Speedway from the outside

[dtc]

This is not about racing but before you even get to the track.

 

1. Do you know the number of your teams’ track? I work for one of the new directory enquiry companies and have found less than half of the tracks listed with the word “speedway” in the title. Some of course may be listed under the name of the stadium etc but if you don’t know were the track is, or what the name is you won’t get the number

 

2. Web sites: the BPSA site although informative is lacking in content. Official Team and Track sites can be poor or non-existent. By far the best sites are the unofficial ones (this one all4back etc...). All teams or tracks should have a decent official site even if either the BPSA or fans run it.

 

3. News Papers: Local papers tend to have some good coverage (apart from Newport). But where is the decent coverage of the seventies, the annuals etc?? It’s about time the BPSA got together with a large paper, i.e. The Sun or The Mirror to have the proper match reports, league tables etc in the public domain.

 

4. Advertising: Newport RFC have a big sign next the town centre with the date and time of their nest home fixture as well as who they are playing. Most large football and rugby teams have similar billboards, surly speedway should something similar, even if just for large meetings. Also advertising in local papers or leaflet drops would be useful.

 

5. Although Sky has done a lot of good for the sport it is about time the BPSA sorted TV coverage out. This year I saw no Premier league action, pairs, fours and as far as I am aware no PLRC on Sky. If Sky want to keep Elite League fair enough, but let someone else have Premier and Conference Leagues (Eurosport, motors TV etc…). Also a magazine program weekly during the season would be nice.

 

These may just be ramblings. What do you think??

 

Dave

[Liontamer]

These may just be ramblings. What do you think??

 

Yes, I think they probably are

 

:-)

[jotrez]

I'm not sure if they do now or not but peterborough used to have a big sign right near the stadium saying their next match,etc

 

I agree about the premier and conference league not being shown it would be nice to see them get some coverage too even if it is just a show on once a week with all the news and some highlights or something.

[Lioness]

In fairness to Trelawny they have big signs all around the area advertising the speedway.....just a pity the arrows to the excellent track aren't a bit more prominent!

 

Other than that it seems just to be the occassional AA signs-thats all it is to Armadale certainly although sadly Glasgow doesn't even have that as far as I can recall.

 

For a few tracks you have to ask what exactly constitutes the local press as many are now located outwith their natural area. I believe the Edinburgh Evening news gives good coverage to the Monarchs for example but it is not the local paper for the track location. Up here the Sun and Daily Record have both given speedway a little more coverage this year than I recall in the past but lets face it, its a minority sport as far as the sports editors are concerned so they aint gonna give it prominance.

The same goes for the Sky coverage, or rather lack of it, for PL speedway. In all honesty Sky have done a lot to increase the profile of speedway and its perhaps a bit like shooting ourselves in the foot to critisise them for not showing PL/CL matches. After all they very rarely show Torquay v Yeovil in football! I think they are wrong but 'Elite League' sounds more prestigious than the CLRC and in their marketeers opinions will attract more viewers. They did show the occassional PL track during their live speedway meetings but that seemed to fall by the wayside sadly.

 

Both Edinburgh and Glasgow have in the past or present had pretty decent coverage on local radio but again the local radio for the Armadale area don't even know it exists!

 

As far as advertising goes, it costs, believe me it costs! Again I can only go by Edinburgh and I believe they do a lot in local schools but when you are working on a budget paying a couple of thousands for an advert isn't giong to be top of your priority list!

 

I think your points are all good ones but we need to re-size them to the affordability of speedway promotions. As for the BSPA website I dont think it will ever have credability to be honest. I very quickly discovered it was a waste of time looking at it when most of the news is outdated and covered on here by fans well before it hits the BSPA site anyhow!

[Guest willg]

I think you are spot on DTC.......

 

In my view the majority of speedway promoters have no idea what constitutes marketing and image generation. I agree that adverts in papers are expensive, but there are loads of things that a club can do that cost little or nothing to achieve except effort and time.

 

For example:

 

Editorial content (reviews,previews etc) in local papers - they are often desperate for news so if someone were to produce - it would go in.

 

A decent, thought provoking and informative website - too right about the BSPA official site - it's awful. For some reason all4back.com has gone right down the pan lately. Make a clubs website factual with loads of stats, features, articles, previews and reviews and it will get loads of hits.

 

Forge good relationships with regional papers and regional TV companies - convince them that this sport needs to be covered, give them access, let them into the stadium free, send them reviews and articles as well and you're onto a winner.

 

Develop a fan database (not hard to do despite popular opinion) - see where they all come from, see where your fanbase is weak - then market that area of town (leaflet drops, free ticket incentives etc) - I only got into speedway four years ago when my father in law took me and the missus along with free tickets (he hadn't been in 30 years) - we are now all hooked and go regularly.

 

Once crowd levels go up then this is the time to start investing in adverts, if you are creative at where you put them then it needn't cost too much.

 

Free kids promotions will always work, get the fans of the future in today!

 

 

This is just scratching the surface, my line of work is as a Business Advisor and I regularly give advice on new customer generation and retention tactics - I am often left scratching my head at some of the amateur things I see going on in the speedway world, except that is the GPs, they seem to be very professional, they have employed a range of marketing tactics and they stick to them - safe in the knowledge that the product is great and that people will come if they know about the event!

 

This is my first post on this site (having just found it really!) and I think there are a lot of people on here with excellent ideas on how the sport could be developed, I only hope the powers that be read some of the really great constructive comments and debate them fully, as far as I'm concerned this sport is on the up and up, and I for one would defo invest capital in this sport (if I had any!) as I think there is a load more money to be made than is being made at present.

[Triple.H.]

In Oxford city centre there are various official council owned poster sites for advertising gigs,nightclubs etc.I have seen plenty of A4size full colour posters advertising the mighty Silver Machine all through the summer,even seen them in some of the more tourist haunt pubs.Also there is a tourist advice centre which supplies a monthly booklet about what,s on and restaurant,bar,theatre,concerts and sporting events that month.The OSM have been in this every month with listing of all that months home matches and even made the front cover a couple of months ago.The booklet is also available from hotels and guest houses.Perhaps the only improvement that could be made on this is to try adverts in foreign languages.We get excellent coverage on BBC radio oxford including live broadcasts from some away meetings,announcements on the sports bulletins including occasional interviews.For the last couple of seasons but sadly not this, we even had a half hour show on local tv station the oxford channel which showed all the races from the previous weeks meeting,and was repeated at different times of the day over the next week.Waggy,s pyramid scheme also takes place where you bring so many people who get in free and get a free programme they get to see a race from the centre green and meet a couple of the riders,and if they comeback with 5 new people they again get free entry and so do there friends.

[Guest willg]

Wow, sounds excellent!

 

These ideas are all a great advert and can only publicise this great sport which is a good thing if it brings revenues up.

 

My point now though is:

 

If a promoter is having great success with obvuiously innovative ideas like these then are they being shared around at the AGM?

If not, then they should be because if every track around the land increases its fan base and ultimately profits then it can only get ploughed back into the sport which could eventually solve some of the really irritating issues for many people like:

 

Too many tracks, not enough riders.

No promotion / relegation.

Elite League too small / Premier League too big.

 

 

Win / Win?