waiheke1

The mag company I worked for sent out reminders with the last three issues of each sub, often with a special renewal rate. They would also target lapsed subscribers with mail/phone/email offers. Have to say i find it a little odd u dont load subsciber phone details into your database.

3 for a win One for losing by less than six One for five or more heat maximums (5-1s)

And youngest ever world chsmpion? Great msrketing though.

I understand that, and agree.But... Obviously there is a huge cost (opportunity cost) in investing in land/stadium that could presumably produce a better finsncial return elsewhere. To just say kl can do it because it doesnt cost them anything is a little simplistic - obviously the incremental cost of running an nl team is relatively small, but it is part of a much larger invrstment, which is likely more than promoters who rent are making. Ultimately it comes down to the amount promoters are willing to invest. Just to be clear, this is not ananti poole dig, as clearly matt ford invests more than a lot of other promoters in terms of his team.

Surely this would have been a great opportunity for promising british riders (cook, worrall, robert lambert) togain experience riding on the continent against a decent, but not too strong, line up? If one rider is going to be allowed to compete, why didnt tbey request say four spots?

So if its that easy, why doesnt matt just buy you a stadium. Oh, is there a cost in buying a stadium and maintaining it? Id have thought renting was actually much more attractive finsncislly?

I've asked my five year old and she reckons 8 is bigger than three too. I think she's a little young to distinguish between fact and opinion, but she does think it would be silly for anyone to think 3 is bigger thsn 8. Just saying.

How was it different?

How dare you accuse him of making the story up.... I happen to believe him just as much as I do the OP.

Parsloes - you stated: Parsloes 1928 nearly, on 01 Dec 2013 - 3:37 PM, said: we're all happy to contribute to the sport we love.'Contribute' being the operative word.. Not just sniping away continually like certain others!! Surely you can see the irony when you've labelled as stupid and bigotted volunteers who contribute" for free their time to produce a speedway website because it doesn't have all the stats you want. Maybe your name's Alannis, and you genuinely can't... I'm not arguing with you on that point. But... the point of social media that you don't seem to grasp is that you are not reliant on them surfing to your website. You target certain demographics with facebook ads, tweets etc - you find them, rather than relying on them to find you. As of 2012, the UK had 30 million facebook users and 10million twitter users. Can you see any possible way in which using those mediums may be more effective than adverts/articles in the local paper?

Parsloes 1928 nearly, on 23 Nov 2013 - 02:30 AM, said: Is there anymore more stupid a thing than this so-called 'history' site on proboards completely ignoring the third tier racing record of riders? Parsloes 1928 nearly, on 23 Nov 2013 - 06:46 AM, said: Hmm, yes but the point is that there is this website purporting to be a definitive record of Speedway riders' records in the British leagues but actually deliberately supresses info. on whole sections of riders' careers... And the reason? The completely ridiculous, bigotted views of one individual who , completely laughably, believes the third division to be 'junior racing'... Parsloes 1928 nearly, on 28 Nov 2013 - 09:35 AM, said: Well we all now know that a database which is meant to be of riders' racing records is completely flawed Parsloes 1928 nearly, on 01 Dec 2013 - 3:37 PM, said:No volunteers have any problem at all with riders getting paid; we're all happy to contribute to the sport we love.'Contribute' being the operative word.. Not just sniping away continually like certain others!! Incredible! Quote Parsloes 1928 nearly, on 02 Dec 2013 - 09:06 AM, said: I agree but how on earth does having a brilliant website generate such publicity..?! Unless you look at the website you'd know nothing about it - and if you've never heard of the track or even, dare I say it, the sport, why on earth would you look at the website? Parsloes 1928 nearly, on 03 Dec 2013 - 09:22 AM, said: far more people stumble on an article in their local paper than are likely to mysteriously 'surf' their way onto a website of a sport they've never heard of. and this shows how little you understand social media. the whole point is that you can target your marketing for a very low cost, you don't need to rely on people "stumbling" onto your website. how many people do you think are on Facebook compared to how many read the local paper? CMV06, on 03 Dec 2013 - 09:32 AM, said: I've always thought that a good way of getting younger people in would be to showcase a band from a local university/college. Give their followers (or anyone with a student card) a discount on tickets and have a different band every week or so. This could build a good relationship with the local Uni/College and some of the music followers might actually get the speedway bug. Would also dish out free tickets to local primary/secondary schools every couple of months and it might get a few regulars that way too. This. I actually suggested pretty much the same thing on a different thread a couple of months back. Students for a tenner, good music, speedway, some cheap pints in the bar, make it a good students night out, and if you have a heap of students coming, potentially theya re going to attract other youthful folk along. I think a marketing role, specialising in online media, is a decent idea. The most cost efficient way would surely be to have one person to do it for all the clubs, and a consolidated BSPA website. Offer a 9 month contract (March-October) with a pro rata 50k salary, should be able to attract someone of a decent standard? Divide by ten top tier teams, that’s 3.75k a team per season. Assuming 20 home meetings, that’s under 200 quid a meeting, so an extra 12 (roughly needed) on the gate needed each home meeting . Surely a marketing/IT person worth their salt should be able to do that.. Get the PL and NL on board as well, and you probably only need an extra 5 on the gate each week for each team. But... at the same time clubs need to improve the presentation at the meeting, otherwise each time you’re going to have to be finding fifteen new people each and every meeting, which is a lot tougher than if you can retain even a couple of the nebies each week – give it a couple of months and you’ve got your 15 extra regulars. I’m a cricket purist, in that I would much rather watch a test than a 20/20 game (if time, with a young family, was not an issue)BUT... 20/20 is exactly the kind of model speedway should look at, and the benefit it has is that it doesn’t need to alienate purists by replicating it, because it already has a format which should allow a meeting to be run in an hour and a half. People on here whinge about “only 15 m minutes of racing” being poor value, but what speedway needs to be is a night out with an hour and a half of entertainment (15-20 minutes of which is the racing itself), with the option of staying on in the bar afterwards if people so desire. People’s time, as well as money, is increasingly valuable, so make sure the meeting is run slickly, spend a bit of money on a decent sound system, a bit of entertainment (local band/dj for between heats), a decent MC, spruce the place up a bit (if you were renting a house long term that was run down, you’d probably invest in a bit of paint or make some effort to make things look nice), have reasonably priced and decent food and drinks so people are happy to buy it from you. Like any industry, if profits are low you can improve things short term by cutting costs. However, you reach a point when cutting more costs will only decrease the quality. Eventually you’re going to need to be able to grow revenue, which you can do by increasing prices or by increasing sales volume. You might be able to add a quid or two on the price, and people will still attedd, as what is left now is really the “hard core” fans. But if you want to have a really sustainable business, then you’re going to need to grow crowds beyond what they are at present, and that may means spending more money not less (at least initially), and even decrease pricing at the same time .

Surely as an established fan what u want is mostly the same as a newbie - good racing, good atmosphere, reasonably priced food and drink, slickly presented and overcin an hour and a half. Guests - not ideal but what is the alternative? Double points - noone seems to like them, but lets be honest about that not try to clsim it is because they are unfair. More brits - yes, but there needs to be a long term investment. Increased/decreased points limit: no consensus, but prrsonally I think aim should be to strengthen not weaken the league. Cost cutting: all well and good, but emphasis should really be on improving product and growing revenue if u want a sustainable model. Pricing: ideally lower, but you aint going to get it lower by cost cutting, only by incresding the numbrrs through the gate to the extent it becomes viable.

Clearly speedway in britain is not in a great way, but guest riders, riders also riding in foreign leagues and doublepoint rules are WAY down the list of causes.Assuming the op's story was true, do u think newbies would care about any of those things if thry had just had a grest evening out with an hour and a half of good entertainment, in a presentable stadium and a decent atmosphere?

What's his twitter account name?

Rugby league nines is bringing in a rule where a try under the post is worth five points not four. Football has tha away goal rule. Cricket has the duckworth lewis system where u can score more runs at a better run rate than the opposition and still lose. A six hit off a no ball brings a team 7 runs not 6. A wide where the batsmsn run a single is now worth two, but a bye only one. It is fair to say that the guest system used in speedway is rare, if not unique, but I havent yet seen a viable alternative proposed. Back to the orinal poster an nz cricketer may play cricket for a club, his province, an english county side and an ipl franchise all in the same season. He may play 20 over games, 50 over games and three four or five dsy games. Some matches the tesms where the ssme colour uniform. Some games the team scoring the most runs does not win. The lbw rule is conceptuslly easy but the finer nuances and exceptions not .

There was a speedway scaletrix equivalent, there's an ad for it in the 1985 world final programme.

and how dare the site owner decide that a pair is not a team. what an insult to the likes of collins, morton, gundersen, nielsen etc. who won this event. especially when the name of the site is "internationalspeeday.co.uk" - what a misleading title if you're not going to include ALL international speedway. i'm going to sit in the corner and sulk until its fixed....

don't ever go to this site Parsloes, or you may have a seizure http://www.internationalspeedway.co.uk/about.htm A record of international speedway meetings, but the site owner has excluded the world pairs. I've just had to be talked down from a high building, been prescribed some heavy duty meds, and have a few years intensive counselling booked in...

So you call someone bigoted, and whinge when you re accused of trolling. Jeepers, i thought trolling was pretty polite, I've been pretty tempted to make reference to country matters. And pretty much all football players playing at higher levels have played some form of junior footbal, statistical information for hich is not freely available. National league speedway is junior racing, to the extent that it is at best semi professional, and is clearly below the standard of top flight racing (in the same way that someone may refer to the england "senior team" or man utd "senior team" as distinct to the reserves, England A, Enndland under 20s etc. You hinge about "ganging up" - does the fact that you are almost always in a minority f one or two tell you anything? oh, "league" appearances. Hmm, last time i looked there as something alled the "conference LEAGUE" and a whole range of "LEAGUES" below the top four divisions. I thought he did have an argument why he left them out - he considers it junior speeday, he doesn't have the time or interest in compliling stats. That's a pretty solid argument if you ask me. and surely its up to the site owner to put whatever content he ats on it, not fulfil your "wishes". Have you complained to wikipedia that there is not a page for every rider who has raced national league? The BSPA for their websites failure to list comprehensive stats? It's hardly a debate anyway is it - Parsloes is ranting and showing himself to be a sanctimonious twit (typo), and astounding and amusing everyone else with how uttely disconnected to planet earth he seems to be.

is there a name for your condition, and perhaps more importantly, is there a cure? Are you going to put these missing stats together yourself, or just hinge that others haven't done it...? i do find it baffling that this task is left to enthusiasts, rather than "the establishment." Great that there are at least some people out there who do this. Does anyone know where a copy of the peter oakes book can be obtained for a resonable price? and, and this is not a dig at the proboards site hich is excellent, but does anyone know of a site which list the averages by season for riders in BL matches only (rather than all competitive matches). And a question for Frigbo: Is there a way that your databse could be configured so that all the averages for a particular season could be viewed, rather than by individual rider? (e.g. display 1982, and it ould show all averages for all riders for that season).

Surely last year's is rated one of the best gp of all time?

True, but surely any decent business plan should have a resdonably comprehensive risk analysis built into it. Its not as though rainy british weather is a new or unforseeable occurence, or injuries in sport a new phenomenon. Id say the main risk as a speedwsy promoter is building a team/plan which can be scupperred 12 months later at the next agm.

That’s not really a valid analogy though is it. Firstly, the people posting on here are customers, current, past and potential future – therefore comments on the quality of the product provided by promoters is highly relevant. Secondly, I’m not a builder, but if I pay money to a builder who builds a shed that leaks and I hear that he is almost bankrupt, I may be able to deduce that he is not a very good builder and is not running a successful business. The fact that he may still be a better builder than me doesn’t invalidate that deduction. Thirdly, you are right, most people on here have never been promoters. But there are people who have followed speedway for long periods of time, so may well have a better understanding of the sport than many promoters. Similarly, there are people on here who are in senior roles in sales, marketing, accounting, IT, management, run their own businesses etc. These are all highly transferable skills, and while there will be certain nuances to being a speedway promoter, as there are with any industry, to suggest that none on here could do better than the current lot is simply a fallacy. That’s not to say that every person on here could do a better job than current promoters granted, but plenty could, and even those that couldn’t can contribute suggestions which could improve the promoter’s product and/or running of business. I’d suggest the main issue would be as an individual promoter ones power is largely limited to ones own operations, whereas a fundamental change is required to the mentality of the BSPA as a collective is speedway is really to progress. But I’m sure every single track could do better in some aspects of financial management, marketing, product quality etc. I certainly don't think the current promoters are stupid, and yes most have been able to make money in other ventures Hoever, there does seem to be something about sports (not just speedway), which seems to make otherwise astute businessmen make some quite poor business decisions. Surely this is the same in most professions, you could say why should a builder/plumber train an apprentice. It's called succession planning, and if you care about your employer and your industry its what you will do. It's also in your on self interest to ensure your company does well - in speedway surely you want your reservces to do well to maximise your chances of making the play offs and hence earn additional money.

The point is thst if the second strings get extra heats against reserves, then hest leaders will have less heats sgsinst reserves/second strings, which will kead to a compression of aversges (I.e. second string sverages will increase slightly, hest lesders will decreasr slightly). This msy not be massive, but what it may allow a team to do is redclare mid season, removing a second string with an artificially high average for a better rider on a similar 2013 average .Tbf, we already have a situation where riders who race regularly in nominsted hests have artificially low averages compared to other riders ( and vice versa for reserves). Compare the 87 and 88 bl averages (when they intorduced nominsted heat snd second reserve heat) to see how such a compression is very noticeable.

No, but plenty of magazines are 40% ads and people willingly psy more than three quid for them. If the programme doesnt represent value (and given that you can buya speedwsy star for less it doesnt seem to) then people should just not buy it. Plenty of sites people can go to to print off racecards. As for programmes included as part of season tickets - realistically if they were excluded, the biggest drop on offer is maybe going to be a tenner (I.e. cost of programme production, not the sales price).