SuperSpeed

Martin Dugard ran the "Brighton Bonanza" indoors at the Brighton Centre for around 10 years I think in the late 90s/early 00s, on a temporary shale track. There are a few clips on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brighton+bonanza+speedway And quite an interesting article on it here, with a picture of Edward Kennett driving a forklift: http://www.speedwayplus.co.uk/Bonanza.shtml

For me it says that the location of Arlington is not, in itself, an impediment to attracting decent crowds. Others on this thread have said that the stocks are attracting lower crowds this year; I have no reason to doubt this as I don't attend the stocks regularly enough to argue one way or the other. I would say, though, that the Bears Bash at Arlington last month saw a crowd that the Eagles could only dream of in recent years. So we come back round to asking why people weren't turning up to speedway in sufficient numbers (ignoring the mismanagement by Ian Jordan) to make the operation viable. I'm sure all of us have our theories as to why this is and plans on how to reverse the decline, and I'm sure that most of these theories and plans are broadly in agreement. I don't think they bear repeating here again for the nth time, I'm just sad that the prospect of seeing bikes at Arlington again has receded.

Whilst all the above are true, people turn up in their droves to watch stock cars at the same stadium - and the stocks charge for parking!

For me, the lack of standalone teams lessens the appeal. When Eastbourne were last in the NDL it was a 10 team league with only Belle Vue being a "junior" side. I have fond memories of watching Eastbourne in the NDL, and seeing Brennan go from the start of his career to representing GB last year has been special. Now it's a 10 team league that consists almost entirely of "junior" sides, with the exception of Mildenhall and Kent. It makes it seem like a league that's been cobbled together to give youngsters somewhere to ride, rather than a genuine competition. That said, if it was a choice between seeing Eastbourne in the current NDL or not seeing Eastbourne at all, I'd take NDL.

More chance of getting blood from a stone than anyone seeing any money from that crook.

Seems unlikely to me...surely Len wouldn't have donated the Kent airfence to Iwade if he was planning on coming to Eastbourne, given that the airfence at Arlington needs replacing?

This is the question, isn't it? The stadium was rented on very favourable terms, many (most?) trackday staff were volunteers, we now know that riders and other bills weren't being paid, yet sponsorship, matchday and season ticket money seems to have disappeared without trace. I doubt that we shall ever know the real truth, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mr Jordan's pension pot is looking rather healthier than it did 12 months ago.

It's pretty clear at this point that Mr Jordan is a liar and a crook. Why he continues this ridiculous charade, with fabricated excuses and fabricated staff, instead of coming clean that's he stiffed riders and fans is beyond me.

I wouldn't myself, however I'd be very unlikely to buy another season ticket after this fiasco, regardless of the promoter.

We had our 90th anniversary tickets refunded earlier in the week (minus the booking fee) but nothing yet for the merchandise or season ticket. I am not optimistic.

This is meant to be the case already, it's just that it's roundly ignored. Per the rulebook: In normal circumstances the time from the finish of a heat to the start of the next shall not exceed 4 minutes (including the 2 minute time allowance)

The accounts for 2019 show that they paid out £235,725 in "staff costs" that year on a turnover of £237,721.

I wish I could share your optimism but, unless any prospective new management is willing to stump up £35,000 for a new air fence, I fear this may be it for speedway at Arlington.

According to Ian Jordan in a Q&A in June, the attendance for Poole was 1,000, Kent was 975 and Edinburgh was 800.

It looks like fixtures at other tracks are listed as provisional as well, so I don't think there's too much to be gleaned from that.

Eastbourne Eagles and Arlington Stadium are two separate concerns now, the speedway club rent the stadium from the Dugards on race nights.

Whilst this doesn't come as a surprise, it would be nice if Eastbourne actually communicated this rather than just surreptitiously removing the fixtures from the fixture list. Ian Jordan likes to go on about openness and transparency but there hasn't been much of either in the last couple of weeks.

Rumours on Facebook via a sponsor that Lawson and Kennett have left, as has Ian Jordan (who allegedly owes thousands, both in rent and to the riders) and that an SCB investigation is underway.

It was - Kennett was riding in the World Longtrack on the day of the home leg and Rory Schlein guested, he supposedly aggravated a previous injury and failed to appear for the away leg the following day where Doolan replaced him.

If the season finished today I think my wife and I have effectively paid £44 per meeting

The club have to shoulder some of the blame for that, I'm afraid... We've had two meetings start late because the tapes failed, "15 minute" intervals that have stretched to 40, incessant bouts of tractor racing (and a tractor demolition derby), a reserve who'd rather sit in Poland not racing than turn out for Eastbourne, a "full MSDL second half" with no opposition that consisted of Abilitt racing a couple of junior riders who couldn't broadside and lapped slower than I could run it, an NDL fixture with half a team, a double header that wasn't far off running into the following day...etc, etc...is it any wonder that only the die-hards come back week after week? My sister has two small boys who love motorsports, and who I'm sure would love speedway too, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to recommend it to her when I can't tell her what they'll be seeing, or reassure her that she'll be able to put the kids to bed at a reasonable time. For my part, myself and my wife carried our 2020 season tickets over to this year in good faith, rather than go for a refund. Lord knows we could have used the money at various points over the last 18 months but we wanted to help the club, particularly considering how well run things were (on the whole) during 2019. We bought our 90th anniversary tickets the day they went on sale, plus the extra merchandise that they were flogging. Sadly at this point in time it's increasingly seeming like a poor decision and, even if the remaining Championship fixtures are fulfilled, we'll be significantly out of pocket compared to paying for meetings on a week by week basis. If the rumours regarding the financial situation are true I dread to think what's happened to the money from the air fence fund...and with no air fence there's no Eastbourne next season regardless of the outcome this year

In a Q&A earlier in the season, Ian Jordan said that breakeven was around 875-900. The Poole and Kent meetings had attendance of 1,000 and 900 respectively (when the capacity was limited to 1,000 by Covid restrictions). The Edinburgh fixture attracted 800. I havent seen a figure for Glasgow but it seemed about as busy as Edinburgh to me. I missed Leicester at Arlington due to family committments so can't comment on that, but the Scunthorpe attendance was apparently only about 550-600.

The club and the stadium are separate entities now, Eastbourne pay (Eric Dugard, I think) to hire Arlington for meetings.

Unless you're party to information that wasn't made public from any source, (doubtful as, by your own admission, you've only been to two speedway meetings in living memory), the scheduled meeting at Arlington tonight wasn't cancelled until Thursday.

In mitigation I think this is at least partly down to the truncated season, combined with being a weekend track - I think we've only had two weekends since the end of May without a meeting. If the domestic season had started in late March as usual then it may have easier to plan fixtures to avoid the clashes. I'm more or less in agreement with your other points though. Last night was the second time this season that the tapes have failed (although the first time it was eventually rectified), and they weren't rising evenly the other week although the meeting continued despite that. Even when everything does work properly we seem to be getting ever greater delays between heats and protracted periods of tractor racing throughout the evening. With the double header last week we got home gone 11pm, for a meeting that started at 6:30pm, and we only live 8 miles away from the track!