Iām not about to read every post on this thread, and I apologise if this has been covered and discussed by you on previous posts, but Iāve seen enough to know that the silence coming out of Northampton is staggering.
Unless someone who uses this forum that lives or works in Northampton can say any different, there appears to be absolutely zero noise in the local area. We are now in late Marchābarely five weeks away from the season starting for Northampton ā and what have we actually heard? No confirmed team name, no full rider line-up, and next to no presence.
How on earth do they propose to build a fan base from a standing start without drumming up any local support? Are they telling the Northampton public that they have a new Speedway team to follow? They will no doubt get a decent crowd level from existing speedway fans around the country at the beginning of the season for the novelty factor, but that won't last if they haven't done the groundwork locally.
It feels like the management is just relying on disenfranchised Coventry and Peterborough fans to fill the void because weāre missing our own tracks, and the few Leicester fans that exist to pop along.
Iāve personally started three different offices for companies from cold starts, and I can tell you now: this is not how you do it. You don't just open the doors and hope for the best. When you're launching in a new territory, you must be aggressive. You must get out into the local community, pound the pavement, and actually sell what youāre providing. If the person walking down Northampton High Street doesn't even know there's a world class sport (I use the term World Class loosely in the UK) appearing on their doorstep in five weeks' time, the marketing has failed before the first heat.
And when those involved directly in the running of the sport and the decisions read things like this, they'll no doubt accuse me of being disruptive and moaning. Theyāll claim we donāt understand the "complexities" behind the scenes. But in reality, there are plenty of Speedway fans who actually know how to run successful businesses, how to start a business from nothing, and how to keep it successful. In any other industry, if you launched a product this quietly, youād be out of business in six months. You must create a "local anchor" ā give the people of Northampton a reason to claim the team as theirs. If you don't build that local identity from day one, you aren't a club; youāre just a nomad team at a neutral venue.
If they don't start shouting about this soon, theyāre going to be racing in front of an empty stadium once that initial novelty wears off.
Iād like to be proved wrong and see it be a massive success, and I might be wrong and all of the above is actually happening behind the scenes. But if the actual Speedway world doesn't know anything about it, I highly doubt it is.