IainB

Not in its current form, but then we've all known that for at least the last 7 or 8 years.

Rybnik not riding this weekend so should be good to go... unless his knee injury flares up again 😉

However great the call proves to be it still leaves the Lions having only ridden 1 home match in 2 months! And only 4 home matches in 3 months by the end of June! And 2 of them against Sheffield!

Agreed... but 1 home Lions meeting in 2 months of late spring/early summer is far from ideal.

They've lost my £25 anyway, as I booked my holiday away for that week as there was no home meeting in the fixture list!

1 point each... move on

Interesting listening to Lemo on the Tatum Talks podcast where he mentioned that the 2024 SoN was a financial disaster and that (speaking in the week prior to the GP events) there were still 800 tickets available for the Friday night (just the £80,000)!

Re-arranged: July 6th 1 home match since May the 4th, next home match July 2nd!

I was down in Poole last Wednesday on a lovely bright and breezy day when you postponed your solitary junior development event of the season 😉

Staging a Speedway Grand Prix at a temporary venue like Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium is a massive financial gamble, heavily driven by infrastructure logistics. Because Alexander Stadium is primarily a premier athletics venue (with a fixed 18,000 capacity around its running track), hosting a GP requires building a bespoke, temporary dirt track from scratch and renting additional seating if you want to scale up. While exact, line-by-line budgets are kept strictly confidential by promoters, looking at what it takes to build a temporary track and secure an FIM license gives a realistic cost breakdown. You are looking at a total layout of **between £1.5 million and £2.5 million** for a single Grand Prix weekend. The major costs break down into three distinct pillars: ### 1. The Track Build & Logistics (£400,000 – £600,000) Creating a raceable speedway track inside an athletics stadium requires meticulous engineering to protect the existing international-standard running track. * **Protection & Base Layer:** Thousands of wooden boards or heavy-duty plastic geotextile membranes must be laid down first to fully protect the underlying running surface from heavy machinery. * **The Dirt:** Promoters have to source, transport, and lay roughly 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes of specialised shale or granite mix. * **Safety Equipment:** You need to hire and install FIM-regulated air fences, starter gates, referee communication systems, and track-grading machinery (tractors and bowsers) for the weekend. * **The Tear-Down:** After the meeting, every single grain of shale has to be meticulously removed and the stadium pressure-washed back to pristine condition. ### 2. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Rights & Sanction Fees (£500,000 – £800,000) To host a round of the FIM Speedway Grand Prix, a local promoter or council must pay a substantial staging fee to the global rights holders, WBD Sports. * This fee secures the calendar slot, television production rights, and covers the base prize money fund for the 16 competing riders. ### 3. Stadium Hire, Staffing, and Temporary Infrastructure (£400,000 – £600,000) Alexander Stadium’s permanent capacity sits at 18,000. While that is solid, a flagship British GP usually aims for higher numbers. * **Temporary Seating:** If a promoter wants to temporarily scale up capacity (Alexander Stadium can technically be expanded up to 40,000 using temporary grandstands), the hire cost sits around £100 per temporary seat. Adding even 5,000 temporary seats can quickly add £500,000 to the bill. * **Staffing & Overheads:** Hundreds of turnstile operators, stewards, medical personnel, and specialized track staff are needed, alongside the cost of hiring the stadium itself from Birmingham City Council. > **The Financial Catch:** Unlike a permanent venue (like Cardiff's Principality Stadium, which can absorb immense costs due to its 70,000-seat potential), Alexander Stadium has a lower financial ceiling. A promoter would need to guarantee packed-out stands and high-tier ticket pricing just to cover the upfront costs of transforming an athletics track into a world-class shale circuit. 👆 ai

Somewhere like the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham might be the right size and even Nigel Tolley was talking of moving the Brummies there... but then he is completely mad 🎩

It was announced at the Manchester GP that Monster are running some kind of 3 round series within the series for the Polish GP's, I didn't pick up on all the details. And of course BSI ran some kind of "Super Prix" back in the noghties, the richest 60 seconds in motorsport or something, was that for £100k Benfield Sports International (BSI) did run a massive cash-prize gimmick in the noughties, and it is the exact reason why that specific "richest minute" phrase exists. The event was the **2007 German Speedway Grand Prix**, held at the Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen on October 13, 2007. BSI heavily promoted it because it marked the **100th Grand Prix** since the SGP series took over from the old one-off World Finals. To celebrate the milestone, BSI put up a staggering **$100,000 cash prize** strictly for the winner of the Grand Prix final. Because a standard four-lap final takes roughly 60 seconds, BSI’s entire marketing campaign for the meeting billed that specific race as **"The Richest Minute in Sport."** Here is how that dramatic night actually played out: * **The Track Farce:** The event became infamous for all the wrong reasons. The temporary track laid inside the football stadium began disintegrating almost immediately during practice and the early heats, with massive ruts and chunks of shale flying up. * **The Delayed Drama:** The track was deemed so dangerous that the meeting had to be completely abandoned on Saturday night and re-staged the following afternoon (Sunday, October 14). * **The Winner:** After all the chaos, the legendary **Andreas Jonsson** won the re-staged final, successfully pocketing the $100,000 cheque for his 60 seconds of work. He beat Greg Hancock, Jason Crump, and Leigh Adams to the line. While the actual event in Germany was a bit of a logistical nightmare for BSI, the marketing line worked so well that the "richest 60 seconds" tagline stuck around in speedway media and broadcasting for years afterward.

So I understand, nobody involved in that episode covered themselves in glory, silence all round, the fans deserved and explanation from somebody. The club and/or Ellis

And don't forget he buggered off from Birmingham after a month with no explanation

Remind me, who took the decision to run SWC at Warsaw Stadium, WBD or Mayfield?