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33 minutes ago, chunky said:

Well, I used to pay money to travel all over the country to watch matches as a neutral, and there were plenty of us that used to do the same. So, why wouldn't people pay money to watch online?

Obviously, there are those who wouldn't, but people like you and I would.

And the positive for those "dodgy weather" evenings is that many simply decide nowadays not to go as "several times bitten, many more times shy" is very much the thinking when time and again you pay to get in and throw your cash down the (probably blocked) drain...

At least with streaming those who decide to give it a miss can then still put a few quid into their club which, by not turning up in person, they won't be doing...

A little from a lot can soon mount up...

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7 minutes ago, mikebv said:

And the positive for those "dodgy weather" evenings is that many simply decide nowadays not to go as "several times bitten, many more times shy" is very much the thinking when time and again you pay to get in and throw your cash down the (probably blocked) drain...

At least with streaming those who decide to give it a miss can then still put a few quid into their club which, by not turning up in person, they won't be doing...

A little from a lot can soon mount up...

Exactly... It's not quite the financial suicide that the doom merchants seem to believe.

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On the other side of the coin, I haven't been to a 'live' speedway meeting for some 10 years but I happily paid to watch the stream of the British final.

 

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I'm not convinced by the choir of voices pledging to support streaming speedway.

I ask myself this...a few years ago, a deal was done with Bet365 to have streaming coverage of speedway. Who signed up for it? That service never made it to a second season.

People say "yeah, I'll pay". Yeah, until you quickly find a "free" pirated streaming link on BSF, like you do for the Polish and SGP meetings, and use that instead.

It's in the nature of speedway fans to use a pirated link rather than an official channel, to use a downloaded race card rather than the official programme, your own smuggled in food & drink rather than what's on sale at official outlets...

So, by all means give it a try, but don't hold your breath that it will be the salvation of the sport. And when it all goes wrong, and the sport runs out of money, don't forget to blame someone else for that happening too.

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On 9/30/2020 at 8:24 PM, OveFundinFan said:

You make two points in one sentence, so I break it up.

Why would you increase income (presumably you mean charge more) for away supporters. You trying to attract them I would have thought.

how many neutral supporters would pay to watch a match that doesn't involve their team?      
You obviously expecting few, so any that do watch is a bonus income.  If two teams I didn’t support were playing and I thought it was going to be a cracker of a match, yes I would pay and watch.  

Although I have an affection for BVue (I started going over 60 years agog), it’s Speedway I love, so good racing comes above loyalty to a team - that’s why I love speedway GP racing, it’s so exciting.

 

Sorry you misunderstood.

What I mean is that if you live stream a regular league match, away supporters who would not have had any intention (or opportunity) to attend might very well pay to watch their team.  I think I might if it was the best entertainment option that night. Remember you're competing with other TV which people have already paid for or a night out. So say the away team has 1000 regular supporters and you get 500 of them to pay £10 to stream, then that's £5,000 you wouldn't have made without streaming. Excellent.

Then there's neutral supporters. I really can't see this being many.  Put it this way if Leicester v Eastbourne was available to stream for £10 on a  nice summers evening there are plenty of other things I'd rather be doing here in Newcastle (at least there will be again next summer).  But you are reaching a global audience so let's say 1,000 neutrals pay £10 so you make £10,000  extra.  Excellent.

The question now is does £15,000 income cover the cost of providing the stream? And importantly what negative impact does it have on your gate receipts?  

I don't know how much it would cost to stream a meeting but I suspect TV standard would be very expensive. If you're talking one camera and one commentator then less costly but lower standard.  Again remember you're competing with other activities. I've no idea but say a man with a camera and a commentator providing all the streaming tech charge you £5,000.  You're still £10,000 up. Excellent.

But what about those supporters who would have turned up  and paid on average £15 who now stay at home and stream for £10. Or worse where a group of people (family of four) pay £10 instead of £60 on the gate. If 50 families did that then you've lost £10,000 on the gate receipts (consider that the family would also be saving travel costs so it's a real threat). You are no better off and that's before you consider the impact on bar takings and the like.

The threat of bad weather could make this even worse if more people who would have normally paid on the gate decide to stay at home. I reckon most people attend as a group or at least as a pair.  If they stay home and share a stream that's £10 instead of £30 at the gate.

Clearly the numbers are made up but I've tried to be realistic. It all seems a bit too marginal with a risk of actually losing money for any promoter to try this at league level.

Feel free to suggest that there are 10,000 neutrals out there desperate to stream league matches every night of the week but you'll struggle to convince me.

Don't get me wrong I think it would be great but it just doesn't sound financially viable to me.

As I said earlier it's your shared events which could really attract the number of streaming sales needed to make it viable.

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On 10/1/2020 at 12:28 AM, michanekman said:

On the other side of the coin, I haven't been to a 'live' speedway meeting for some 10 years but I happily paid to watch the stream of the British final.

 

As a matter of interest and obviously you don't have to answer but why haven't you been for 10 years and why did you stream the British Final

12 hours ago, uk_martin said:

I'm not convinced by the choir of voices pledging to support streaming speedway.

I ask myself this...a few years ago, a deal was done with Bet365 to have streaming coverage of speedway. Who signed up for it? That service never made it to a second season.

People say "yeah, I'll pay". Yeah, until you quickly find a "free" pirated streaming link on BSF, like you do for the Polish and SGP meetings, and use that instead.

It's in the nature of speedway fans to use a pirated link rather than an official channel, to use a downloaded race card rather than the official programme, your own smuggled in food & drink rather than what's on sale at official outlets...

So, by all means give it a try, but don't hold your breath that it will be the salvation of the sport. And when it all goes wrong, and the sport runs out of money, don't forget to blame someone else for that happening too.

I don't think you can compare streaming coverage of Speedway to what was on offer on Bet365 a few years back, from what I saw of it, it had no commentary and you couldn't watch it full screen and a lot of people don't want to sign up to a betting website to watch it. Obviously I don't know for sure but I think you'd probably find that the vast silent majority do subscribe to BT Sport or Premier Sports to watch their Speedway rather than watching some ropey stream with Polish of Swedish commentary, I certainly do. I don't think you can tar all Speedway fans with the I'll watch it for free brush.

I don't think streaming will be the saviour of the sport but it's certainly an untapped revenue stream (pun)

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