uk_martin

A decent start then. What would be good is to have a BSF Honours Board or something (remember those from school? lol) where all the riders who graduated can be added to a permanent thread, and their names remembered for the efforts that they put in. Each year, new names can be added.

The fact that a breach of Health & Safety is a CRIMINAL as well as a civil offense means that those in charge face fines, and possibly jail unless their procedures are water tight. 99 out of 100 people's worst consequence of coqing-up at work is getting the sack. Coq up over H&S and the consequences are far worse. No wonder they are cautious, because with no-win-no-fee lawyers ready to sue them into a black hole in space and the H&S Executive ready to land them in court in front of a judge and jury, wouldn't you be cautious too?

Maybe what happens next is what always happens in speedway. The situation deteriorates from childish to infantile. What else do you expect?

He started 2016 on 9.91 and ended it on 8.59 I'm sure I read something by Brian Buck that said that Birmingham were made to forfeit the assets that they had ... Edit - found it

Now that Lakeside have dropped down into the NL, have they had to relinquish all their riding assets like Birmingham did? If so, is Zach Wajtknecht a free agent again? i.e. NOT under any priority obligation to ride for Lakeside? Would he still be an option for the Brummies on his newly reduced average, I wonder? There's certainly some "unfinished business" to be tidied up I think.

Depends on if they have a track to ride on. Has anyone been past the Swindon building site? Is anything happening there?

Can anyone give a progress report about this scheme please? Who has "graduated" through the course and making a success of themselves in league racing? Who is starting out who we can hope to see next year?

More a daydream than a team. Neither location has the use of the stadium secured, Belle Vue doesn't have a promoter at the helm, Coventry is the subject of a Police investigation whilst the stadium lies in ruins. IMHO, there's a few basics that have to be dealt with before we start singing from the rooftops about this "team". And then there's Swindon. To quote the statement - "Swindon, who are due to move into their new stadium in June, will also enter a team into the National Trophy with riders from sides who aren’t in the mini tournament." - What's that all about? A team of 7 guest riders who will wow the Swindon public for all of 4 meetings only? Will Swindon have to have the same 1-7 or can they pick a team of track specialists for each of their away meetings? Is this like making things up as you go along, or what? And what if the developers "do a Reading" and don't deliver on their promise of a new stadium there?

And who is the promoter of the "senior partner"? As in the person(s) not just the generic team name.

So we have a cobbled together BV / Cov team who in the worst case scenario could be homeless unless agreements to use the stadiums are secured, and there's this part time Swindon Sprockets team being mooted. Jumpers for goal posts, anyone?

It was in the papers today that the deal to save Coventry stadium was in doubt again, with the landlords fetching the Police in. Belle Vue is anything but secure at the moment, so only in speedway can you take two clubs that are only 50-50 to operate at all and make up one team that is purported to be "sure" to run at both venues. What drugs are these people taking?

Whatever.

You're full of bright ideas today aren't you? Add 5.5 hours to the length of a race day, subtract that from the length of the waking day and thete will be loads of time for detours and social calls won't there?

Whatever. Birmingham to Snetterton = 142 miles (per Giggle Maps) thus 284 miles there and back. @55mpg in my car, that's roughly 5.16 gallons of diesel. 5.16 gallons = 23.46 litres. And at £1.11 per litre at Asda, that's a few pennies more than £26.00 for fuel, plus £5 admission = £31. Do the 5.5 hours driving time along the M6 & A14 etc count towards the entertainment value too?

Or more likely that the product is no good at ANY price? Nor me. I didn't go either. HOWEVER, the sport-going public with money to spend DID go! More to the point, they chose athletics over speedway over for where to spend their money. That in the eyes of the money spending public makes speedway a poor choice. Do you have research to back that up? Or is it just a gut feeling? Don't say it's "common sense" because speedway as a sport is a common-sense-free zone. Check out this... http://www.tutor2u.net/economics/reference/price-elasticity-of-demand You'll see that some products will retain their demand no matter what the price (within reason) and some will stand or fall depending on very small price changes. Without proper research you can't just say what will happen to the demand for speedway.

Correct, you haven't. Firstly, it really doesn't matter what the headline price is. Whether it's £13 which is then discounted by concessions down to something akin to £8, or whether it's £10 flat rate. What matters is two-fold. Firstly what it means to the fans. Do they pay £8 or do they pay £10, and you'll agree that £10 is more than £8 so your flat rate idea is going to push the cost per "average" (OAP) fan up by 25%. Secondly, what impact does it have on the clubs revenues. Unless you have the research at hand at how much demand will rise or fall depending on whether there's a £1 rise in the price or a £5 reduction in the price, I'd say that this is an unknown factor. This whole panic about inflation is doing my head in. Birmingham, whose admission I've had to pay, started out in the PL in 2007 at £15 per adult. It stood at £15 even in the EL (if I remember rightly, or did it go up to £16, I can't remember now) and now since 2015 it's been at £13 in the NL. I've not heard about any impending price rise, but if the price went up by £1, what sort of rise would that represent in the long term? How can you put a value of £10 on NL speedway? Or any other form of speedway come to that? The value is what people are prepared to pay. Up the road from Perry Barr, not long ago, 50,000 people paid between £30 and £50 to see Usain Bolt for 10 seconds. Is that good value? Or is everyone else wrong? The price is not the game changer for speedway. It's the quality of the product that matters. Despite the stability in the admission price since 2007 and the on-track success of the teams, crowds at Perry Barr have fallen year on year (with a slight blip at the start of the EL era). You can even say that in real terms, the price reduced compared to everything else that was getting more expensive around it. And still the crowds fell. Never once have I heard someone say to me "how much is it in, at the speedway...oh, that's too much" Plenty of times I've heard "nah, it's boring. First out of the start wins" and other disparaging comments about the state of the viewing, or the long delays between races and other things. People have the money to spend if there is value to be had. (as I found out in trying to get a ticket for the Guns'n'Roses gig) Speedway's challenge is in providing better value for the money.

Feel free to disagree, but I can't see the logic of your arguement. On the one hand you say that a "fair" overall price of £10 means that you won't need concessionary admission for old-timers. Having agreed by implication with my point that the average take at some places is about £8 per head because of concessionary admission, meaning that the majority of people coming through the turnstiles a very old or very young, what you are saying is that the majority of fans need to have their admission prices increased from the average of £8 to your "fair" £10. On the basis that this is more than the rate of inflation, you're not going to have too many places left to visit then, if your pricing structure were to be adopted.

Depends if you like what you see. I'm no big football fan so if I was to pay £30- £50 to see a scoreless draw I'd consider that 15 mins of speedway @ £1 per minute would compare quite well.

Look at the post above you and you will see that concessionary admission is regarded as one of the 5 pillars of the sport.

With all the concessionary admissions for kids and pensioners the average "take" is about £8 per person. £1.60 of that belongs the the Chancellor leaving just £6.40 to pay the bills with. How much lower do you want it to go?

BSF should put a permanent hyperlink to the SCB rule book in the footer of every post on here.

Hands up anyone who's surprised? Keep your hands up whilst I count...

That's the problem. The 5yo pays no admission and the 95yo gets in on a concession. The promoters aren't getting the income that they need to take things further. I'm told that at some venues over 70% of the revenue is "concessionary". People talk about speedway being only worth £10 in admission value, well at some places thats more than the average take per head. We need to move away from being family friendly and move to an audience that you can concentrate your efforts on. Focus on "Club 18-35" if you like. At least they will be full fare payers, with disposable income to spend on other things. Make the whole experience youth-friendly and you may succeed in getting a new audience. If that sounds harsh on the oldies, well I'm sorry, but sometimes you have to crack some eggs to make an omlette. Right now the sport has as much life left in it as have the pensioners watching it. For there to be a long term future, the youth of today need to be attracted in.

True. So you did. Was that because you knew or was it a good guess in the context of the guessing game that was going on in previous pages?

When Brandon Stadium was being taken apart, there were witnesses, videos and photos of what was going on all over t'internet. Has anyone borne witness to the damage caused being repaired yet? Will photos of the newly renovated stadium feature on all varieties of social media again?