enotian

If there was a streamed competition which featured a Weymouth team, even though they have no home fixtures, would you be inclined to subscribe then? For example a pairs event in which the same two riders (injury permitting) exclusively represented Weymouth at each round. They'd be exclusively Weymouth riders in that competition. Although they'd more than likely ride for other teams in other competitions. Is that something that would interest you? It doesn't sound particularly authentic but you imagine the way to maximise streaming is to appeal to a wider range of supporters i.e. not just two teams.

That's a very strange interpretation of that sentence to get to Eurosport is free? Maybe I should have pointed out that I was referring to Discovery Sport but I think that was clear in the context of the post. Whether I agree or not is irrelevant, I just understand the business model. They want to attract more customers to their service via exclusive content. They won't achieve that by making their content available via other platforms that their potential subscribers already have access to. If you don't want to give them two slices of the cake then just don't subscribe. Nobody is forcing anyone to, you are free to do as you wish in that respect. As it happens it looks like I missed out based on the result but that was my choice to watch the cricket, which I'm also enjoying.

I didn't say it was.

Diamonds vs Weymouth was the first match I went to. Late 70's. Don't really recall it at all but I think I still have the programme in the loft. Owen vs Yeates was the big deal. From memory of the programme I think Simon Wigg and/or Cross were in the Weymouth team. Future stars. Serious question though, have you not been tempted to subscribe to the BSN streaming service? I think they stated it was aimed at attracting lapsed supporters without a team to follow locally, like yourself. Interesting to know if that appeals to you or if not why? Whilst I'm on 'interesting' chat by the Sky commentary team about the state of World cricket during the rain delays at today's ODI. Expressing concern of the monopoly of the top three nations and the negative impact that has on the other nations. Interesting discussion, acknowledging that you need a range of competitive nations for the sport to grow and you can't base the product around a 'local derby' (the ashes). So not just Speedway having problems.

It is a shame not being able to view the whole competition without subscribing but you kind of understand why they have to restrict some content to generate subscriptions. They can't give everything away but you do wonder how attractive the semi finals are? I'll probably just watch the T20 cricket they're up against, since I already pay for that. The semi's look fairly straightforward for the top two but the race for third might be interesting but I'm not that bothered about the 6th and 7th qualifier as they'll just be make weights in the Final. Wonder if it would be better starting with last years finalists (including host nation if applicable) in semi 1 (top three to Final, bottom 4 to semi 2), next 7 nations in event 2 (top 3 to semi 2) and the top 3 from semi 2 into the Final plus the hosts (promote 4th from semi 2 if the hosts have qualified. I might have been tempted to subscribe for semi 1 and event 2 might be competitive (if Zagar could be bothered). As it stands some of the semi final heats are mis-matches. So I'll stick to the cricket.

depends on how you define a great job. If that's keeping the sport running in difficult times then certainly, great job done. if it's making speedway the best possible product it can be, then no. because it's not. again you can't view this in isolation. even if Edinburgh is great and can't be faulted the holistic piece is not in great shape. what's the point in Workington, Eastbourne, Swindon or whoever returning in 2023 when they (or some of the other teams) won't be able to track competitive teams because there are not enough riders to go around even if they are riding for more than one team, which in itself is a divisive issue. How long will those clubs last starting off at the current NDL level? Could they even contemplate it? These are all things which could be addressed but never seem to be. On the point of tracks being lost to development if speedway was a vibrant important part of the local communities there'd be more chance of those developments being denied. You don't often get successful sports clubs kicked out of their home venues as they should boost the economy of the local area. Maybe that's a little unfair on my part but the weakest always get picked off first.

Which is probably why it's in the state it is in. Lack of awareness or denial. This is a senior experienced official denying that the reality of British speedway isn't *depressing, despite (seemingly) falling attendances and as a result fewer tracks. I worked a bit with promoters of music event's, club night's and the like. They can never comprehend why their ticket sales for the next event were poor when they had such a great time putting the last event on. It was a brilliant night they'd say. Maybe it was for them as there's a lot going on when you're organising an event but did the paying guests enjoy it as much? They didn't get to hang out with the superstar DJ or didn't have to queue for the bar etc etc. You have to remember that the vast majority of customers don't have access to the pits/backstage or superstar performers/riders. Any lulls in the entertainment aren't filled by dealing with running the event or catching up with old friends. And the backstage facilities aren't always the same as those the paying public have to endure. It is hard for promoters to distance themselves from the experience of the event being at the epicentre of it to what the experience is like for the paying public. Sometimes they're vastly different. You see it with TV series like Question of Sport or Celebrity Juice. Those involved in making the shows must be having a great time doing so but they're basically unwatchable. Therein lies the problem. If you don't even think there's anything wrong with the product why would you try to fix it? * I wouldn't have used that word. The declining state of speedway wouldn't depress me, there's a million and one other things to do. It's just a shame that such a potentially exhilarating sport is producing such a weak product.

Isn't the answer that the top level of speedway in this country should actually be a European league? With Discovery Sports being the effective governing body. Think of a pan European 16 team league on a 4TT (20 heats) basis. 5 home fixtures and 15 away. 20 meetings for each team with all the SGP stars and the best of the rest making up the 64 rider list. Maybe some grading system so the SGP riders are spread across the teams. Maybe U21 riders at reserve. Teams/Tracks selected to aid development of those venues to SGP standard and spread across a variety of countries. Poland would dominate of course, say 4 Polish teams and two each from Sweden, Denmark and GB. With the remaining 6 teams from other European countries with a view to developing the sport in those countries. It sounds like at least a £25 product given the calibre of rider and the scarcity of meetings (5 per venue plus any play off, i.e. only 10 meetings in the UK if there are two UK teams) From a Discovery Sports perspective it's product development for the SGP and SON/SWC. In terms of riders and venues. It also gives them loads of content for their subscription service (80 qualifying meetings plus play offs and grand final) they could even make the latter stages free to air to generate more subscriptions, with at least 10 countries with a team and many more with riders involved. It would also give them control over the rider assets and allow them to develop new stars from different countries making the SON and SWC better competitions in the long run. It gives them a clear rider progression plan SGP4, SGP3, SGP2 & (domestic leagues), Euro League and finally SGP, From a rider perspective those 20 meetings are probably all the SGP stars need. Most do 28 fixtures across two leagues at the moment. The standard would be a similar to the Polish Extraliga to gauge form for the SGP. Non SGP riders would have 20 meetings and the potential of riding in a domestic league(s). For example if they did Euro League and 1 domestic league they'd have maybe 40+ league fixtures per year (not including cups or play offs) which would go some way to removing the curse of doubling up in the UK. Whilst beyond Woffinden, Lambert and Bewley not many Brits would get Euro league places (maybe 4 more) if the SGP riders did sit out domestic speedway that would free up places across the Danish, Polish and Swedish leagues. So those riders wanting to be full time professional could do so by riding in other domestic leagues. Focusing on the UK the two Euro League teams would also have sides in the top domestic league, lets call it British Elite Speedway League (BESL) of say a maximum of 14 teams (13 home plus cup and play offs) is akin to the current fixture list for both PL and CL. Probably no need or ability to attract SGP riders in the BESL. Heat Leaders being the top UK riders plus lower order foreign Euro League riders. 2nd strings UK based riders and/or young foreign riders. Reserves UK U21 (or age defined by number of suitable riders available [i.e. if there's not 28 U21 riders of a suitable standard increase to U24 etc]). Might struggle to attract a TV deal but focus on streaming. Those age defined reserves (development riders) being the only riders allowed to also ride in the 2nd tier, lets call it the British Development Speedway League (BDSL), to give them track time and heat leader responsibility. supplemented by UK based semi professional riders and/or new foreign riders with at least one reserve being a UK rider with under 50 matches experience (junior development riders). A sustainable league focusing on youth development and priced accordingly. Of course it would depend on the co-operation of the domestic authorities and them accepting their place in the pyramid so it would never happen.

It is a really important question to which the answer is, I suspect, nobody knows. Nobody knows why it was relatively successful at one point (GB victories internationally?) and nobody knows why it is no longer popular now because nobody knows who it's supposed to appeal to or how it would appeal to them. It's a mongrel. Doesn't really appeal as a sport kids could dream of becoming a star at because it's not accessible. But doesn't appeal to the rich who could access it because it's not F1 or lead to MotoGP. Doesn't appeal as a team sport (even when it was genuinely 7 team members with one club) because there's not a lot of team work on the track. Doesn't appeal to motor sports fans because the bikes are not able to be used anywhere other than on speedway tracks. Doesn't appeal to extreme sports fans because there is no obvious big air thrills despite it being far more dangerous than most of these X games sports. During the sky sports coverage it was always pitched as a great family night out. I never thought that was a good idea but I don't have a family so maybe that's what it should be? But do lots of families do things together anymore? Despite all this it is still one of the most thrilling sports to watch when it's done well. Who knows?

they wouldn't be riding more fixtures would they. If you look at league fixtures only (assume cups and Play Offs are as is) they're doing 20 PL and 20 or 18 CL. With a 10 team PL you'd be doing a max 36. So not too much difference but that's only if the PL clubs want to stage 18 home fixtures as opposed to the current 10? They're more likely to only want to stage 9 home fixtures (so as not to dilute the TV and sponsorship income) which would mean a rider going from c38 league matches to 18 league matches. and if the teams are reduced to six men then you probably end up facing the top riders just as often. the sums just don't add up for clubs or riders regardless of it being the right thing to do. reality is that the revised structure won't deliver the increases through the turnstiles to allow the clubs to afford the increases in rider rates, to compensate them for the reduced number of fixtures. the Pandora's box of doubling up once opened is difficult to close

couple of factors to halt what needs to be done. 1. TV money split between 10 or even 8 instead of 6 reduces the revenue receipts for the existing 6. Those that move up lose streaming receipts, replaced by TV money? 2. Remove doubling up and the riders increase their rates to compensate. The lack of available riders gives them a strong bargaining position. 6 or even 5 man teams might help but would riding 5 heats per meeting compensate for riding in two leagues? In summary each team has less revenue and at the same time their costs go up. Not very appealing.

It's a really good shout. Loads of relatively new investment in the area with the new Gateshead College, Sage and Baltic plus all the quayside apartments and OU buildings. Then you have the new Arena under construction and perhaps a new Metro/Local Rail station if the Leamside expansion gets the go ahead. Access isn't too bad from Felling By-pass or via the quayside and there's plenty of car parks close by or more unused land which could be used for parking. I'm not really sure why the area hasn't been used for housing or who it's owned by. Lots of residential investment on the other side of the by-pass. I can see Gateshead Council being behind something sports related in this area, it's close to the International Stadium and sports academy, but as has been pointed out before the cost would be prohibitive. In lieu of a millionaire without a clue you'd need to attract grant funding. Not easy. Sport England is an obvious starting point but they tend to focus on Olympic sports. Speedway isn't but BMX & Skateboarding are. If you can pitch the facility as a multi sports training facility you might get somewhere. That's a lot of contacts to make and manage and even then you'll not get 100% funding. Gateshead FC tried to do something similar with NHS funding thwarted by the credit crunch in 2008 I believe. There's also a decent plot of disused land at the north end of the Team Valley Trading Estate next to the A1 Lobley Hill junction, currently used for the occasional fair. Maybe too close to Festival Park housing. Not impossible to pull off but definitely a long term project for someone.

to be a success the series has to be profitable. I'm sure everyone would like to see a series held across the globe but at this point in time if you made that a stipulation there'd be no series. nobody could make it pay. of course you still have to manage the quality of the product and in that respect Gorzow wasn't too bad. certainly better than the previous two rounds. maybe there's a danger of the series being viewed as Polish centric but how many rounds does MotoGP have in Spain? Nobody calls it the Spanish championship. They go where they can sell tickets and attract sponsors/subsidy. the series does need to reach a wider market but it's also limited by the number of nationalities represented. with only 16 riders it's difficult to say promote a SGP round or the series in France with only one wildcard appearance for a French rider. at this point you can't really look beyond the core speedway territories. it looks like Discovery Sports have a desire to expand the series, which makes complete sense if you want to increase subscriptions and/or TV rights but how the do it is the trick. If only there was a Euro wide league in which the best tracks across Europe could stage meetings and build up some resources and infrastructure to be able to host GP rounds successfully??? Then during the winter they could transplant the whole thing to the southern hemisphere/USA.

After heat 12 at Gorzow in previous SGP's Red Gate has accumulated 30% of the points, Blue 27%, Yellow 23% and White 20%. Will it be replicated tonight?

Gorzow stats since 2015: Unsurprisingly the Zmarzlik show Most race points - Zmarzlik 90 pts (23 wins), Woffinden 86 pts (16 wins), Doyle 73 points (11 wins) Gate race points - Red 28%, Blue 25%, Yellow 26% and White 21% Gate race wins - Red 28%, Blue 26%, Yellow 26% and White 20% So nothing really from the gates and likewise starting positions Best line up position - #12 64 points then 2, 6 and 5. 63, 61 and 60 points respectively. Worst line up position - #15 (again) 27 points then 10 and 3, 32 and 36 points respectively. Semi appearances - Zmarzlik & Woffinden 6 out of 6, Lindgren, Doyle 4 each Final appearances - Zmarzlik 5 only 1 win, Doyle & Woffinden 4 with one win each. Other winners, Zagar, Lindgren and Vaculik.

Ive done no such thing (although admit to the prior bleeting my opinion and prediction). This is my only post on this thread. I take no pleasure in the demise of the Diamonds. I've spent too too long on the terraces at Brough not to be saddened by this. I've no interest in a post mortem or claiming some childish I told you so. You'd do well not to accuse me of something without sufficient evidence. My opinion is clear based on my previous posts but I've no intention of claiming some sort of victory in these sad circumstances. Truth is there are no winners here.

Hasn't someone clever with too much time on their hands worked out the the geographical centre of Great Britain (England, Scotland & Wales) is Blackburn. Which, incidentally apparently has the same number of holes as the Poole track Money is money right. It doesn't matter where it comes from. What would you prefer to receive, £20,000 from 1,000 spectators paying £20 at the gate or £30,000 from 3,000 people paying £10 for the live stream? The answer is both because we're all greedy capitalists. The truth is spectators are costly. From a promoter perspective you'd save quite a bit of money by excluding any attendees and only making the event available via subscription, however dystopian that might sound. Luckily there's a couple of factors stopping that from happening, the impact on the local economy from attendees, in particular travelling supporters and event atmosphere. An easy conclusion from watching pandemic events behind closed doors is that spectators should actually be paid to attend as they clearly enhance the TV product, until someone develops a digital crowd experience to rival it. That's the profit driven glimpse of the future. Virtual Reality viewing where everyone stays at home but experience being in the crowd with other viewers you can interact with. You'll get constant pop up reminders to place a bet or order junk food via deliveroo, unless you've paid a premium subscription to avoid adverts. There'd only need to be one track and maybe only 14 riders with both digitally altered to represent different stadiums and competitors. Hell why not just do the whole event digitally generated by computer programme, with 14 Chris Harris' guesting. Grim.

It is one of speedways problems and attractions. It's (or used to be) both an individual and team sport. Other sports like Darts and Snooker have international team events but there's no team work involved really. Whereas speedway does involve team work at least off track nowadays if not via team riding anymore and has affiliation to geographical area which other motorsports "teams" don't. To that extent it's difficult to formulate a pyramid structure for speedway that most other successful sports have. Is it SGP - SEC/SGPChallenge - SGP2 - SGP3 - SGP4? No. Is it SON/SWC - Domestic Top Flight - Domestic 2nd/3rd tier - Domestic Youth Leagues? No It's a bit of both and not very structured to the point it isn't a pyramid at all. SGP - Polish Extraliga - SGP Challenge/SON/SGP/SEC/Swedish Elite - Danish top division/SGP Premiership/Polish 2nd Division - Other domestic leagues. As I've posted before, it looks like Discovery Sports understand the need for a structure to ensure there is a sufficient supply chain of riders to develop the SGP product but would the FIM give them the power to structure domestic competitions to facilitate that??

You can definitely create a better atmosphere indoors, with better lighting (imagine all the lights turning red for an exclusion) and reverberated sound but the earlier poster is correct you'd need to compromise on track size at most indoor arena facilities. If you could find a large enough facility to include the right size and shape of track plus suitable spectator area's then it could be a game changer. Track preparation not subject to the elements, no rain offs. Better presentation. I think if you're talking about erecting a roof over a current speedway track I can only imagine it would be extremely difficult and expensive. I've been go-karting in such a converted warehouse but not to the scale needed to include a speedway track but there's a potential multi use of the 'centre green'. Let's watch some go karting while the tractors are on. Fantasy stuff unfortunately.

Presumably that's what Oxford have offered? So if that's the going rate then that's what you have to pay. I admit for a rider that is way past his best it seems a lot of money but what else can you do if you're serious about strengthening the team in a world where there are few other realistic opportunities. Mind, no wonder the sport is going down the pan if bog standard riders are on that sort of money.

That's the problem though isn't it. Next season they'll want to be free to ride in Poland on a Sunday even if they don't actually end up getting any matches. Also these new Dane's won't come in and and score like Kenni or Rene did (apart from Birkemose). They'll be 5 pointers which is decent and better than what we've got but won't hang about to become future heat leaders. If they do they'll deffo get rides in Poland. Again I'm not defending the promotion because Summers to Oxford tells you everything you need to know about how serious an effort has been made to improve the team.

He publicly stated he doesn't having previously said that was his plan. Of course he probably had to say that. But you're correct regardless. If you can find some council owned land it's probably earmarked for housing. If it isn't it'll be next to housing. Even if you did find a plot which is otherwise unused you'd need to persuade the local authority that having a speedway team will benefit the local economy. Good luck with that on the basis it attracts a handful of visiting supporters for about 15 weekends of the year. Alternatively you find a private plot of land and agree terms with the owner presuming they can't sell if for housing. Then you have to invest heavily in building the track and facilities. Interesting to see how the people behind the new Workington track have achieved what they have but I'm guessing the land owner has an interest in the sport?

Yes they will because they also have a quarter of the leagues top 12 riders. Although their reserves will not be as good as Edwards and Thompson. Surely.......

Foreign riders who don't ride in Poland. There's a couple of Swedes who've been and not done much. People will say move from a Sunday. The Diamonds can't. Plus how ridiculous is it that the amount of speedway operating on Saturdays and Sunday's in this country is so miniscule?? We know the top riders are accounted for elsewhere at weekends but there simply has to be a level where speedway supporters can spend their weekends following the sport in the UK.

Shouldn't have signed a quarter of the leagues top 12 riders then. You reap what you sow. Tbf the rules allowed it so why wouldn't they. It's such a shambles we're now saying that the winners lose out. Crazy but entirely believable.