IainB

Sneaked off to the gents with his laptop

Now that's what I call ridiculous!

I would have thought there was still gate position choice still to race for and the one or both of the remaining 2 riders could have blown their engines or got injured. I thought that was the whole point of not awarding races.

We'll have to wait until racers & royals logs in, he's the only one that truly knows what's going on

Since when are we awarding FIM races?

Sarcasm alert: He's not been the same since breaking his neck... can't think why...

Well said!

Have you ever thought of doing some kind of Facebook Live broadcast? Not necessarily of any racing but behind the scenes, rider/manager interviews, maybe replays of incidents etc. I'm sure if you went to the local FE College there would be a number of media study students that would jump at the chance of producing something for you... just a thought, you may already be doing it.

In fact you can see him 14 miles down the road 2 nights earlier

Unfortunately I'm being realistic, judging by the crowd I saw against Redcar in the "big reopening"... no club can be sustained with those crowds. I was there supporting the club before you go any further

LEICESTER: Hans Andersen, Dan Thompson, Kyle Howarth, Nick Morris, Ryan Douglas, Joe Thompson, Zaine Kennedy. BIRMINGHAM: Chris Harris, Valentin Grobauer, James Shanes, Ashley Morris, Erik Riss, Paco Castagna, Jason Edwards. Probably the biggest question with this one is whether at the end of the season Leicester will have had any points they can pick up from this one expunged from the records.

I think you'll find it's too much trouble for lot of clubs

I've just had a look at Nottingham Panthers (just picked them at random) Ice Hockey Web shop as speedway is often compared to Ice Hockey and well... their offerings put speedway to shame. Looked at a couple of others, similar story

A lot of the shirts with any hint of a design are produced by a Polish company called dispeed.

Surely "quality" merchandise is part and parcel of "promotion" these days. It seems to be in most other sports. Have "the powers that be" approached a proper clothing manufacturer to produce it? In the same way that they do with the TV deal. It's not like clubs are in competition with each other with merchandise, a Glasgow fan is never going to buy an Edinburgh shirt and vice versa

I'm aware of a supermarket that went bust... doesn't mean the model is wrong

I'm taking about Jack Holder gate

It's strange then that many riders sell merchandise, one assumes at a profit, yet clubs seem unable to make it pay. I wonder if Eastbourne and Poole make money from it and if so what they are doing right and with all respect to yourself what you were doing wrong? Perhaps a sport wide model is needed rather than individual clubs doing their own thing.

I remember during Alan Grahame's testimonial year you could get "Big Al'" underpants lol

I'm sure it works very nicely indeed for Jaybea. Does it work for speedway in general and the club individually though? If I were a club that didn't want to do my own merchandise I'd be looking to sub it out to Eastbourne or Poole!

It would be interesting to know whether the excellent offerings of Poole and Eastbourne are actually reflected by visibility of these items on the terraces. Didn't Poole recently have a pop up shop at a shopping centre for pre Christmas merchandise celebrating one of their Championship victories?

I'm opening this one up as a general topic following on from a "discussion" I've been having on the Leicester thread and their range of Championship & Shield winning merchandise available from the "Club Shop", which in my opinion is woeful. I've been to all the club sites and seen what's on offer elsewhere and to my surprise the results were very different. I've not gone digging too far and only looked for links from the club's website home page Premiership: Belle Vue: Pretty basic compared to the best but better than most Ipswich: No club shop Kings Lynn: No club shop Peterborough: Disappointing Sheffield: Pretty basic Wolverhampton: Pretty basic Championship: Berwick: No club shop Birmingham: No club shop Eastbourne: AMAZING! One of the clubs that all others should be aspiring to be like Edinburgh: Pretty good... I do like the look of those tartan shirts! Glasgow: Shop coming soon, disappointed in that, I expected better from Glasgow Kent: No club shop Leicester: Pretty basic, hardly anything cashing in on the clubs success Newcastle: No club shop Plymouth: Quite impressive from the newcomers, very similar to the Eastbourne offerings Poole: AMAZING! One of the clubs that all others should be aspiring to be like Redcar: Shop on website showing nothing available Scunthorpe: No club shop Some clubs seem to be running their own merchandise operation and others have subbed out their operation to a company called Jaybea designs who look like a from the bedroom using a mobile phone company. There's money to be made in club merchandise and many don't seem to have cottoned on (forgive the pun) to this. It's easier than ever in the age of the internet to get merchandise produced and sold. Some clubs are not even offering branded face masks in a global pandemic... Some people wouldn't know a business opportunity if it walked up to them and hit them in the face shouting "I'M A BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY".

There also plenty of examples of clubs doing it themselves and making a shedload

I've just looked at the range of Redcar merchandise on the website... Awesome!

Normally in business when services are "subbed" out there are service level agreements and targets to be met. Judging by the "Championship Winners" range on the Jaybea website it doesn't look like there was a clause in there about producing merchandise to cash in on the success