HertsRacer
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Posts posted by HertsRacer
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2 minutes ago, Rayleigh said:I wonder if there are some backdoor negotiations going on as the BSPA or Rye House have made no formal acknowledgement. I have no inside information but even for the BSPA I am surprised we have not had the normal statement "it is with regret that Rye House have withdrawn/suspended from the Premiership"
The fact that Rye House have pulled the plug is so far based on rumour. If true, and it may well be that they have approached the BSPA with their intention , I suspect there are ongoing moves behind the scenes to come up with a rescue package that will at least enable them to finish the season.
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45 minutes ago, GWC said:It will probably take a wholesale decline and closure of tracks back to about 10 operating.
Once that happens so long as those tracks closed can open up again within 5 years there might be a revival.
Its been done before!
Sadly many tracks continue today only because they know that if they were to close they would never get planning permission to re-open again due to noise and the close proximity of houses these days. .
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49 minutes ago, Aces51 said:It doesn't matter what you do or how good the product is you simply won't get the crowd on a Monday that you would on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. People have a limited amount of money to spend on sport, entertainment or leisure activities and most of it is spent at the weekend. It's common sense that people are more likely to go out when they have no work or school for their children the next day.
Its an odd one. In the late 60's I was a regular at Reading who ran on a Monday. They averaged 6000+ in those days. Also went to Romford on Thursdays who averaged about 5000. Not much difference, people worked the next day and kids went to school. Today I can walk down our High Street Mondays to Thursdays evenings and all the pubs and restaurants are empty, and the place is like a ghost town. I don't think its just about money as our town is fairly affluent, it seems that people just don't want to go out midweek these days.
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Notice in this weeks Speedway Star that a couple of enquiries have already been make re the possibility of speedway returning to Brafield. Answer seems to be no in the short term, but maybe in a couple of years time.
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33 minutes ago, cityrebel said:It's been an absolute disaster for one of my local tracks, Rye house. Since giving up their Saturday race night, their crowds have plummeted. The end of the season can't come soon enough for some clubs.
Rye House will never work as a mid week track. The trouble is much of their support is not local but from all over Hertfordshire. People just don't have the time or inclination to get home from work, change, grab a bite to eat and rush out again. The chaos on Govia trains at present is also doing the club no favours.
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13 minutes ago, Grand Central said:I admit it was quite a few years since I was involved in any programme adverts but It was 'dirt cheap' relative to other forms of advertising or so I felt at the time.
Perhaps thingss have changed considerably since then; but with dwindling 'circulation' I would have thought that to be unlikely.Agreed, with attendances now in their hundreds rather than thousands, and many not buying programmes or printing off their own race cards, it now does not appear good value in terms of return to place adverts in programmes. Most of our advertisers did so as a sense of loyalty to help keep the magazine going rather than any potential benefit to them. If we had raised the price for advertising along with the rise in printing costs, I'm sure their loyalty may well have been tested.
As Mr. Snackette posted, no reason why a simple race card with accompanying adverts cannot be produced. I have many non league football programmes from the 1950/60's when this was the norm with just the team line ups and the rest local adverts.
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1 hour ago, Grand Central said:Do many clubs make a net profit on programme advertising revenue ?
Or is more likely that it helps to go cover some of the high production costs and any programme 'profit' is really just from the meagre sales ?
And even then it is minimal profit; after an army of volunteers have a put in massive efforts getting all the ad's and providing the copy pretty much FOC.
Can't help thinking all those man hours could bring in more revenue that created real profit if it were not 'wasted' on quite so many 'vanity productions'.
I doubt the advertising revenue makes a profit. I used to contribute to a local magazine which was printed on glossy paper with colour photos. There were a few more pages than your average programme, but the printing costs for about 500 issues was about £950. The charge for advertising was £25 for a quarter page (The most popular), £50 for half a page, and a full page was £100 (The least popular). The revenue from this helped but didn't fully cover the printing costs.
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28 minutes ago, cyclone said:IMO the same thing is happening in Speedway with SGB Championship programmes now mainly costing between £2.50 - £3.00.
With the Speedway Star running a rating feature on each track's programme, it appears that some Promotions have entered into a vanity contest to be top dog, with the result that larger, in terms of size and number of pages, are being produced, which in turn has resulted in the prices rocketing.
If they reverted to producing a more compact & smaller sized version at about £1 - £1.50, I wonder if those who now print off a basic scoresheet to fill in, might be tempted to purchase a low cost Official programme instead?
Quite agree. Today programmes are printed on glossy paper with coloured photos and packed with adverts. In the past they were just cheaply produced with half a dozen pages consisting of a scoresheet, something written by the promoter, fixtures/league tables and any bits of latest news. That's basically all you need.
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3 minutes ago, The White Knight said:If the Programmes are not revenue earners for their respective Clubs - then the answer to your question - No.
A lot of people do like them though, and there are a lot of avid Collectors out there. It would be sad for them if Programmes were to be phased out.
Up to each individual Club I suppose.
Agree, in my youth I was an avid collector of programmes of speedway, football and ice hockey going back to the 1920's. Still get them out occasionally to look at them. I love them from a historical point of view. The last time I went to a premier league football match it was more like a glossy magazine full of stuff that didn't interest me, for which they wanted £6. I didn't bother. Gone are the days when programmes were a cheap and simple addition to the match day experience.
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2 minutes ago, Grachan said:Darcy actually tweeted about this horse a while back, and said it was named after him. Can't remember who the owner is, but Darcy said he asked him for permission.
Owners Phil Fry and Charlie Walker. Record 1 outing, 1 win, so worth a flutter if you like that sort of thing.
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11 minutes ago, blupanther said:With temps feeling like -5* on Sunday it wouldn't have felt much like fun
Especially as they are forecasting snow now.for Sunday.
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7 minutes ago, DunRobin said:At present the plans are for the track to be shortened, the new stand will go on the back straight & then the old stand will be demolished. However, I have serious doubts as to whether the new plans will be passed by the local authority. The letter from Barratt Homes has been very well written by their solicitors & lays it very firmly in the stadium's owner's responsibility to ensure that there is no noise nuisance from "greyhound racing, speedway & the car parks". It further go's on to say that the local authority needs to ensure that these terms are met or either present or future tenants will have good reason to complain.
Barretts letter may be an attempt to preempt the Government's proposal to shift the responsibility of dealing with any noise nuisance onto the developer rather than the venue when new houses are built near an existing music or sports venue.
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16 hours ago, 25yearfan said:There must have been 3-5000 at the dog meeting at Romford when I went and we parked although it was difficult to find a space.
Now in current times I doubt if hardly any team meetings in British speedway get more than 2500 at the most!
Speedway at Romford Greyhound stadium could work I think!
Pretty sure the Greyhound Stadium would have been the first place the promoters looked at to replace Brooklands all those years ago. If there was any chance of speedway at Romford Greyhound Stadium it would have happened before now. As you say it would have been successful, no doubt.
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26 minutes ago, BOBBATH said:Sorry to hear of this-how old was Ron, I think I recall Ron riding for Sheffield in Provincial League days-am I correct or is my memory playing tricks?
You'll be pleased to know there's nothing wrong with your memory. Ron rode for the Tigers between 1962-4.
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6 hours ago, 25yearfan said:Yes it was a scandal that such a well supported sports team, the Romford Bombers were forced to close cause of one blokes campaign. Ironically, the blokes son was a "Bombers" regular and the guy moved soon after winning his campaign.
I'm convinced that had Romford speedway been allowed to continue, the Bombers with their huge support would of eventually gone into the top flight and become one of the biggest club sides in the Country, probably much the same as Ipswich speedway did who opened the same year as Romford in 1969!
I believe the stadium was knocked down in the late 70's because the football team were struggling and couldn't afford to keep it open, how ironic again!
I also think that reopening Romford speedway at the Greyhound track would also be viable even in current times and would be the closest thing we'd have to a London track!
Yes, I've always wondered what would have happened if they had not been forced to close. When Custom House was sold, would they have bought West Ham's First Division license instead of Ipswich.
As for the Greyhound Stadium, no chance of speedway there I'm affraid. The houses are even closer than at Brooklands.
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Very sad news. Remember Ron riding for Yarmouth against Norwich"B" in the first meeting I ever saw back in 1961.
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7 hours ago, iris123 said:Yes,but that is the two teams,even though one has a junior team as well.I was thinking Romford,West Ham and Dagenham =3 different clubs
Although it is generally thought that West Ham Hawks ran their home meetings at Dagenham in 1938, I can find no evidence to support this. In the local newspapers their home meetings are listed being held at West Ham Speedway on Friday's starting at 8-15pm, and in the few match reports that appear there is no mention of Dagenham. There were also some programmes of the Hawks sold recently on E-Bay showing they ran at Custom House.
I wasn't aware that Dagenham's track had lights. If they didn't then they couldn't have staged meetings in the evening. Can anybody shed any light on this?
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2 hours ago, cityrebel said:I only went to Romford once, my dad took me to see the Czechs there in 1970. I did see a few of the bombers matches at west ham in 1972.
Remember the Czech meeting well. Probably one of the most exciting matches I've ever seen. Over 10,000 packed into the stadium, and I think someone forgot to tell the Czech riders that the safety fence was made of concrete the way they were flying around it. Also followed the Bombers at West Ham, but with both the team and the stadium living on borrowed time it was all a bit sad watching really.
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Can't believe it was 50 years ago that I was a regular at Brooklands. Was at the Crewe match and supported them throughout their sadly short existence. Great times.
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Interesting article in the Daily Mail today that BT is preparing to give up their right to show Premier League football due to losing over 5000 subscribers as a result of having to raise prices to the customer to pay for it. Though they will be bidding in this years auction for future rights, they said they wouldn't go beyond the price they thought it was worth to BT, and that BT would still succeed without showing the Premier League. If this happens might it mean that more money could be available to spend on the other sports in their portfolio?
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4 minutes ago, sugarray said:I really prefer individual race suits. Makes the riders more identifiable.
Quite agree. Also with so many guests last year you had half a team with official race suits and half not, which really did look amateurish.
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2 minutes ago, Hawk127 said:It nearly did for Mildenhall and if you look at how close the houses are getting to Foxhall and it would/will only be a matter of time before someone moves in and whinges. It only takes one if the story about Romford was correct.
Sorry Hawk, we posted at exactly the same time. Yes I remember that person who killed off the Bombers then moved away. As you say it just takes one individual.
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Maybe only at Swindon at present, bearing in mind that any new stadium is a replacement and that a stadium already exists. Mildenhall have had problems in the past, and with so many new houses being built there are bound to be some near enough to tracks for the noise to be audible.
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Don't think this has been mentioned elsewhere, but on the BBC website there is a report that the music industry is hailing a major victory after ministers vowed to change planning rules in England to protect venues from complaints about noise. In the future It will be down to developers to address noise issues if they opt to build homes near a long-established music venues. The report also warns that this was not just confined to music, but also regarding complaints being made about the ringing of church bells as well as about noise emanating from speedway stadiums and even farms.
Rye House 2018
in SGB Premiership Speedway League
Posted
Totally agree with you re conference system. It always amazes me how the regular baseball season consists of 162 games, and there is still interest as to reaching the play-offs right up to the last game.