Speedways relationship with the media

[ExiledAce]

Back in the 70s Speedway seemed to be covered quite well on TV and in print. Regular coverage on World of Sport, daily results/meeting reports and news in the papers and at least everyone seemed to know of the sport if not actually go. I seem to remember PCs world title win making the front page of the Daily Mirror.

Even in to the mid 80’s Speedway seemed to do ok, Wiggy and Kenny Carter were never off Breakfast TV or so it seemed, ITV regularly showing Wc quails, even test matches but at least you could mention the sport to most people and not have them look at you like you were from outer space!

So what went wrong, why did people stop going, why did the media lose interest?

I’m as guilty as the next man, for various reasons I couldn’t go as much as I liked [and I used to go everywhere, believe me] then eventually stopped altogether. Planning on going to Plymouth this year, I have never fallen out of love with Speedway just drifted away. Followed it as much as I could online and on TV.

Is the answer that simple, far too many people of my generation drifted away, and with it any media support?

[IainB]

I don't think the explosion of TV channels has helped. Everything seems to have its own niche channel these days, BSN being speedway's example. 

Back in the day you just had 3 or 4 TV channels and if you were fortunate enough to be on one of them you were quids in. Then satellite TV came along and the whole entertainment industry was carved up into its different categories, and everybody now watches stuff in their own bubble. 

In the era of 3/4 channel TV if you were a "celebrity" you were a national celebrity, these days you could walk past most of the modern day "celebrities" in the street unaware as they're generally not known outside of their bubble.

Add in the demise of the print media for anybody over 40 and it's really hard to get your message across without some kind of "on brand" message. Speedway with its very white, very male audience and participants will just get overlooked, having said that it does have the youth of the participants on its side that really could be exploited more. The old codgers in the crowd will not like crowds of hooded yoofs roaming the stadiums in gangs playing their awful music though 😂

[The White Knight]

2 hours ago, IainB said:

I don't think the explosion of TV channels has helped. Everything seems to have its own niche channel these days, BSN being speedway's example. 

Back in the day you just had 3 or 4 TV channels and if you were fortunate enough to be on one of them you were quids in. Then satellite TV came along and the whole entertainment industry was carved up into its different categories, and everybody now watches stuff in their own bubble. 

In the era of 3/4 channel TV if you were a "celebrity" you were a national celebrity, these days you could walk past most of the modern day "celebrities" in the street unaware as they're generally not known outside of their bubble.

Add in the demise of the print media for anybody over 40 and it's really hard to get your message across without some kind of "on brand" message. Speedway with its very white, very male audience and participants will just get overlooked, having said that it does have the youth of the participants on its side that really could be exploited more. The old codgers in the crowd will not like crowds of hooded yoofs roaming the stadiums in gangs playing their awful music though 😂

Love it. 🤣🤣

[mikebv]

On 3/9/2025 at 10:42 AM, ExiledAce said:

Back in the 70s Speedway seemed to be covered quite well on TV and in print. Regular coverage on World of Sport, daily results/meeting reports and news in the papers and at least everyone seemed to know of the sport if not actually go. I seem to remember PCs world title win making the front page of the Daily Mirror.

Even in to the mid 80’s Speedway seemed to do ok, Wiggy and Kenny Carter were never off Breakfast TV or so it seemed, ITV regularly showing Wc quails, even test matches but at least you could mention the sport to most people and not have them look at you like you were from outer space!

So what went wrong, why did people stop going, why did the media lose interest?

I’m as guilty as the next man, for various reasons I couldn’t go as much as I liked [and I used to go everywhere, believe me] then eventually stopped altogether. Planning on going to Plymouth this year, I have never fallen out of love with Speedway just drifted away. Followed it as much as I could online and on TV.

Is the answer that simple, far too many people of my generation drifted away, and with it any media support?

The domestic competition's definitely piggy backed off the very regular success at international level..

Watching PC thrill the nation on a Saturday afternoon riding for England, certainly aided crowd numbers for league speedway across the country...

And then the UK decided to train up riders from the USA, Denmark and "everywhere else" instead of developing riders to replace PC, Louis, Simmons, Jessup etc etc etc..

Meaning less UK riders to watch, and inevitably, less success, as the USA and Denmark in particular cleaned up...

And TV then decided to give it a wide swerve as watching non UK riders win pretty much every major honour, year in year out, became something viewers decided wasn't worth doing..

Nowadays barely 20,000 will attend Speedway every week...

Mainstream media wouldn't be interested in such a tiny sport...

Particularly with it's weather impact issues and, domestically, its ludicrous operating model...

The GP's maybe have a chance of MSM coverage now Lambert and Bewley are challenging? But the organisers seem happy with Satellite and running behind pay walls...  

 

 

[OGT]

15 hours ago, mikebv said:

The domestic competition's definitely piggy backed off the very regular success at international level..

Watching PC thrill the nation on a Saturday afternoon riding for England, certainly aided crowd numbers for league speedway across the country...

And then the UK decided to train up riders from the USA, Denmark and "everywhere else" instead of developing riders to replace PC, Louis, Simmons, Jessup etc etc etc..

Meaning less UK riders to watch, and inevitably, less success, as the USA and Denmark in particular cleaned up...

And TV then decided to give it a wide swerve as watching non UK riders win pretty much every major honour, year in year out, became something viewers decided wasn't worth doing..

Nowadays barely 20,000 will attend Speedway every week...

Mainstream media wouldn't be interested in such a tiny sport...

Particularly with it's weather impact issues and, domestically, its ludicrous operating model...

The GP's maybe have a chance of MSM coverage now Lambert and Bewley are challenging? But the organisers seem happy with Satellite and running behind pay walls...  

 

 

All the other main FIM world championships are behind paywalls and have been for years. No need for speedway to be any different really. 

[Petecc]

20 hours ago, IainB said:

I don't think the explosion of TV channels has helped. Everything seems to have its own niche channel these days, BSN being speedway's example. 

Back in the day you just had 3 or 4 TV channels and if you were fortunate enough to be on one of them you were quids in. Then satellite TV came along and the whole entertainment industry was carved up into its different categories, and everybody now watches stuff in their own bubble. 

In the era of 3/4 channel TV if you were a "celebrity" you were a national celebrity, these days you could walk past most of the modern day "celebrities" in the street unaware as they're generally not known outside of their bubble.

Add in the demise of the print media for anybody over 40 and it's really hard to get your message across without some kind of "on brand" message. Speedway with its very white, very male audience and participants will just get overlooked, having said that it does have the youth of the participants on its side that really could be exploited more. The old codgers in the crowd will not like crowds of hooded yoofs roaming the stadiums in gangs playing their awful music though 😂

Celebrities,  everyone can be famous for 15 minutes. I just didn't expect it to be the same 15 minutes. 

[IainB]

15 minutes ago, Petecc said:

Celebrities,  everyone can be famous for 15 minutes. I just didn't expect it to be the same 15 minutes. 

15 minutes... spread over the course of 2 hours with regular breaks for tractor racing 😂

[IanBrannan]

The simple answer, as someone who works in speedway, and in media in general including the BBC, the whole media landscape is incomparable to how it used to be even 5 or 6 years ago. Did the media lose interest or do they have hardly any staff left to write anything?

However many people you think work in sports departments in newsrooms for either print or broadcast media, the reality will be a fraction of that, and really (as already happens) it’s down to those within the sport to lay the content on a plate in order to get coverage. Loads and loads of old long time journalists have left, been made redundant, taken retirement, died etc. So the people who used to bang the drum for speedway on the inside are no longer there. 

British Speedway sends news reports out on a daily basis, and even in the off season whenever something happens it is released directly to the media to hundreds of places. 

The way newsrooms work, you have certain sports guaranteed to take 90% of the coverage (mainly football etc), all other sports from Speedway to every  sport in the Olympics and beyond are battling for that remaining 10%, and for the most part I’d include domestic rugby and county cricket in that.

We also need personalities with a story. You mention Kenny Carter and Wiggy always being on the TV, they would not have been on the TV regardless of how good they were as riders if they were dullards. They were on because they were good value & entertaining. 

Results are at best going to get a passing mention, I would say the pre hype or some kind of human interest story would more likely get decent coverage, but to do that we need the personalities first. Chicken and egg I know, but that’s the situation. 

So I’d say it’s a mix of everything, but also don’t lose sight that a lot does happen, you may not see it yourself but it is there. We have regular stories in national newspapers such as The Sun & The Star & Mirror via Peter Oakes & Phil Lanning, we have many local BBC sport shows running speedway features and even live commentaries, we’ve had  big coverage of the GB Youth training camp on the north east ITV News recently even in the closed season as such, coverage on ITV on the south coast of Kent I think too. 
 We don’t quite have the resources of other sports at the moment but, people are trying to gain maximum coverage with the resources and contacts we have, and what we have now is undoubtedly better than what we’ve had in recent years. A way to go but we’ll get there. 

[MARK246]

Speedway in the media never recovered from the Sunday People's proven race fixing articles, most people saw speedway as a circus act, the fixing of results just reinforced their view.