Ben91

They are. Football (one of the biggest of them all) is phasing gambling sponsorship out because it can cause serious addiction. The number of bookmakers who offer speedway markets has also decreased. They aren’t interested. The only people who want to bet on speedway are the existing diminishing fan base or those with serious gambling addiction who would happily bet on Romanian under-12s netball. Companies sponsor things that will help them improve or promote their business generally. Speedway won’t. Greyhounds is a dying sport too and one that has always been synonymous with gambling. It isn’t a partnership that has just sprung up. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but let’s not assume bookmakers are the saviour. It’s straw clutching.

Bookmakers already offer speedway markets. Bet Victor (or any bookmaker) has nothing to gain by sponsoring a sport with such a small profile and potentially no TV coverage. It would have to be a huge favour to Harry Redknapp to get something like that to happen. Things are pretty dire if that’s our great white hope.

What bookmakers are queuing up to sponsor speedway?

Absolutely. That’s where we have to back ourselves to eventually match and even surpass what the Polish league can offer. Won’t happen overnight but that isn’t to say it can’t happen given time. It needs a long term plan however and well, we all know how rare those are in speedway here…

While it may be a sweeping generalisation I feel like Eastern Europeans in generally are a little more stoic than people in the west too. There’s some motorbike racing going on at the end of their street for a couple of hours a week, they just get on with it as part of life. Live and let live. Here on the other hand if someone starts a moped in the next town someone will raise a noise complaint.

Professional sports are generally moving away from gambling sponsorship. It’s not a good look. There are outliers such as darts but that is a sport with a profile to put the bookmaker in front of millions of people on television. Speedway can’t do that. Nobody knows the odds like a bookmaker and Speedway would be a losing bet for them.

British Speedway has two options. A) make sure it is the one other league that riders choose or B ) strike out on its own. Remove the fixed race day and rebuild its own product. Short term the big names will stay in Poland but if we focus on developing our own riders in the long term we won’t be as reliant on Poland propping the sport up as it apparently (according to Poland) does right now. The bubble could always burst in Poland. It did here after all. It is in our best interests to have our own sustainable model here in the event of that happening.

Poland want the sport in a stranglehold. This would be the exact opposite. Doesn’t suit their agenda so won’t happen.

A great signing for Scunthorpe and they’ve done nothing wrong but no way should riders with almost 8 point Premiership averages be allowed to ride in the Championship. Highly likely he’ll double up too. The average conversion rate and doubling up free-for-all is a huge part of the reason the sport is in dire shape here. Apologies to Scunthorpe fans for being a downer on what for them is positive news. It’s sadly a poster child for the negative spiral British Speedway is in though.

This is silly from Poland. They want riders to only ride there eventually. That kills Speedway elsewhere, then it becomes a one nation sport. Very short sighted. Just goes to show stupidity is a sport wide problem.

A two team Premiership made up of Belle Vue and Ipswich. They will race each other home and away 15 times. Top two reach the play-offs to decide the winner.

Your last paragraph is bang on. Making a Championship club take a bullet isn’t the way to achieve it. More clubs can sustain the lower level of racing. Evidenced by the Championship containing more tracks. The way to serve the sport as a whole is to bring the standard to the level that is sustainable across the board. The issue then becomes that because of the mismanagement of the last X amount of years we now have a shortfall of Championship standard riders (let alone Premiership). Not to mention stadium rent costs only going in one direction. Basically we’re in a huge mess. The solution needs to help as many tracks as possible survive in the short term and thrive in the long term, not just be a vehicle for Ipswich to be able to retain Doyle and Sayfutdinov.

Not wanting to move up because it isn’t financially viable isn’t sense of entitlement, it’s sensible. The overall standard of the sport here has dropped. The GP riders and Sayfutdinovs in the Premiership only mask the fact that the rest of the riders are Championship standard at best. That’s why they are racing in both leagues (that and the suggestion they’re owed a living from the sport so should be allowed to race for multiple teams in Britain). The sport here can’t justify the level it tries and wants to present. The fact that landlords want their rent so admission prices will only rise regardless of what’s on show doesn’t help. This spiral will only continue. There’s no overnight fix. Those running the sport need to publicly acknowledge that and put a long term plan in place. Smoke and mirrors breeds rumours and discontent. Tell the fans what is happening and why and most of them will be a lot more understanding.

The current business model is clearly unsustainable. Premiership club dies so a Championship club has to step up to keep the Premiership afloat. Rinse and repeat. This Groundhog Day can only repeat itself a finite number of times, before long there will be no teams left. It’s concerning the number of fans who think things should carry on this way, let alone that the people running the sport seem to agree.

It’s a professional sport (allegedly), not a crèche.

The big stars can bring crowds in, but I’d suggest the repetition somewhat knocks that on the head. If Emil Sayfutdinov (for example) was coming to my track once a season and I absolutely had to be there on that night to see him I’d get it. But last season he went to some away tracks three, maybe four times. It’s not so much of a novelty when the big name is back in town again in a few weeks. This is one of the benefits of a larger league, you don’t race the same teams two to three times at home a season. The damage is done and probably too hard to rectify in the short term but seeing the same old faces week in, week out in both divisions is a contributing (one of many) factor to the decline of the sport on the whole.

A sensible development if so. Hopefully the average conversion rate between the top two divisions will be less lenient too. How would it help? As I understand it the fixed race night is so that riders can ride in multiple leagues internationally. Denmark would still have priority on a Wednesday so any riders who have a team spot there wouldn't be able to race for their British clubs on a Wednesday regardless of the division.

Because that’s the system they voluntarily agree to enter into. They aren’t going in blind. There’s too much rider power now. Before long everyone will ride for Belle Vue because nobody wants to ride for the other clubs.

Does the lack of clarity about what British Speedway will actually look like contribute to the reluctance of Sky (or any other broadcaster) to cover the sport? Seems to me that plans for the league structure are waiting on a potential TV deal yet a broadcaster will surely want to know what it is they’re signing up to show on their channels.

It isn’t harsh. Professional sports enforce their rules regardless of whether someone is inconvenienced or not.

They’re not owed a ride. It’s an opportunity they sign up for to have a team spot. That can be at any of the clubs in the top league and it’s known in advance. Don’t like it, don’t sign up. That’s not unfair in the slightest.

Disagree. The riders know what they’re signing up for. If you want a chance to ride in the top league then you enter the draft. If you’re drafted somewhere then you ride for the team who pick you. If you don’t like it, don’t enter the draft.

The trouble we have now is the result of the relaxing of the average conversion rate between the two leagues and doubling up becoming a free for all about 15 years ago. Before then there was a noticeable difference in standard between the leagues (all three leagues that is). Sounds like that one was driven by rider power, but the promoters also allowed it to happen. There’s now not enough riders of the standard of team spots available. I think this is half the problem, nobody wants the sport to be watered down. It feels like a necessary evil though, because those “good enough” riders just don’t exist in large enough quantities so we’re lumbered with the current incredibly flawed system.

A speedway race is the ideal sport for this short attention span, TikTok generation. The racing itself has always been the attraction, the convoluted rules that go with it are a massive turn off. The sport needs TV coverage. TV doesn’t need speedway. It’s on the people running the sport to make it a product a television company (ideally multiple) desires and wants to throw money at. Television puts out things people want to watch, it isn’t there to promote or sustain the sport. That’s the job of the promoters. TNT don’t want speedway. They had it, let it go and inherited it again as part of the Eurosport/Discovery deal. Meetings take too long to run. That’s a sport wide problem. Some of it is necessity, some could be improved upon. For the sake of the fan in the stadium and to make the sport more palatable for the TV. A highlights show could be very interesting, showcasing the best of the weeks racing. The hurdle there would be gaining permission of whoever has the right to film/broadcast meetings. Presumably BSN. They’d need to be paid well for it, because they’d basically be giving the best of their product away for free each week otherwise.

Bridger averaged over four in his first top flight season. Hardly struggled. There were good riders in the Elite League in those days too.