Piotr Pyszny

Can't help feeling it would be useful for somebody outside speedway - possibly involved with another, more successful sport - to come in, speak to relevant parties and make a few suggestions. A 'fresh eye', dispassionate, without a vested interest, might be able to see the wood and the trees - not to mention the green fields beyond.

The one at Foss Islands, by the old incinerator chimney?

Does OP HackneyHawk (or other posters) have anyone in mind to conduct this inquiry? Who would make a suitable inquisitor?

Farringdon, according to the Defunct Stock Car Tracks website. Closed in the late 1990s. http://www.simonlewis.com/sc5.html

Bovingdon?

Have to say I've enjoyed F1 and F2 stock cars on the rare occasions I've watched it. The best drivers start at the back of the grid and, over 40+ laps, manage to work their way through to the front. Some skill involved. Imagine how much more interesting Formula One might be if the guys with the fastest cars - such as Lewis Hamilton - started from the back of the grid! I did watch an unlimited bangers meeting at Brandon a few years ago. They held the pre-racing drivers' meeting on the infield. A family was sitting in front of me. The young girl turned to her mum and asked what was going on. The mum replied: "They're just telling the drivers there aren't any rules."

I remember one of my brothers remarking: "The spectators at banger racing make those at speedway look well-to-do." In my (admittedly fairly limited) experience of banger racing, the pauses between races are considerably longer than in speedway (something for which the latter is often marked down).

Given the revelations about the number of applicants for advertised job vacancies (15,000 for 10 the most extreme I've seen), how likely is that?

TV's interest in the British Basketball League has been very patchy, according to Wiki. Seems the present deal is with a company called Perform Content. https://media.sportbusiness.com/news/british-basketball-league-signs-new-deal-perform-content/ Super (rugby) League's 2020 deal with Sky Sports was worth £40m (it's since been reduced owing to COVID-19 disruption). Rugby league also has a less lucrative deal with the BBC, for Challenge Cup live coverage and Super League highlights (ditto). The BBC is to show every game - 61 - during the 2021 Rugby League World Cup (includes the men's, women's and wheelchair competitions). British ice hockey's Elite League has a TV deal with Free Sports. It covers the live screening of league and cup games. Can't imagine it brings in that much money. What did speedway get out of Sky Sports from its final deal?

Did the same myself once. A great day of sport! After that year (1990), mind, I always drove to Berrington.

For clarification: nowadays, it's only the finals of the annual knockout cup competitions - run by Lancashire and Yorkshire cricket leagues - that attract attendances into four figures. As for Berrington Lough, I guess it suffered from being very much in the middle of nowhere (ironically, today's model for new speedway tracks).

It's a key point. Speedway is a collection of small businesses, all of which prioritise their own, individual interests rather than the common good.

But a club used to taking £250,000 a year from clubhouse hire starts, post-COVID, from a much stronger position than, say, a speedway club relying on a few hundred spectators for 90 per cent of its revenue. They've got 'rainy day' money in the bank. Incidentally, club cricket in Lancashire and Yorkshire is the best supported in England. Lancashire League clubs charge £4 admission. The bigger ones attract crowds of about 250-300. Club cricket cup finals in Lancashire and Yorkshire often pull crowds of 1,000+. When did Berwick Bandits last see a crowd that size? Not on any of my visits, either to Berrington or Shielfield. As HGould remarked, speedway's big (insurmountable?) problem has always been most clubs are mere tenants, at the whim of the landlord, who in addition to banking rent, creams off takings from the bar etc. Even more concerning, as dog racing goes down the pan, speedway may well find a number of its clubs having to call it a day by default.

Think we can add top division rugby league to that list. I'd say 90 per cent of revenue through the turnstiles is a very high proportion of overall income. Clubs in other sports seem to do very much better than speedway with things like commercial sponsorship, corporate hospitality, replica/souvenir sales, bar takings and clubhouse hire (all over and above the number of paying spectators). I know of one Lancashire League cricket club - amateurs - that pulls in £250,000 a year from clubhouse hire alone.

Many non-league football clubs attract far more than 800 spectators. And many speedway teams attract far fewer. Look at the list of non-league football average attendances (2019-20), and you need to come down as far as 52nd (Guiseley, 793) to get below 800! https://www.nonleaguematters.co.uk/global/attendances/

There can't be many professional sports nowadays where 90 per cent of revenue is through the turnstiles. And that on crowds as small as 800.

From the perspective of both cricket and speedway, that is a ludicrous generalisation. Looking forward to league cricket resuming tomorrow.

Last time I went to Smallmead, on a warm evening in the early Noughties, I was eaten alive by bugs - presumably from the adjacent sewage treatment plant. The place was a dump (as are most UK speedway venues) but I guess a dump is better than no speedway at all.

I haven't watched speedway regularly since 2008. Between then and now, I doubt I've seen one meeting per season (after relocating in 2008, the nearest track is more than an hour's drive). However, during lockdown, I took the opportunity to get my records complete and up to date - and bought a few programmes via eBay. Both fired good memories. Now, I'm looking forward to going to speedway, if and when it resumes. I hope it doesn't disappoint (as the most recent two visits did)!

Like you, I'm a confirmed SKY non-subscriber, so whether or not matches (of various sports) were/are on the telly made/makes no difference to my spectating choices. I gather viewing figures for speedway club meetings shown live peaked at circa 145,000. That's probably about 115,000 more than speedway's weekly customer footfall. Pretty useful, one would imagine, for improving the sport's all but invisible profile. Were any of this 115,000 tempted along to their local circuit? If not, why not? Further to the 'provide good racing and the crowds will come' claim: it certainly wasn't my experience during the last few seasons at Cleveland Park, Middlesbrough, where the racing was consistently excellent and the two local newspapers (the Evening Gazette and the Northern Echo, both of whom had a speedway reporter) gave the club plenty of daily publicity. Yet Boro Bears struggled to attract viable crowds. Average in the final season, 1996, was 850. I remember the promoter, Malcolm Wright, telling me he lost a grand every home meeting. Not great crowds but, ominously, still several hundred above what the club, as Redcar, are capable of drawing now.

That's the exact opposite of what a couple of Park Avenue supporters told me six months ago! Means Horsfall will always be a 'meh' venue for watching football.

I went several times, mostly from West Yorkshire. Lovely scenic drive over Holme Moss and through Longdendale and Glossop. Much easier to get to than St Austell, Sittingbourne and any of Glasgow's tracks were!

This has always been speedway's Achilles heel. Too many clubs have been/are subject to the whim of the landlord, for whom speedway often hasn't been/isn't a priority. Seems a shame one of the very few purpose built speedway venues, owned and run by speedway enthusiasts - Buxton - is now used only for practice and experience days.

Blimey, Steve, most sports had the 'will live TV coverage damage our attendances' argument back in the mid-1960s! And decided TV was the way to go. Did speedway simply fail to capitalise on the shop window the most recent examples of live TV coverage provided?

There's probably a far greater chance of the rugby league club sharing a revamped Horsfall with Park Avenue than returning to Odsal. I gather there are plans to strip out Horsfall's little-used athletics track and do a proper job of building a stadium. Without the rugby league club on board, I can't see the Odsal money pit being viable. Speedway was never as well supported at Bradford as it was at Halifax, where anything over 3,000 felt like a big attendance. Being in a crowd of a thousand scattered about Odsal's vast acreage really wasn't much fun. Perhaps many posters only ever went to Odsal on a 'big event' day. Having read The Dean Machine's remarks: does speedway not have a 'fit and proper person' test (not that it works in football!) for would-be promoters?