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StevePark

Newcastle Diamonds 2021

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Was devastated last night that I could not attend as I broke my ankle on Friday. However I would still like to help if there is a chance we could keep the club alive through a monthly payment. I will keep an eye out for any further information. THJ sorry I couldn't meet up but hopefully we will get some news on here. Jill 

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im open to a monthly payment to if it helps a little 

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4 hours ago, Gaz said:

So the positive news was people interested in getting together to buy the club? 
Just curious what are the start up costs? 

Gary I know you are passionate about your team however it is difficult just to pluck a figure out of the air but I will give it a go to try and get peoples minds focused at what you will be looking at to run a successful venture for the first season.

If you read the BSPL rule book start up costs of £30k for your bond with the BSPL and £15k against your rider asset's will need placing with the BSPL; now if you don't screw up this is returnable and just sits with the BSPL for however long you want to run until the next person comes along and takes over those costs. You have the good will of the current promotion so buying what few assets he has (very few) riders; the tractors; water bowser; grading tools; sound system; amplifiers; starting gate fencing and air fence; so lets say for arguments sake £25k for those; then you have your annual seasonal fees to the BSPL that have to be paid for licences; insurance; management and administration costs and other essential items (which again you may get back at the end of the season from the shared events however that's not guaranteed) and you have your start up costs at the start of the season to get the track ready set up the team and you need funds in the bank to run your first couple of meetings and especially if you start with a few away meeting as these will need to be paid for before you generate any cash through the turnstiles and at a conservative estimate you need about another £40k in the bank to cover these costs So as a start up and as a very rough guestimate  you will need around £110;000 to set the thing up and running.

Then the next thing is addressing the crowd numbers and what type of team you can procure that will give you a chance of being competitive and this has two main factors crowd numbers to rider costs and a hard core of 350 dedicated home fans only gives you £7k at 20 quid a head for rough figures and to put a meeting on at Brough costs around £2500  leaving you £4.5k for points money so over 2 meetings that's a rough average of 45 quid a point and when you see the rising star riders on 40 quid a point guarantees it means really that the rest of the team need to be around the 45 to 50 quid a point mark and that is really stretching it as top riders are looking for 65 to 95 quid a point at this level which will mean if you over extend this budget you will need to find the short fall from somewhere which could be as much as 4k over the two meetings that you need to find which is either 200 on the gate or other revenue streams to cover an average team cost on say an average of 80 quid a point across the full team...

ARC may be open to offering a two year lease if whoever comes in can show a sustainable business plan and meets all their rules on how they want their facility used and to run the following year my estimate would be another 50k to run that second season (as all bods would be in place)… Now this is where the fun starts as it would give you 2 year to get the next stage sorted which would be to get into your own venue (note I have not said stadium) and again there needs to be some hard talking on this one but my angle would be "lets stop blowing our collective brains out trying to make a profitable business out of this club; many have tried over the years and it is just not achievable so thinking outside the box (hopefully) lets look at running a not for profit organisation that will potentially open up funding streams not normally available to normal businesses" here are a couple of links for light reading which will give an idea...

What we need to know about CIC and CIO organisations...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_interest_company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_incorporated_organisation

Now I do not want to build up any false hope here its only an idea and it may not even be allowed but to my mind it needs explored further and the funding will need to be in place to run for a couple of seasons until we get to a position where we can jump ship to a new venue but it will be a very long hard slog and potentially a very expensive one. 

Unless there is an entrepreneur out there who likes a gamble and a risk; because if we could get 3/4ers or even 2/3rds of the crowd who came to last nights wake against Birmingham then "jobs a good un" as the saying goes and the thing is viable for someone to have a go at for sure and I was very surprised at the turn out figure last night  of 1232 and many thanks to everyone who turned out (blew my guess of 750 to 850 right out of the water)

I am off on a break now for the next 5 days and wont have a signal (or a very limited one that's for sure) to answer all those who pull my figures apart however they are only educated guesstimates for a rough guide to give people an idea of how big the task is...

By the way I am just the facilitator and the ideas man... I'm too fat and too old for a job... Honest...

Regards
John

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27 minutes ago, diamonds7 said:

im open to a monthly payment to if it helps a little 

Not a bad idea in principle actually.  If for example if 100 - 200 willing souls could be recruited to contribute £5 ( or more ) per week and sign up for 12 months by Direct Debit - that could generate £2,000 -£4,000 per month or up to £48,000 per year.    A broadly similar arrangement was initiated a few years back by an Edinburgh Monarchs Supporters Group, completely independent of Management of the club -  i.e. Monarchs Fans Trust .  The initial aim was to set up a fund to assist with things like Ambulance cover, unexpected costs such as rain off losses and  other types of help.  Prospective members sign up to join the Trust and either make one off contributions or pay monthly by direct debit. 

Perhaps using that as a template for starters could help to stimulate a few enthusiastic individuals to come up with something along those lines to help the Diamonds stay in existence for 2022 - and hopefully well beyond.   It is certainly a complex challenge to be faced with on many fronts, but in the absence of any other options at present, maybe worth investigating.

Newcastle Diamonds have always been my "second" team and as a young lad living close to Meadowbank ( Edinburgh ), George Hunter and Ivan Mauger were my two heroes.  Have only ever had two Speedway badges in all my ( many ) years following Speedway i.e. Edinburgh & Newcastle, so in a way, losing the latter would almost be as bad as in 1967 when Meadowbank was bulldozed for the 1970 Commonwealth Games Stadium and Monarchs kicked out homeless after starting off there in 1948.  Am really rooting for all concerned in Diamond land that a solution can be reached in time for declaration time.

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It may sound stupid... But could we drop down to the National League for that first £110,000 season... Maybe cut the costs down slightly with the riders wages... Get the season's costs down to say £90,000, it is closer to reality than the £110,000... Let's face it, the 350/450 hardcore fans who have been going week in week out will still probably go to watch NL racing as they love the club and go whatever, and imo it is some of the most exciting racing in the country. Just an idea of cutting costs somewhere to help reduce the costs in that initial season? Could still include some good riders in the NL, some local talent too.

Max at number 1, Archie at number 5, Josh Embleton and Danny Smith. Even Jack Shimelt at number 6 and 7, as I feel the standard of NL racing will drop even further next year and if Jack can progress well over the winter, he may not be too far off come the start of the season... Some very cheap to pay riders there... And you're only looking for another 2 riders to make a team?

Just an idea, I'm sure someone will explain to me why it can't be, and please do :)

£110,000 is a scary sounding figure, I know a few fans said they can give a couple grand here and there, but £90,000-£110,000 is just too high a figure imo, we desperately need a new Rob Grant to come in to supplement the generosity from the fans...

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1 minute ago, SlicktrackSandy said:

Not a bad idea in principle actually.  If for example if 100 - 200 willing souls could be recruited to contribute £5 ( or more ) per week and sign up for 12 months by Direct Debit - that could generate £2,000 -£4,000 per month or up to £48,000 per year.    A broadly similar arrangement was initiated a few years back by an Edinburgh Monarchs Supporters Group, completely independent of Management of the club -  i.e. Monarchs Fans Trust .  The initial aim was to set up a fund to assist with things like Ambulance cover, unexpected costs such as rain off losses and  other types of help.  Prospective members sign up to join the Trust and either make one off contributions or pay monthly by direct debit. 

If the majority could set up a direct debit of £5-£10 and we could get a handful of fans who are willing to put more in a month, up to £1,000 like some have suggested, we could be well up near £60,000 for the full year... BUT, we need an initial cash injection, sometime within the next 6 weeks, for us to even declare our intent... I just don't see that happening :( A fan direct debit type situation should have been set up at the beginning of this season, in hindsight...

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12 minutes ago, Diamonds85 said:

If the majority could set up a direct debit of £5-£10 and we could get a handful of fans who are willing to put more in a month, up to £1,000 like some have suggested, we could be well up near £60,000 for the full year... BUT, we need an initial cash injection, sometime within the next 6 weeks, for us to even declare our intent... I just don't see that happening :( A fan direct debit type situation should have been set up at the beginning of this season, in hindsight...

I totally agree.. every day, week that goes by we are running out of time / funds. 
Newcastle Diamonds Facebook / Supporters club should be doing something but seem to have given up.. There should be a post similar to Twitter one “Save Newcastle Speedway” and get votes going etc to see who would be interested but just seem defeated. 

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Daft as it seems raising the money to keep Newcastle alive could be the easy part, then who ever is running the show needs to get a lot more people through the gates on a regular bases to keep the business running. Failure to do that will see Newcastle back in the same situation sooner rather than later.

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17 hours ago, Diamonds85 said:

All sounds very promising? Any real interest from anyone would be great, hope it's enough to keep the club afloat? I'll keep EVERYTHING crossed that it is...

It was nice to meet you the other week, hopefully the speedway can be saved. Still miss supporting the Comets. Once it's gone its hard to bring it back. Will hopefully catch up over a beer

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Just now, Ajr said:

It was nice to meet you the other week, hopefully the speedway can be saved. Still miss supporting the Comets. Once it's gone its hard to bring it back. Will hopefully catch up over a beer

Hopefully the Comets can get going at Northside? 

Met sum good folk at Workington, well i  first met them on the Travel Plus tour to Poland in 2000. They put me up when I went up to Workington. 

Also Comets had a few of my club's rider's go there from Long Eaton after we had closed, the legend Stoney & Brent Werner. Also the association with Tony Mole & Graham Drury which was a great partnership at Long Eaton as well. 

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19 hours ago, Diamonds85 said:

@TotallyHonestJohn

Hi John, What's the crack then? Did anything happen in the bar upstairs after the meeting? Would be great to know what happened... I would love to have came up but I was with my elderly relatives and couldn't have really expected to have made them come upstairs after standing for so long and they had to get their kids home ready for school in the morning too... I am very interested in helping out financially on a weekly basis if we can somehow manage to get a fan consortium put together to support someone in the future. I might not be able to put very much in, but I would be more than happy to do my bit. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Cheers

Your elderly relatives had to get their kids home for school in the morning???? 

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6 minutes ago, Diamondboy said:

Your elderly relatives had to get their kids home for school in the morning???? 

Thats a bit personal, for all you know they could foster..

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3 minutes ago, M.D said:

Thats a bit personal, for all you know they could foster..

Yes they could, have they? Hence the question marks!! Get off your box!!

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