Speedways governors have failed us

[cityrebel]

18 minutes ago, ch958 said:

with considerably more expense that your average NL football team and theres the rub

Absolutely. Speedway is far too costly for everyone involved in the sport. The crowd figures don't justify the outlay.

[old bob at herne bay]

 

With 90% of revenue throught  the turnstiles and 80% of the clubs total income spent on riders wages,  UK speedway was in a complete financial mess  before COVID19. Like so many high street businesses this pandemic has just highlighted the problems. 

Ian Jordon hit the nail on the head when he said that 30 -40% of his crowd were uncertain that they would turn up this season.  Not running  league speedway must have been a cut your losses strategy. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Piotr Pyszny]

8 hours ago, cityrebel said:

800 is a pretty decent turn out nowadays. As a sport, its attendances put it on a par with non league football.

Many non-league football clubs attract far more than 800 spectators. And many speedway teams attract far fewer.

Look at the list of non-league football average attendances (2019-20), and you need to come down as far as 52nd (Guiseley, 793) to get below 800!

https://www.nonleaguematters.co.uk/global/attendances/

Edited July 29, 2020 by Piotr Pyszny

[Piotr Pyszny]

7 hours ago, George Dodds said:

On the contrary I would say it was pretty much every british sport with the exception of top division English football, rugby union and cricket. They are the only ones subsidised by huge TV contracts the rest have to make their own money.  

Think we can add top division rugby league to that list.

I'd say 90 per cent of revenue through the turnstiles is a very high proportion of overall income.

Clubs in other sports seem to do very much better than speedway with things like commercial sponsorship, corporate hospitality, replica/souvenir sales, bar takings and clubhouse hire (all over and above the number of paying spectators).

I know of one Lancashire League cricket club - amateurs - that pulls in £250,000 a year from clubhouse hire alone.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Piotr Pyszny

[Spl77]

The BSPA are probably dining out on being given elite status by the government. It's probably the first time for 30 plus years that anyone other than the BSPA have seen speedway as an elite sport! 

[HGould]

7 hours ago, Piotr Pyszny said:

Think we can add top division rugby league to that list.

I'd say 90 per cent of revenue through the turnstiles is a very high proportion of overall income.

Clubs in other sports seem to do very much better than speedway with things like commercial sponsorship, corporate hospitality, replica/souvenir sales, bar takings and clubhouse hire (all over and above the number of paying spectators).

I know of one Lancashire League cricket club - amateurs - that pulls in £250,000 a year from clubhouse hire alone.

The biggest problem with UK Speedway though is that so few Clubs own their own stadium.

They pay rent to Stadium Owners and have therefore no or very little income from hospitality, bar and food outlets. 

Brummies is a classic example. 

Most Club Shops are pretty poor compared to non league Soccer.

If a Club has an average of 600 paying fans at £15, that's around £180,000 through the Gate for 20 meetings.

I would guess based on numerous away trips in past season that most Clubs average is close to 600-700.

If any Club these days gets in 10%-15% of that in Sponsorship they are doing pretty well. (18-24k in sponsorship)

That's the limit of the income for the majority that Rent

It's a vicious circle, riders paying too much for over priced equipment, being paid too much by promoters to pay for that over priced equipment.

Reduce machine costs and understand it's a part time job to be a rider (semi professional) and we might start getting somewhere. 

 

[IainB]

2 hours ago, Spl77 said:

The BSPA are probably dining out on being given elite status by the government. It's probably the first time for 30 plus years that anyone other than the BSPA have seen speedway as an elite sport! 

Maybe time to rename the League to "Elite League"... oh hang on a minute, they already tried that 

[George Dodds]

9 hours ago, Piotr Pyszny said:

Think we can add top division rugby league to that list.

I'd say 90 per cent of revenue through the turnstiles is a very high proportion of overall income.

Clubs in other sports seem to do very much better than speedway with things like commercial sponsorship, corporate hospitality, replica/souvenir sales, bar takings and clubhouse hire (all over and above the number of paying spectators).

I know of one Lancashire League cricket club - amateurs - that pulls in £250,000 a year from clubhouse hire alone.

True owning the stadia would open up all sorts of other income but also adds to the outgoings. Your Lancashire League cricket club will not take £250,000 from clubhouse hire this year so that will leave them in a mess because - unless things have changed since I used to watch it - most clubs struggle to attract three figure crowds through the turnstiles. Commercial sponsorship and corporate hospitality must all be under real threat as businesses either fold or cut back on outgoings after lockdown. 

[Ben91]

Ultimately, the powers that be have had since March to work out a plan, albeit with uncertainty over how things will develop granted. 

With regard to cancelling the league season I believe they have made the right decision, however the communication with fans was not good. I seem to remember only two updates from the BSPA since March and one of those was to say that the season was being cancelled. The party line until that point was that some league racing was hopefully going to happen, yet it doesn’t seem there was a plan of how to achieve that. If there was then the most important people, the fans, weren’t informed. 

Speedway is a strange beast. We are a motorsport but race as teams with home and away fixtures, I can’t think of any other motorsport that does the same. But those teams, while under the same umbrella don’t seem to read from the same songbook. The sport really needs an overarching authority with no ties to any club. It has done for a number of years now. 

[Piotr Pyszny]

29 minutes ago, George Dodds said:

True owning the stadia would open up all sorts of other income but also adds to the outgoings. Your Lancashire League cricket club will not take £250,000 from clubhouse hire this year so that will leave them in a mess because - unless things have changed since I used to watch it - most clubs struggle to attract three figure crowds through the turnstiles. Commercial sponsorship and corporate hospitality must all be under real threat as businesses either fold or cut back on outgoings after lockdown. 

But a club used to taking £250,000 a year from clubhouse hire starts, post-COVID, from a much stronger position than, say, a speedway club relying on a few hundred spectators for 90 per cent of its revenue. They've got 'rainy day' money in the bank.

Incidentally, club cricket in Lancashire and Yorkshire is the best supported in England. Lancashire League clubs charge £4 admission. The bigger ones attract crowds of about 250-300. Club cricket cup finals in Lancashire and Yorkshire often pull crowds of 1,000+. When did Berwick Bandits last see a crowd that size? Not on any of my visits, either to Berrington or Shielfield.

As HGould remarked, speedway's big (insurmountable?) problem has always been most clubs are mere tenants, at the whim of the landlord, who in addition to banking rent, creams off takings from the bar etc.

Even more concerning, as dog racing goes down the pan, speedway may well find a number of its clubs having to call it a day by default.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Piotr Pyszny

[Piotr Pyszny]

22 minutes ago, Ben91 said:

Speedway is a strange beast. We are a motorsport but race as teams with home and away fixtures, I can’t think of any other motorsport that does the same. But those teams, while under the same umbrella don’t seem to read from the same songbook. The sport really needs an overarching authority with no ties to any club. It has done for a number of years now. 

It's a key point. Speedway is a collection of small businesses, all of which prioritise their own, individual interests rather than the common good.

[George Dodds]

2 hours ago, Piotr Pyszny said:

But a club used to taking £250,000 a year from clubhouse hire starts, post-COVID, from a much stronger position than, say, a speedway club relying on a few hundred spectators for 90 per cent of its revenue. They've got 'rainy day' money in the bank.

Incidentally, club cricket in Lancashire and Yorkshire is the best supported in England. Lancashire League clubs charge £4 admission. The bigger ones attract crowds of about 250-300. Club cricket cup finals in Lancashire and Yorkshire often pull crowds of 1,000+. When did Berwick Bandits last see a crowd that size? Not on any of my visits, either to Berrington or Shielfield.

As HGould remarked, speedway's big (insurmountable?) problem has always been most clubs are mere tenants, at the whim of the landlord, who in addition to banking rent, creams off takings from the bar etc.

Even more concerning, as dog racing goes down the pan, speedway may well find a number of its clubs having to call it a day by default.

I'm not really arguing against you - speedway's biggest problem has been its decision to be tenants and not owners but, and Berrington Lough is an example, owning your own stadium is not the simple answer to untold riches.

I'm well aware of the strength of league cricket in Yorkshire and Lancashire - albeit it is much weaker now than when I watched the CLL, Lancashire and Bradford leagues regularly between the late eighties and mid-noughties, but let's be honest the point of a league cricket club is not to make money through attendances but to subsidise running, often a large number, of cricket teams through non-cricket activities.

They also don't - legally at least - pay all bar one of the players at the club so while a lot of the points you make have are valid on the it's not really a like-for-like comparison  - although Somerset do seem to have followed the blueprint by subsidising speedway through its hospitality facilities.  The regular 1000 plus crowds seem fanciful  as I doubt that any non-county cricket ground can currently hold anything approaching that number although in the days when Richards, Sobers, Worrall, Garner and Cronje played league cricket in Lancashire may very well have.

[ch958]

5 hours ago, HGould said:

The biggest problem with UK Speedway though is that so few Clubs own their own stadium.

They pay rent to Stadium Owners and have therefore no or very little income from hospitality, bar and food outlets. 

Brummies is a classic example. 

Most Club Shops are pretty poor compared to non league Soccer.

If a Club has an average of 600 paying fans at £15, that's around £180,000 through the Gate for 20 meetings.

I would guess based on numerous away trips in past season that most Clubs average is close to 600-700.

If any Club these days gets in 10%-15% of that in Sponsorship they are doing pretty well. (18-24k in sponsorship)

That's the limit of the income for the majority that Rent

It's a vicious circle, riders paying too much for over priced equipment, being paid too much by promoters to pay for that over priced equipment.

Reduce machine costs and understand it's a part time job to be a rider (semi professional) and we might start getting somewhere. 

 

thats the answer but who has the authority, imagination, cojones, whatever, to do it? We can do it unilaterally - the riders who ride gp or foreign leagues prob have dedicated machines for that. Needs someone with more tech knowledge than me to suggest exactly what to do but F2 maybe??

[cityrebel]

4 hours ago, Piotr Pyszny said:

It's a key point. Speedway is a collection of small businesses, all of which prioritise their own, individual interests rather than the common good.

Spot on.

[Fromafar]

I think most Promotions don’t get crowd levels to cover riders demands for the season and rely on Sponsorship and fans initiatives to raise funds to keep afloat.Have a feeling things will have too change a bit in future.

[Skodaman]

22 hours ago, George Dodds said:

On the contrary I would say it was pretty much every british sport with the exception of top division English football, rugby union and cricket. They are the only ones subsidised by huge TV contracts the rest have to make their own money.  

What about Basketball?

[Piotr Pyszny]

2 hours ago, George Dodds said:

The regular 1000 plus crowds seem fanciful  as I doubt that any non-county cricket ground can currently hold anything approaching that number although in the days when Richards, Sobers, Worrall, Garner and Cronje played league cricket in Lancashire may very well have.

For clarification: nowadays, it's only the finals of the annual knockout cup competitions - run by Lancashire and Yorkshire cricket leagues - that attract attendances into four figures.

As for Berrington Lough, I guess it suffered from being very much in the middle of nowhere (ironically, today's model for new speedway tracks).

Edited July 30, 2020 by Piotr Pyszny

[cityrebel]

55 minutes ago, Piotr Pyszny said:

For clarification: nowadays, it's only the finals of the annual knockout cup competitions - run by Lancashire and Yorkshire cricket leagues - that attract attendances into four figures.

As for Berrington Lough, I guess it suffered from being very much in the middle of nowhere (ironically, today's model for new speedway tracks).

I remember going to a football match at Shielfield park and catching the special bus from the car park to Berrington Lough. Strange times.

[George Dodds]

57 minutes ago, Piotr Pyszny said:

For clarification: nowadays, it's only the finals of the annual knockout cup competitions - run by Lancashire and Yorkshire cricket leagues - that attract attendances into four figures.

As for Berrington Lough, I guess it suffered from being very much in the middle of nowhere (ironically, today's model for new speedway tracks).

It is a huge problem. Speedway tracks with locations similar to cricket clubs - heart of the community, surrounded by houses - are few and far between ... and subject to severe planning restrictions to operations. Nothing to stop them building good facilities though. 

[Piotr Pyszny]

1 hour ago, cityrebel said:

I remember going to a football match at Shielfield park and catching the special bus from the car park to Berrington Lough. Strange times.

Did the same myself once. A great day of sport! After that year (1990), mind, I always drove to Berrington.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Piotr Pyszny