IainB

Those 2 miles to get from the east of Leicester to the west can take the best part of half an hour at the time folk would be travelling... not that it's going to happen in a million years!

To use the Tiger's academy meeting as an example is not really fair, it was very much after the Lord Mayors show on a dark October evening asking fans to turn out to watch a bunch of riders they have zero affinity with. And I did say new Speedway fans. NDL is pitifully attended, that's because it shouldn't be being sold as a product and should be being included as part of the senior teams race night package imo. All clubs crowds are pitifully attended in the terms of other "professional" sports with maybe only County Championship cricket being the exception, but they certainly make up for that with the other formats of their sport, in fact you could possibly compare the County Championship to our NDL. @mikebv has pretty much covered the rest 👍

I think the BSPL actively put a stop to clubs running from different tracks didn't they?

Hopefully the admin staff and Phil Morris are being paid properly for their time, but you'd hope the directors aren't taking a salary and there's probably no dividends to pay out.

Actually, BSPL is a limited company and one of the directors is Danny Ford, along with Damien Bates, who wants out, the other 2 directors are Chris Louis and Rob Godfrey, so 2 PL, 2 CL.

Britain competing PL on a Mon/Thu is a relatively new thing and has just about killed off the sport, and the PL in particular, in this country. I take it you're a relative newcomer to Speedway and Ipswich? Personally I think new punters are more likely to want to come and see young Johnny Local making his way to better things in the sport rather than Johan Foreigner who flies in for his pension fund top up.

Treat yourself to a BSN subscription

Obviously none of us know the financial details of TV deals and/or sponsorship only what we pick up from different sources. Watling JCB have been on board at Leicester since our CL days so I doubt their financial input is anywhere near what the TV deal delivered. I agree that Doyley will more likely than not be back at Ippo next year (if Ippo run) but he is on the down slope of his career, is married to an English woman with a young kid and lives in Norwich, so that probably works for him to earn a bit of extra bunce on a Thursday night. He is very much the exception to the rule of the GP/Ekstraliga contingent though.

The TV deals (especially the more recent ones) allowed the PL clubs to afford their number 1's and attract sponsorship, without it they're in the same boat as every other club.

Without a TV deal the PL clubs are as hard up, if not more so, than the CL clubs, I doubt they'll be able to afford to out bid many of the financially viable CL clubs.

Link? The one above? What episode number is that? 29? Not available on Spotify yet. I'll give it a listen

What did he say then? I'm pretty sure I've listened to the recent podcasts and I didn't hear anything that made me think there was any chance of an imminent Panthers return and especially not in 2026, maybe I missed something 🤷‍♂️

Where has all this Peterborough stuff come from?

They tried this already I can't remember when exactly but I think it was something to do with the availability of GP riders at weekends. I seem to remember Coventry riding at Stoke without the likes of Hamill, Hancock & (maybe) Jonsson and it was called the BSPA Cup (I think). Needless to say it never lasted

It wasn't £6k per PL club per season... BSN would deliver more than that. I'm led to believe it was worth around £100k per PL club per season, whether anything went to CL or NDL I don't know. You'd have to assume that PL clubs didn't get everything.

As I said before, it's buttons in the terms of TV deals but has clearly been keeping the sport afloat at PL level for the last number of years

Yes, they were indeed great days but it was staged on a Sunday in 22 & 23, a Saturday in 24 before returning to a Monday and a pish poor crowd in 25

I wonder what the costs/benefits/usefulness/viability is of making BSN available on a linear network (Sky/Virgin Media) would be, maybe in conjunction with a betting company. Similar to Racing TV

I'm with you there... @TTT seems pretty insistent and I've wanted to comment on a lot they've said... I can't be arsed though 😂. Like you say, just got to wait for it all to play out

Are there any "employee" riders in British Speedway, other than by their own Limited Company's? Specifically speaking about foreign riders, do you know how they are paid, how they pay their tax and how their visa requirements are fulfilled?

Well argued 😂

Don't forget that riders are not employees though, I'm not sure how foreign riders visa requirements are met in that case, do they work under/for an umbrella company. I'm not sure Brum were screwed over by the PL though but the setup as a whole, they should surely have been allowed to ride CL on a Monday much in the way that Swindon were allowed to run Thursday's when the PL switched to Monday/Wednesday originally, to force Brum to run PL was utter madness.

How many times does it need saying... the asset system has been dropped, nobody "owns" anybody anymore. I said it a few months back, riders need to become salaried employees of their clubs, ain't never going to happen though.

Last time it was held at the NSS at the weekend a few years back I seem to remember the crowd being quite good

I even heard them being played over the pa at Belle Vue once a few years back... how's that for down with the kids!