uk_martin

Have you had the guided tour of his trophy cabinet?

You're asking about speedway promoters doing market research??? Now I know you've got a sense of humour.

Annual totals yes, but attendance per meeting, probably not. The Brummies are down to the hard core "die hard fans" now, who will attend no matter what the cost. I just hope that their stadium rental is on a "per meeting" basis rather than "per season". If that's the case then there may be hope. Only a £2 differential between full fare and OAP discount, down from the £3 previously. That's a step in the right direction. Also, the incentive for students is positive, in the hope of attracting the next generation of fans in.

They probably won't increase numbers but (& especially if they stop offering concessionary admission) they will increase the revenue per head that attends, thus boosting the turnover amount. The crowds are down to the bare-bones hard core levels who will view "speedway at any price", so pushing the prices up won't lose them any more numbers off the terraces, so no harm done attendance wise, and an instant win on the overall revenue front. And if they do retain a discount for OAP's the discounted admission will probably match the old "full fare", therefore again, increasing revenue per head to the minimum needed.

I gather that there's a vacancy for Minister of Propaganda in Moscow at present. Do well, and you get the bonus of a Dacha on the Black Sea coast...do badly and you get fired - attached to an artillery shell pointed at the Ukraine.

I would guess that as the majority of speedway fans are of pensionable age, including those on BSF, that for that reason the majority of responses would be to preserve the discount because of nothing other than motivated self-interest. I for one don't understand why pensioners should get discounts on luxuries like speedway and yet have to pay full whack on bread, milk, eggs and other "essentials". And why in the UK only? I've not seen any pensioner discounts at any of the speedway tracks I've been to on the continent. And then we have the matter of the clubs who are facing ever increasing running costs. And yet, over the course of a year, those who offer OAP discounts will be losing £xx,000's a year in revenue. That's a circle that has to be squared. OK, some penny-pinching pensioners may take the hump and stop going. The up side of that the less the terraces look like a Derby & Joan Club evening out, the more likely you are to find younger people coming to watch speedway instead. Swings and roundabouts on that score.

There have been times when I can't get in using the Chrome browser, but when I try with Firefox, I can get in. It couldn't be that the BSPA servers can't cope again, can it?

That's 21 more riders that you'll need.... That's 14 more riders needed in addition to those in current teams... Now we're getting into fantasy land. If you look at a previous post of mine, I counted up only 104 riders registered in the UK spanning all 3 current leagues... Where are the 35 extra riders coming from to make up the proposed Mildenhall, Kent, Eastbourne & IOW teams, let alone the wet dreams of Cradley, Rye House etc returning to the sport.

He didn't wait very long to make that brilliant decision to mark out a bus lane on the M4 motorway.

Yeah, there's a limit to how quickly the beads on the official BSPZzz abacus can be moved about in doing their calculations.

Well, exactly...no-one at Starry Speedway has said that the first rider will be on a season-long contract, have they? It could be another of those "until the Swedish season starts" kind of contracts. It might even feature a guarantee that in the event of sustaining a season ending injury, the team won't be redeclared with a replacement rider, so that they don't have to feel lonely and like they've been thrown onto the scrap heap.

At this point in previous seasons the Brummies Facebook Page would have run about half a dozen videos featuring James Shanes...and a couple featuring Ashley Morris. Indeed, the Brummies Facebook page gave James Shanes more exposure than Fox News gave to Donald Trump. That hasn't happened this year. Is their absence a hint of a fresh broom sweeping clean?

Sounds like a job for the BSPZzz's Parliamentary Liaison team (whatever they are called these days) eh?

The Planning officer would only resubmit if the applicant (who pays a considerable amount to have an application processed) has paid for it to be resubmitted. When that happens, the planning officer is duty bound to reassess and resubmit an application. Your statement sounds like one person on the council staff (remember that a Planning Officer is a bog standard "white collar worker" like many other people on a council's payroll) with a vendetta. Assessing and processing a planning application takes a lot of time and therefore costs a lot of money, and any member of staff spending the time needed to process an application without someone else to pay the bill for it, just as a vindictive act of revenge, would quickly be shown the door.

Speedway Star's feats of investigative journalism defy belief Who could have guessed that the Brummies would have one rider "in the bag" by now?

Brummie Bear is due to make a special appearance at the Supporters Club Christmas Party...you never know....

Out of interest, has anyone who previously promoted the idea of behind-the-scenes corruption, "brown envelopes" or "money talks" eaten their words yet? There was as much evidence of corruption on show last night as there was of Donald Trump's election having been "stolen" from him.

How does that compare to what SkySports gave in the past (less Terry Russell's 40% cut) to the sport for their coverage? And was that talk just amongst fans or did it emanate from official publications? I appreciate it's what you hear being talked about but you also hear that the Earth if flat and that Donald Trump had his election result stolen from him.

Is there any proof of this? Are you confusing the UK TV deal with a Polish one? I got the impression that Eurosport picked up speedway on the cheap i.e. Eurosport cover their broadcasting expenses and the BSPZzzz were to make do with just getting the continued TV exposure, after SkySports and BT had had enough. I don't recall hearing any talk of the deal involving money going back into the sport, other than at the top level where Eurosport's parent company, Discovery got into bed with the SGP series.

"“We’ve brought together an experienced professional team to assist us," If and when they find a suitable location (and let's see if they can find one quicker than anyone in Cradley could) they will put out another experienced professional team to try to find 7 more riders that the country doesn't have to populate the available team places.

The reason I asked was because if you have one big league, you can't have doubling/trebling up/down. It'll be one rider - one team. And as I pointed out before, (HERE) at the time I did my count, there were only 111 (I counted one rider twice) riders registered to all 3 leagues who can pledge priority to British Speedway. That included the likes of Edward Kennett, Josh Auty, Ben Barker, Adam Roynon, Aaron Summers James Wright and Lee Complin, whose continuance is by no means guaranteed into next year. So, in reality, you may only have as few as 104 riders. And that's it. Do the maths, that's only enough for 14 teams, plus a few rattling around in case someone gets injured. Where do the other riders come from? Poland, Sweden & Denmark, where they give first priority to their own leagues, so that we can have more Claus Vissing type situations? Will the BSPZzz pull out a classic party trick like allowing teams to be made up of 5 contracted riders and two guests? That might allow the number of teams to be increased to 20 and be no worse off, guest rider wise than most of the Birmngham Brummies fixtures of last season. Who will the lucky 14 teams be? Who do you leave out of your one big league? And if your one big league is made up of 14 teams, there will be no National League. The speedway toddlers will be in the same teams as the ageing former GP riders. Suck that one up. And I'd be dying to know where those romantics who talk about bringing speedway back to places like Eastbourne, Bradford, Coventry, Workington etc think they are going to find their riders from. Not surprised you've lost your speedway mojo. Only surprised at how many still have one at all.

They spent all their money on Gerhard engines, so have got nothing left to invest in these....because Gerhards were the way forward too, back in the day.

I ask again...one league with how many teams? And as for second half racing, yeah, of course. Selling a 1970's product in the 2020's. What could possibly go wrong? About as likely as football bringing back real leather "caser" balls for the Premier League next year too.

Funny, when I read about it, it reminded me of Poole drafting in Greg Hancock just for the play-off's against the Brummies in 2013. Didn't hear any Poole fans complaining about it back then.

Seen it now, but not at the time of writing. Sad state of affairs indeed.