Humphrey Appleby

They also did a great job of renovating the stadium as well, which had fallen into quite a state of disrepair. In many respects it's better than what it was like before the closure.

What very sad news.

I think it's only Sid and Orion that are left...

It's obviously sad news for both Swindon fans (cough!) and speedway in general. Unfortunately though, the outcome was totally predictable when you saw who was involved, and astonishing how anyone ever bought into the nonsense that's been spun over the last few years. Sadly, the political makeup of the council (and surrounding councils) probably precludes much support for finding let along granting approval for a new stadium. That's one thing that saved Oxford Stadium from being built on.

Yes, it's tragic although entirely predictable sadly.

I honestly think that even if speedway had been the best run sport in the world, it would still have been in decline. All sorts of land and environmental pressures, its demographic, the rise of home entertainment, the rise of the Great Football God and competition from other sports...

Playoff systems are relatively uncommon in Europe, but have been a feature of Latin American football for decades where they seem to be accepted. Going back in time, I believe Germany also had a playoff system in the pre-Bundesliga era when teams played in regional leagues. Why it never happened in England is an interesting question, but possibly because the FA Cup was a major competition that provided the culmination to the season at one time. However, football fans would accept whatever they're used to, just the same as the fans in any sport. Fans would no doubt grumble initially, but over time would no doubt come to accept the system in the same way that the Superbowl, World Series, AFL/NRL Grand Finals are seen as important events. The top two (three from Division 2) teams are automatically promoted. 3rd to 6th (4th to 7th in Division 2) playoff for the remaining promotion spot.

Playoffs long pre-date the American sports, and were not hugely used even there until the expansion of the various major leagues from the 1960s onwards. Baseball hardly used them beyond the World Series being a 'playoff' between rival leagues until expansion and the need for divisional structures and unbalanced schedules made this a necessity. American football plays so few games that there wasn't much choice once the NFL (and later AFL) expanded beyond a handful of teams. I think the Stanley Cup was again a 'playoff' between the champions of what were considered major leagues at any given moment (and these changed from time-to-time). In the meantime, I think the County Cricket Championship effectively had playoffs back in the 19th Century, Australian Rules certainly has always featured them, Rugby League had them years ago too. Rugby Union - at least in England - didn't even have leagues until the 1980s, as they were considered too radical for the old farts running the sport at the time!

Football is now more the exception rather than the rule for not having playoffs to decide its champions, although it does have promotion playoffs and of course had relegation test matches in the early days! Although I prefer that the team with the most points wins the championship, even the points system has been contrived in recent years so nothing is sacrosanct. If race offs (I refuse to call them playoffs in speedway) are considered desirable though, you could give some advantage to the higher placed teams by giving them some sort of points lead and/or home advantage. You could also have a double elimination system which gives the higher placed teams more advantage.

Not many. 4-rider teams will give you 12 heats where everyone meets each other once with the same pairings. You could then mix-up the pairs, but that would require at least another 6 heats (for a total of 18) and there wouldn't be a balanced format. Alternatively, you could add a couple of reserve pairings to each team, which would add another 3 heats (for a total of 15), but they'd only have 2 rides each and you'll have 3 all reserve races which is not ideal. Or you could mix-up the pairings with the reserves (so there are now 3 pairings per team), but then you'll need to add 9 heats (for a total of 21) which would give Nos 1-4, 6 programmed rides and Nos 5 & 6 only 2 programmed rides. It's awkward which is why I think only the Danish Open League has ever used a 3TT format, and that was only for a season as I recall. That used 6-rider teams with 2 reserves (who had 2 rides each) over an 18-heat format. The last 3 heats were some sort of nominated races based on team ranking order after Heat 15, so the nominated riders from the top two scoring teams rode in the final heat. I'm not sure how you'd explain all this to a television audience...

The only way that a salary cap could ever work is if the BSPL centrally contracts and hires out the riders to teams. Other (mainstream) sports can afford expensive auditors to go and check conformance, but speedway hasn't got the money for them and no doubt much of the sport still runs on cash-in-hand anyway.

3TTs are awkward as (assuming four riders per race) there will always be one team not riding in any given heat, and difficult to come-up with a balanced format where every rider meets at least once. The 'classic' 18-heat 3TT format used in Britain is pretty awful as team members are stuck in the same pairs and don't meet a pair of riders from each of the other teams. And as you point out, also difficult to arrange fixtures unless there are 3, 6, 7 or 9 teams in the league.

I'd argue that the NL was ultimately a disaster for speedway, and as I recall suffered from just as much instability as the BL. Yes, it allowed maybe couple of the teams that dropped down to survive and even prosper (Ipswich and Sheffield), but others also fell by the wayside as the NL filled with professional riders. The NL refusal to allow its riders to be used by the BL also limited progression and forced BL teams into using even more guests. In any two-tier system, the bottom tier has to support rather than compete against the top tier, as it's the existence of the top tier that ultimately keeps costs down for the lower tier. I think few would disagree that the merger of BL and NL, and the creation a couple years later of the 'one big league' wasn't well done, but had the BL collapsed than it would have just have transferred its problems to the NL. I think speedway crowds were generally dwindling throughout the Eighties, although some BL teams still got (by today's standards) quite healthy crowds just as some NL teams struggled. We're now back to the situation though, where the powers-that-be have totally got the split between the PL and CL wrong in terms of costings.

6-rider teams are really the minimum viable number for a 15-heat match, although they have been run in the past.

That's the problem - only one home meeting in every four, and effectively a third of the revenue compared to now. 4TTs fixtures are also difficult to organise in a balanced way unless there's 4, 5, 7, 8 or 16 teams in the league. Even then, you'll probably find that some teams will have less home meetings than others.

If you reduce the size of the teams to fit the supposed number of riders, then you reduce opportunities which in turn means more potential riders simply won't bother with the sport. It simply becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the rider pool will just continue to shrink. 6-rider teams are just about viable for a league match with 14-15 heats. 5-rider teams would require riders to not only have too many programmed rides, but too closely spaced together as well. Almost certain that some riders would also have to have two programmed rides on the trot, which does nothing for timekeeping. Teams have been 7 riders for much of the sport's history (although there have been 8 and 6-rider teams at times) because it's an optimal number for various reasons, including the possibility to run rider replacement.

If I were a promoter of a GP having to invest many thousands of my money to install a temporary track, there would be no way I'd do it if there were any chance of a cancellation due to the weather. That tells you why over 70% of GPs with temporary tracks have been staged in roofed stadia. Going back to the World Final days, probably far fewer television and sponsorship contracts riding on the event. But I actually only count 3 World Finals that were staged on a temporary track - Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Munich (possibly Malmo as well). Granted some Wembley Finals would have been staged on what was effectively a temporary track for some of the years, but there was some sort of existing circuit for much of the time.

Sadly I'd probably have to say yes. To quote the ghost of GPs past (may he rest in peace)... One does wonder how many more lessons there are to be learned...?

Well not really. The issue is GPs that have the expense of building temporary tracks. Since the SGP started, I count just 6 stadiums where temporary tracks were installed and there wasn't a roof. Berlin and Sydney were used once, and the Stockholm Olympic Stadium was used 3 times back in the early days. The other stadiums were Gothenburg (9), Horsens (4) and Tampere (2) - none of which are still used. So a total of 20 GPs. By my count, 7 roofed stadiums have been used - Cardiff (20), Warsaw (5), Stockholm Friends Arena (5), Copenhagen (12), Melbourne (3), Hamar (3) and Gelsenkirchen (2). So a total of 50 GPs.

Odsal got something like 17,000 for its last World Final, and I don't think it was even full (although close). The previous year, the Munich Olympic Stadium - whilst the track was rubbish - managed to pull 50-odd thousand, despite Germany not really being a major speedway nation. Cardiff even in its first year got something like 30-35k. I think the moral of the story is that small provincial stadiums just don't pull the crowds.

I got the impression that IMG largely gave up on the SGP at some point, and just went through the motions to fulfil their necessary contractual obligations. They may have started out with some bigger ambitions at some point, but a combination of poor promotion, poor choice of location, declining interest in speedway in general, competing interests of the Polish Leagues in particular, exhausting the pool of local promoters willing to 'do a wedge', and other distractions (e.g. bidding to run the London Olympic Stadium that cost them a fortune) meant these ambitions could never be fulfilled. Having said that, the SGP organisers also seemed to be fairly amateurish in their approach, so maybe it was cause-and-effect. Discovery is a much bigger organisation than IMG with far more money, so perhaps they can better speculate to accumulate for a while and/or leverage better sponsorship and media deals. However, apparently outsourcing the British GP to the former promoters and attracting the lowest crowds possibly ever doesn't seem like a great start. I do think speedway is a hard sell for anyone though. It has a very limited geographical base, poor spectator demographics, gets limited mainstream media coverage, and has high overheads on top of that.

Well if Cardiff is only pulling 19,000 then the British GP will soon have to be held at Belle Vue. Belle Vue is decent for domestic meetings and even smaller international events, but it would be totally a backward step to move the premier event there whilst somewhere like Cardiff is still financially viable. I hold no candle for Cardiff which I don't think is especially convenient to reach and has appalling overpriced accommodation, but neither do I think moving the GP to a small venue in a less than salubrious suburb of Manchester is really where speedway wants to be going, no matter how good the track. I was quite critical of the former SGP promoters who didn't particularly move the series forward in 22 years, but I don't think trying to take some GPs to premier stadiums in city centre locations was really the wrong thing to be doing. In the case of the GPs it isn't just about the racing but the annual experience - plenty of World Finals had poor racing - and having experienced the charms of Pocking, it wouldn't attract me back for that sort of event.

Wembley also has good transport links, and there's quite a few hotels, restaurants and bars on-site now, as well as several shopping malls nearby. I admittedly haven't been for about 3 years, but the Olympic Park didn't have a lot in it from memory. And a fair bit of it was already looking unkempt and somewhat rundown. Erm, I was talking about Wembley. However, if a GP was to be held in London it wouldn't be at Wembley and far more likely to be in the Olympic Stadium.

Yes, but Vojens is a permanent track so has a better chance. I don't think any of it is insurmountable with sufficient effort, but it undoubtedly comes down to cost at the end of the day.

Neither is the London Olympic Stadium in the best of areas, but there's not a chance it'll be held at Wembley. Quite aside from the cost of renting a stadium (reputedly 500-750k per day + 10% of gate receipts + costs) that would never be filled, it would be a squeeze to get a track in without substantial and expensive modifications. It's also why there's never been an athletics event held there.