How Many Of Us Are Losing Interest.?

[RPNY 608]

I think the crowds are lower at a significant number of tracks and how many tracks can say over a season that their crowds have increased( not many I fear) we don't get attendance figures for various reason IMO .While we have all got many gripes ,too me one of the the biggest failing is the fixture list,we need to have regular once a week meetings or people drift away.

Yup, we are generally creatures of habit, a set race night would certainly help the cause.

[martinmauger 584]

I might be one of an odd breed, but I still really enjoy my speedway.

 

It probably helps that my club Redcar have had their best season in years, with good racing and a much improved atmosphere around the club combined with a good increase in crowds.I try not to pay attention to the rules and politics that go on, and just enjoy 4 blokes riding around a track with no brakes.

 

Something definitely needs to be done around the consistency of meetings and riders though. We have been lucky to have a meeting pretty much every week but you see some clubs go 4/5 weeks without a meeting and people just get out of the habit of going. And guests/doubling up/missing riders needs to be sorted or minimized somehow, people want to see the same 7 riders turn up (injuries permitting).

This ^^, + endless re-runs. Lost a tad interest if I'm being honest, but I still love speedway and remains the one sport that has caught my interest, though F1 is a distant 2nd, then IOM TT. I enjoy all motorcycling activities but can't abide MotoGP / Superbikes for some reason. But the lack of time, energy, other commitments and also money as I'm far from rich are the main factors keeping me from live speedway, though I try to visit Scunny once a month. But one somehow tends to find more time, energy and resolve when one has a team of ones own to follow....

Edited September 7, 2017 by Martin Mauger

[Fromafar 10,333]

Yup, we are generally creatures of habit, a set race night would certainly help the cause.

 

Most tracks have a set race night as things stand,it's the crazy rules and fixture list that has caused the trouble.

[B.V 72 1,054]

Just to post a yes vote I buy a season ticket every year for the Aces and the colts and I still love it.Better still now we have the NSS.

The sport still has its problems but when all said and done its still 4 guys on a bike racing hell for leather round an ovel track the same as its always been if you leave the problems at the door and just enjoy the meeting.

[The White Knight 9,039]

I no longer attend Speedway as a lone protest about a single issue (Double Points). I don't like all of this Double Up/Double Down either.

 

That said, I have not lost my interest in Speedway - I just want it to be the very best it can be. I keep myself more or less up to date with what is going on in the Sport, and it grieves me very much to see the state that British Speedway is now in.

 

There are so many things that seem to encourage people not to attend. There is the lack of Fixtures during the Summer, warm nights, and a glut of Fixtures towards the end of the Season (cold nights). Given the age of the majority of Supporters these days - the cold nights are not encouraging. Why then, can't these Fixtures be balanced out over the Season? Lack of consistency as far as Meetings goes is detrimental to continuing Support. It is very easy to find something else to do if your Team isn't riding.

 

When I first started attending back in 1964, Speedway was a weekly Sport. I used to look forward from one week to the next to my Speedway Meeting. Nowadays the weekly involvement doesn't happen at some Tracks, probably most Tracks.

 

I also am not happy at the way the Top League, when anything goes wrong, automatically starts changing things in the lower Leagues. That is discouraging for Supporters of those lower League Clubs also, and may well put some people off attending altogether.

 

I confess that I don't know what the answer is but Speedway simply has to get it's act together if it is to survive as a National, Professional Sport.

 

I look forward to the day when Double Points is no more and I can return to watching Speedway - but it should be on a weekly basis.

[keef robin 551]

Enjoy my speedway now as much as when I started going in 1963 at New Cross.

It helps when my local team Swindon are top of the league, better atmosphere, bigger crowds.

[Fromafar 10,333]

Just to post a yes vote I buy a season ticket every year for the Aces and the colts and I still love it.Better still now we have the NSS.The sport still has its problems but when all said and done its still 4 guys on a bike racing hell for leather round an ovel track the same as its always been if you leave the problems at the door and just enjoy the meeting.

Your correct at the end of the day it is just 4 guys racing round an oval,but the crowds are dropping off for different reasons and the powers at be don't seem to a be able to find a solution .The results as aTeam sport are meaningless nowadays.Keep enjoying that's the main thing.

[Trees 2,814]

Waheyyy, thank goodness for the club fans who love their speedway! Never, ever the same after you have lost your team, the passion dies!

[Hawk127 1,357]

It fast and furious, dangerous, exciting, average lap times of a minute or less, fifteen heats of mad men prepared to ride at super speeds with no brakes so why does it take two hours to run a meeting.

 

The image created does not match the reality and to me some of the lost interest is a result of the poor way in which meetings are run. I appreciate that you can have hold ups for falls etc. But the delays with restarts, gardening at the gate and rarely the same team riders week in week out does test the patience of many. No new fans can get their head around two hours for fifteen minutes of racing let alone the long gaps in between races. The older fans despair at the rules, close racing at league level is a thing of the past and for real cut and thrust of the sport you need to record it and forward wind.

 

I like a number of two wheeled sports but speedway takes some beating if you look at it in its simplest form. I use to regularly go to tracks in Essex and around London in the 70's to get a fix, was a regular at Rye House when the rockets first moved in in 73 and again at Arena Essex when that first started. Moved slightly North and Ipswich and Mildenhall were the local teams with the occasional visit to Kings Lynn and Peterborough and attended one of the tracks most weeks up until a couple of years back. Now just the odd meeting. Not lost to the sport but certainly not the avid attendee that I use to be. One day the interest might return but until,then I will just be selective about the live meetings.

[stewmac 468]

I'm 50 years old and first went to Berwick in 1976 as a 9 year old with my dad. Then on 15th April 1977, I was at the opening of Edinburgh's Powderhall Stadium, and continued weekly with my dad until I was a bit older and able to get the bus to Edinburgh, then drive a motorbike and car to the stadium. Gradually later in my teens I began travelling around the UK and soon I had visited every stadium in Britain that was operating. I took weekly or fortnightly speedway trips with mates in my early 20s, driving ridiculous amounts of miles to see speedway the length and breadth of the UK nightly. That in addition to never missing meetings at Edinburgh, as well as travelling to Glasgow, Berwick, Newcastle, and even Middlesborough most weeks too. My weeks in summer revolved around speedway. My weekends were ruined if my team lost at home. I knew every rule in the book, every rider in every team, every average every week of the top 30 riders in each league.

When Powderhall closed at the end of 1995, I travelled to Shawfield to watch the Scottish Monarchs, missing only one match there. Then Armadale opened in 1997 and I attended there every week for years, still doing lots of away meetings too. Going back to the introduction of dirt deflectors, I remember Dick Barrie asking Paul Bentley after a rain sodden first heat at Shawfield in the first ever match there with them what he thought of them. Bentley said he thought there would never be another rained off meeting - they were so good!

But gradually, over the past 10 years or so, things have changed. The rule book became more and more ridiculous, the guests increased. The rain off became more regular. The 100 mile round trip became more of a chore. Edinburgh promoter John Campbell stated only a short number of years ago (maybe 5?) in his programme notes one week that as long as it was dry at start time, a meeting should almost always go ahead. My God, how that has changed! Even a shower now will cause an abandonment. The rules have become too difficult for me, a university honours degree graduate, to follow. I still attend weekly home matches. Away trips to the likes of Newcastle or Berwick happen once a year now. If at all. Glasgow has been dropped totally. Ashfield was a place I went to weekly in the late 90s, just to see fantastic racing. Now, it's one-line follow the leader.

Am I losing interest then? BIG TIME! But, only in UK speedway. Others before in this thread have mentioned subscriptions to Polish TV. I have one too. Ten years ago, I went to a GP in Bydgozszcz for the 1st time. It was awesome, but I didn't think about it too much afterwards. Then I went back the following year, then again and again. Poland now features annually for speedway trips with some mates. But I've seen speedway in Czech Rep, Denmark and Sweden as well as in Finland this summer.

I now want to visit all the Polish tracks I can. I've already been to around 10 of them, and am eagerly awaiting next year's fixtures to plan more trips. Yes, it's far away and means weekends away from the family. But it has so many plusses, in addition to the quality of the racing and the amazing stadiums. It's a genuinely beautiful country, with genuinely warm and lovely people, gorgeous towns and cities, and above all, it's affordable.

In 2018, I doubt I will go to any speedway in Scotland or Britain. Our sport here is run by complete idiots. Numpties, self-centred fools who have only their own self interest at heart. Fans are deserting the sport here left, right and centre, yet they simply introduce even crazier rules. I've very, very nearly had enough. I don't know even who races in each team now, it's got so silly with guests.

So, yes, I've had enough. Of UK speedway. But I still look forward hugely to GPs on TV, and to Sunday speedway from the Polish channels through my wizja.tv subscription.

 

Next season, even if I only take 3 or 4 trips to Poland, I am 100% certain I will see racing that eclipses many times the quality of what I'd see in a whole season of UK speedway. Sorry to be negative about the sport here. But what we have here in 2017 simply is not the same sport I fell in love with in the 70s.

[B.V 72 1,054]

Your correct at the end of the day it is just 4 guys racing round an oval,but the crowds are dropping off for different reasons and the powers at be don't seem to a be able to find a solution .The results as aTeam sport are meaningless nowadays.Keep enjoying that's the main thing.

Yes I know speedway has its problems and they have turned fans away.

But I still think a major cause is the fact that leisure now cost far more than it used to and people now cant afford to do everything.

I can only go off what I have done myself I used to go to speedway and football I cannot now afford to go to both so I decided to drop Football I also don't go down the pub as often.Its choices we all seem to have to make these days and sadly for speedway it seems a good few people have chosen something else.

[Sidney the robin 4,735]

Too much time on this forum listening to the whinges and whining will certainly make you begin to lose interest.

 

Especially when it's populated by folks such as the last two posters on a thread asking if they are 'losing interest' when they lost interest 10+ years ago.

 

Sure the sport has issues, but personally, I can't wait for the next GP and equally can't wait to get to England for the play-offs.

 

However, please fix the doubling up issue for next year so teams can have a regular 1-7!!

A poor post and without some of us whingers and oldies the sport in this country would be knackered.Also the two posters you referred to have not lost total interest and still follow the sport and if i am correct would love the sport to prosper.Forget the GP circus that has no relevence to me when i am discussing the three leagues the sport is still brilliant and it can still be a fun night out but people are not coming as regular anymore.As a example the four meetings at the Abbey close together were really well attended and it was great to see that once great racetrack pretty packed again.But those meetings covered over the cracks the problems the sport has, one of the meetings was a 5 pound meeting and in all the four meetings how many people got in FREE to many i would suggest.Over the four meetings i spent between 160/200 pound on those meetings not cheap, ok i am lucky i could afford it but some cant so people have a right to moan.In England get the regular 1/7 teams back riders who they can relate to and sort the CRAZY rulebook out that would be a start this next year or so is a real big one for English speedway. Edited September 6, 2017 by Sidney the robin

[BWitcher 12,453]

A poor post and without some of us whingers and oldies the sport in this country would be knackered.Also the two posters you referred to have not lost total interest and still follow the sport and if i am correct would love the sport to prosper.Forget the GP circus that has no relevence to me when i am discussing the three leagues the sport is still brilliant and it can still be a fun night out but people are not coming as regular anymore.As a example the four meetings at the Abbey close together were really well attended and it was great to see that once great racetrack pretty packed again.But those meetings covered over the cracks the problems the sport has, one of the meetings was a 5 pound meeting and in all the four meetings how many people got in FREE to many i would suggest.Over the four meetings i spent between 160/200 pound on those meetings not cheap, ok i am lucky i could afford it but some cant so people have a right to moan.In England get the regular 1/7 teams back riders who they can relate to and sort the CRAZY rulebook out that would be a start this next year or so is a real big one for English speedway.

 

The two posters don't follow the sport at all.

 

One has confirmed on numerous threads he hasn't the slightest clue about current speedway, it's teams or the riders. He is in absolutely no position to discuss the sport's problems as he stopped going almost 15 years ago due to relocating and hasn't paid a jot of interest since. His only posts on this forum are discussing things back in the day. Yes, there is a place for that, but it has zero relevance to a discussion of 'Are you losing interest in speedway'.

 

The other is someone who spends his time running down the sport and this forum.

 

Yourself, that's a completely different issue, you do follow the sport, you are up to speed with all teams, riders, developments and if a keen passionate fan such as yourself finds his interest waning, that's a worry.

 

My point stands however, if you spend a lot of time on this forum reading all the whingers you will fall out of love with the sport a hell of a lot quicker. I know that from personal experience.

[Sidney the robin 4,735]

I sort of see both sides of the coin. During the dog track years I did sometimes use to wonder why I was still attending every match because the quality of racing was far removed from the Hyde Road days but obviously and despite the poor teams we often had, there was still enough enjoyment to keep me going.

However, since the move to the NSS and despite the best efforts of the BSPA to destroy the credibility of the sport by their often ridiculous decisions and inconsistent interpretation of the rules my enthusiasm for the sport is as strong as it ever was. The joy of watching close, exciting racing overcomes the politics and incompetence. It is a five hour return journey for me to get to Belle Vue but well worth the effort and the cost. I've said it before but the NSS has proved that given the right setting Speedway can be as thrilling as it ever was.

If only somebody sensible could take control of the BSPA.

Great that the likes of you are still enjoying your speedway and after Hyde Rd who would think another track could rival it a track and stadium to be proud of. Edited September 6, 2017 by Sidney the robin

[RPNY 608]

Well from this thread we can see as is often the case in life, some are happy others aren't - Not a huge surprise really!

 

What I would say, if Speedway in the UK was run anything like that in Poland it would see crowds go up massively. I know that's quite the obvious statement but having been able to watch it regularly for the first time this season, it really is a cut above. I don't mean just the top level riders they have, the presentation, the track preparation, the quickness/slickness of how its run. I mean the blueprint is there for the BSPA to follow...