in the off season, or turned 15 and are now eligible for National League competition. There will also be those who competed in other forms of second half racing or amateur meetings so in reality the figure will be higher than 157 but let's use that as the working number. Now we need to fill the team spots. As it stands, due to doubling up (19 riders are due to pull double duty between Premiership and Championship, 11 between Championship and National League) the 182 team spots across the three divisions are filled by 142 riders. 142 is less than 157. There are enough British riders to go around, albeit at a much watered down standard (as I already pointed out it would be). It is worth noting that I am in favour of riders from all nations racing here, I'm merely proving my point that there are enough British riders to go around under the current doubling up rules if, hypothetically, the league had to be run with Brits only. I acknowledge that the standard of riders would be a lot lower of course. My personal hope is that doubling up will eventually be scrapped, one of the common stock responses when that is mentioned here is "there aren't enough riders." And that response is in terms of Speedway riders from any nation, not just British ones. There are enough riders.

I’m sure it wouldn’t take long to work that out if you want to do it. It would significantly water down the product as I said but teams could still be filled if the only option was to use British riders exclusively.

The standard would have to be dropped across the board but without overseas riders there are still enough British riders to fill every team.

I would currently place Drabik and Smektala above Lambert but none of them have reached their full potential I would imagine. What matters is what these riders are like at their peak and when they hit it. Look at Greg Hancock, he probably peaked 5-10 years before he won his last three world titles but the competition around him was better at that time. There are many factors that determine who has a better career but that doesn’t necessarily make one rider better than another who achieves less. It is all about circumstance. It is also worth noting (fittingly in relation to Hancock) that Lambert was almost a permanent GP rider last season due to Greg’s issues however he would not have been expecting that when he prepared for the season and then during the year there was the uncertainty as to whether Hancock would be back at any point or not. That must have had a knock-on effect on Robert’s performances both in and out of the GP. He still managed to mix it on occasion and had he been fully geared up for a full GP campaign I feel he would have fared better than he did in his bit part role last year.

What could save the sport is the fact that it isn’t the only sport to be halted by Covid-19. As it stands no sport is happening here at all if we remain in “lockdown.” If landlords still go looking for their rent that is incredibly short sighted, because it could put the tenant out of business and then ultimately they have lost a revenue stream in future. This may only happen at circuits where perhaps the landlords want Speedway out (conspiracy alert). Speedway teams are businesses. To my knowledge not many have full time employees however, so until they host meetings they actually haven’t got a huge outlay (rent aside - which most sensible landlords would put on ice). The people who are likely to suffer financially are the riders who won’t be getting paid. Perhaps this is indicative however of how Speedway continues to be mutton dressed as lamb in Britain. It cannot sustain employing riders as their sole form of employment at the best of times. The stream of riders will not dry up after this however so the sport will not die. This is an ideal time for the BSPA/SCB (or whatever acronym they want to use) to sit down, go back to basics and reshape the sport properly with the future in mind as opposed to chucking a different load of turd at the wall each winter and hoping something sticks.

No it isn’t. They are ruthless (pun not intended) but they aren’t stupid. If any rider went into their top league and struggled then eight or nine years later was suddenly riding at an elite level a team would pick them up because it is a sport and it’s about winning.

Not at all. Jason Doyle was still riding second division speedway here at 27 as one example. Lambert is miles ahead of Doyle when the two were the same age. Of course they’re different people and their career arcs will naturally be different but if Lambert suddenly kicked on to the elite level at the age of 30 he’ll be picked up in Poland.

Lambert is undoubtedly a great talent, one who was seemingly destined for the very top, particularly when he burst on to the league racing scene. To look at where he is in relation to his age shows just how well he has done as a British rider. Can he get better? Undoubtedly. Will he get better? Who knows. Some of Lamberts peers age wise in world speedway are better than him at present, that doesn’t mean they will always be better than him. It is easy to forget how young he is due to how long he has been on the scene. I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes but if there is room for him to improve his fitness and professionalism then that would only make him an even better prospect. What I do know from watching him is that his gating and work in the first bend could be improved upon. If he does that then a world championship is not out of the question in the future. However they don’t give world championships out for fun, look at the likes of Leigh Adams who spent the majority of his career at the pinnacle of the sport and never claimed the ultimate prize. I’d love to see Robert competing at the sharp end of the GP series in years to come and I believe that he is still the best prospect we have by a country mile at present.

Residing in the capital city of Sarcasm... hasn’t been the same since they built that bypass.