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I watched on Eurosport, a channel I got for free, so having to pay the £30+ extra per month to keep watching is far from beneficial to me. Will it still be available through the normal Discovery+ packages, just using the BT linear channels for scheduling, or will it be exclusively part of the BT Sport subscription? I could not justify the cost of BT Sport for speedway alone previously, it is all I would watch on there and I do not watch any other motorsports. So I stopped watching British speedway after it left Sky, and used a VPN to watch the GPs via the YouTube world feed. But there is no longer an easy to watch world feed, only their useless app which does not even have iPad support. If it remains part of the Discovery+ service I would end up subscribing to that, otherwise I will try to watch the GPs on illegal streams but if they become too unreliable then I guess I am done with them. So much for all the comments back when FIM awarded the promotion to Eurosport Events of how the new partnership would grow the sport and open up speedway to reach new audiences. First they make most of the Speedway of Nations exclusive to a streaming service, and now they seem set to move the coverage from a basic package channel back to a premium one.

It is like two weeks ago when I was shouting at the TV that Zmarzlik was champion as soon as Madsen was excluded. It is no that difficult to keep on top of, but commentators should have someone doing that for them with all the details they need on a screen in front of them. As for the rules for breaking the tie for the top size, if Discovery did one thing competently this year it was having had them on their web site all season long. https://fimspeedway.com/rules

I make it Lindgren in fourth with a second and two thirds over Lambert with a second and one third. Bewley in sixth with two victories over Dudek with one.

The rules:

If that is the standard to judge by then Discovery Sports Events will have a much bigger problem with the attitude of Discovery Sports Events. Discovery did not even put a story on the official website until this morning. Even just the scores were not put on it until long after the meeting finished, if not this morning too. Looking at the official site during a round, the only way you would know the meeting is taking place is the countdown being at zero. Assuming it does not automatically start counting down the next round. When BSI ran it, the site had live scores during the meeting, but Discovery only do that on their app. And that app is only a phone app. I did not have a scorecard but was make notes on my iPad as I followed it last night (before remembering running scores had no baring on the overall championship!) and needed to use the app to check back on scores. Because it is designed for phones it wasted most of the screen and could only fit 9 riders and 4 heats on the screen at a time. Even when viewed on the phone the design is just too much wasted space and could easily show 8 heats and possible all he riders. This is a truly awful way of spreading the sport, just a badly designed app. A web site should come first as it can be accessed on any device, will easily adapts to suit them all, and will be found by anyone searching Google or whatever to find out more about speedway. Which is where the new horizons will be found. Anyone who had just caught it on TV and wanted to know more will be look at their web site, not on an app they do not have, and even many speedway fans will not have bothered to install. But that app is the only thing Discovery update on a Saturday evening. I have no idea who would be looking on the British Speedway site instead of the official one to find out about a Grand Prix. But why should the BSPL be expected to do what even the promoters of the series cannot be bothered with?

If the track was too dangerous for the meeting to continue then heat 20 should not have been rerun. Regardless of how unfair anyone may think the final result would be, safety is supposed to come first above all else. What if there had been a serious accident, that they wanted to be able to get to the end of 20 heats would have been little consolation. And the decision that it was unfit to continue appeared to have been made after Basso went down yet they still made him and Kemp go out again anyway. Presumably only to avoid affecting the final positions by striking out three heats Schrödinger's rerun, at the same time both safe and unsafe

The track that was deemed safe enough to be able to hold a rerun of heat 20 became so unsafe as soon as it ended that the meeting was immediately cancelled without even needing an inspection.

I thought they could call races in Grand Prix meetings now, and I think they were in lap 3, so why did they not just do that? If they had not rerun heat 20 surely it would have meant the result was the standings after heat 16.

The red lights have become so used to coming on that they are now just jumping to conclusions.

Maybe I am stupid, but I could not see anywhere on the actual Speedway GP website that said what time this meeting started. Really struggling to understand why Discovery seem to be trying to hide speedway. Thankfully came here and got a stream in time to catch the end of the first heat.

The ping-pong was part of the overall package of events they got from Matchroom Sports, the darts etc. people. Though they appear to have used Covid to quietly kill it off as it never took place this year and there is no mention on their website of it ever having happened! But that was only a two-day event at the end of January with nothing at all to do with speedway decisions. But Sky dropped the GPs because of a period of British failure and declining audiences, and that they won back the Saturday evening Premier League matches. This gave them three live events on Saturday evenings with a Super League match played then, the soccer at the start and end of the season or cricket in between. So because of the audience being split and to cut costs they dropped the speedway and moved Super League to Thursday. And as soon as they did that Woffinden became World Champion and it no longer mattered that Harris was at the back. But I am certain that Cardiff looked a lot better on television today than had it been in Manchester and full. I agree that a full smaller stadium looks better than a half-full big one, but there is a limit to how small they can be before they just look small. And the National Speedway Centre looks not only small, but like it is part of a leisure centre. Just a row of trees between the track and the massive brick wall that is obviously the back of a hall would have helped. No doubt it has a much, much better track, which is a good enough reason to argue a GP should be held there instead of Cardiff. But, to me at least, Manchester looks so municipal that if you want to sell the event and sport to TV viewers I fear it would just say small time sport. The third biggest covered stadium in the world (apparently) or a local sports complex.

Phew! When Dudek said he was sad I was worried for his balls.

Bewley!

Lower that Warsaw 2015 where it was so bad they just gave up on the meeting halfway in?

They never overturned the rule book. 011.1.32 "Match Procedure: Ties in Individual Meetings" says that if count back and head to head "cannot be used the order shall be determined by a ballot" 015.1.3 "British Championship Final: Racing Regulations" says that "The method for deciding the hierarchy will be as per these Regulations. This system will also be used if a meeting is abandoned after the completion of heat 12, and the meeting is not re-staged, the results will stand at the last point when all riders had taken the same number of rides." The regulations allow restaging the meeting, and that is what they chose to do. They do not say anything about Cardiff wildcards because that is an FIM issue. http://www.scbgb.co.uk/regulations

That is not what was said. The said they had to get the FIM to confirm Ellis as the wildcard for Cardiff, not decide it for them. But there is no rule that would be fair to decide a meeting in this situation where you have a three-way tie on points and count back, and where they have not all raced each other. But they have thought up a rule, you either draw lots or a rerun. For me if you have the option of a rerun there is no other decision to be made. As for the wildcard, maybe they did draw lots? All we know is they said they chose Ellis and the players agreed. The farce is how long it took them to tell people what was happening, because they did not need to keep everyone else hanging around while they decide on who will go to Cardiff then get it confirmed. We could all have read the tweet or whatever later, I doubt anyone in Manchester cared that much about hearing it over the PA.

Rerun, sense at last.

SCB rule books says: Surely you cannot award a title on lots, but I cannot see anything else in the book.

What is not to like is that I am already paying them through my Sky subscription, I should not have to pay them twice for it. Plus the thing about being on TV is that's you catch casual viewers. I got into speedway by being bored one night and catching it on Sky Sports. And I do consider myself a "sports fan". There are a few sports I like, mainly cricket, and those are all I watch. I do not like other motorsports, nor do I even pay any attention to things like the Olympics or World Cups just because they are big occasions, because I know they are of no interest to me. It should be more difficult for me to get me interested in a sport that most people, yet I had no opinion of speedway, saw some, and I am still here watching it, or trying to. I would like speedway to do well, and an important part of that will be getting more people interested in the sport. Great Britain are the reigning World Champions, what a great opportunity this should be to promote the sport. And if they breeze through the Semi-Final we can just say it is because of how good our team is. And it should be the main event for trying to attract fans because you do not even have to know who the riders are as you just support your own country. But we cannot do that because most of the tournament is exclusively on a subscription service where you cannot just see it flipping channels. And Discovery+ is a niche service at that, the smallest of all the mainstream streaming services. Whilst it had an Olympics bump, most people were happy just to watch what they could on the B.B.C. So what else is not to like is that the sport is deliberately contracting, not only shutting itself off from reaching new viewers it is also turning away those who do not have Discovery+. To quote Eurosport at the time they took over as promoted "Eurosport Events will leverage its long-standing motorsport promotion expertise and the international scale of Discovery to develop the sport and grow Speedway around the world. The partnership will seek to expand Speedway GP’s international calendar, extend the distribution of the sport on TV and digital platforms, launch Speedway into new territories and increase its audiences around the world." What is not to like is being lied to. Because they are doing the exact opposite of that. They are not increasing audiences, they are reducing the distribution on TV. Using Discovery+ to provide extra depth, such as more analysis when TV viewers see commercials, or to cover more events like the Team U21 World Championship, is fine. Make money from existing speedway fans that way. But the Speedway of Nations was a mainstream event taken out of the mainstream. There is lots not to like.

Yes, it is working, but I mean there seems to be no way to find that link had you not posted it. There are no links to it anywhere on their Facebook page for me, without an account. And it seems plenty of people on YouTube are having the same problem.

Thank you. Do they hide live links from people without accounts? I could not see that anywhere on the profile page or the linked video page.

A message on the YouTube channel: Which is here: https://www.facebook.com/SpeedwayEuro At least it looks like it should work for those of use who are not on Facebook. Oh to live in the speedway loving Brunei.

What a strange world that it a European speedway championship is televised in Malaysia and Vietnam, but not in the U.K. or Nordic countries. Thanks as always for letting us know where to watch, @racers and royals.

I always assumed it changed because Tai Woffinden kept saying he did not care about winning GPs whenever he missed out, that he just wanted to keep picking up championship points. Which surely must be embarrassing to the series, because he was just being smart within the system they created. That previous system rewarded consistently over winning meetings, especially when you could have a rider entering a final knowing they will get the most points out of the meeting towards the championship table even if they crash out. In all of Tai's titles, only Hancock in 2015 shared the podium with the same number of GP wins as him, the other riders all won more. So they had to make a change to make winning a meeting actually count for more in the season than just a ride for three more points. No one is saying riders will not battle for every point, but they should be disappointed when they fail rather than it not matter because they got the most points anyway. That system was like deciding the Premier League on goal scored rather than points for winning matches. My problem with the current system is it has gone from one extreme to the other. Now it ignores how well someone had gone in a meeting that you can miss the semis on count back yet still only get one point more than a rider who picked up three points fewer. But I do not know what is wrong with the older system of double points in the final. It pretty much meant the winner of the meeting would have the most points, and a six point difference between winning a GP and failing to make the final meant that winning mattered to the championship standings in the way they do now.

Premier Sports are doing an offer: I would probably have subscribed it had it been priced the other way around, but £70 still seems a bit much as I would only be subscribing for the speedway. But it maybe of interest to some.