Speedway Attendances At Brandon

[ch958 2,398]

Well at Belle Vue in 1987 it was £3.10 inc programme. Next year it is £19.50 an increase of 530%

 

To put in perspective the national average wage then was £13,500.00

 

On the same scale of speedway increases it now should be £85,000.00!!

 

In reality it costs about 3 times as much in 2013 to watch speedway as it did in 1987

 

The strategy of accounting for lost fans by simply upping admission was always going to produce the results it has

 

 

Nail on the head for me

[WembleyLion 418]

Wasn't that a double header against Leicester as well or is my memory wrong as usual?

 

You are correct as after Coventry beat Hull 42 -36 to win the league they beat Leicester 50 - 28 in the Midland Cup Final second leg!

[Gemini 4,894]

Blimey! Remembered something right for once. I think a lot of the Leicester fans went to Coventry in a double decker bus (or two) and this was before the M69 was built so it meant travelling along country roads. I seem to remember having to duck several times when tree branches hit the side of the bus upstairs.

[dj350z 2,266]

Blimey! Remembered something right for once. I think a lot of the Leicester fans went to Coventry in a double decker bus (or two) and this was before the M69 was built so it meant travelling along country roads. I seem to remember having to duck several times when tree branches hit the side of the bus upstairs.

I have clearly lost the plot/memory!!!

[Woz01 3,589]

Im glad to say this was before my time! Remember British Finals in late 80's and 90's the crowds were huge, i was only small then and struggled to see on the back straight!

[john birch 85]

Sadly it can - and - it will unless something is done by the Promoters to pull in more Punters - and by that I DON'T mean introducing even more stupid Rules than they have at present. :sad:

 

 

In fact - getting rid of the more stupid Rules might actually help..................................... :rolleyes:

One thing they need to do with individual meetings like the British Final is go back tothe old 20 ht top scorer wins formula.If they must then seed Nicholls,Harris,Woffinden and A N Other into ht 20 and draw the gates out of a hat.At last years Brandonapolis Mick Horton tbf put together a decent line up.The result-a 2.5 hour borefest waiting for the final.

[TwoMinuteWarning 69]

Here's some interesting facts from Coventry Speedway re. attendances and how they have fallen.

 

In 1987 (when they were champions) Coventry's average BL attendance was 4,831. By 2001 it had dropped to 2,063. I imagine it is less than that now.

 

The 1986, 87, 88 and 90 British finals at Brandon all attracted over 8,000 - in 1990 it was nearly 9,000 at 8,960. By 2001 the British final drew a crowd of just 2,329. I doubt it even gets that now at Wolverhampton.

 

Makes you wonder where all the missing thousands went?

 

Interesting figures, but I think that every track's attendances are way down from those of the 1980's and 90's

 

Speedway today (apart from Cardiff) is a mid-20th century sport that hasn't reinvented itself for the 21st century. People want glamour, excitement, entertainment in a seated, smart stadium, and there is just no money in the sport in the UK to achieve those things. For heavens sake, we can't even afford to even pay all the bonus points in the PL, how desperate is that?

 

Speedway shot to popularity in the 1920's and 30's

1. on the back of the motorcycle being the working man's personal transport. That has long-since changed, few are seen on the roads these days, and

2. on the back of the introduction of greyhound racing in 1927, whose promoters kindly built many of the city-centre stadia which ensured the establishment of our sport. And whose promoters have been, and still are, closing the remaining greyhound tracks.

 

Time has come full circle.

 

Throw out the specialist bikes by all means, and use only stripped down road bikes with little or no modifications allowed, devise some sort of all-weather track surface if you can - but you'd still need a big injection of capital to sort out some of the truly awful near-derelict stadiums in which our sport is raced, and I can't see where this would come from.

 

I'm trying to be realistic, and I can't subscribe to Uncle Len's "everything in the garden is rosy" mentality. But if promoters can't see what's happening to our sport, I can only see it's future being a circus event of big stadium "entertainments" (something like motocross has become) and some Sunday afternoon events at a field in the deepest countryside.

[scottyfan 825]

 

 

Well at Belle Vue in 1987 it was £3.10 inc programme. Next year it is £19.50 an increase of 530%

 

To put in perspective the national average wage then was £13,500.00

 

On the same scale of speedway increases it now should be £85,000.00!!

 

In reality it costs about 3 times as much in 2013 to watch speedway as it did in 1987

 

The strategy of accounting for lost fans by simply upping admission was always going to produce the results it has

Remember the Lakeside v Poole match a couple of seasons ago when the admission was free for the live Sky match??

The place was packed out and even Middlo had trouble getting into the stadium because of the tail backs!!

Surely that told the promoters that if the admission prices were set at a reasonable rate (say £5) then the fans would still come and watch and they would still make there money by getting more people in for less money......at £17 pounds plus in this economic climate they won't!!

[arnieg 3,697]

Well at Belle Vue in 1987 it was £3.10 inc programme. Next year it is £19.50 an increase of 530%

 

To put in perspective the national average wage then was £13,500.00

 

On the same scale of speedway increases it now should be £85,000.00!!

 

In reality it costs about 3 times as much in 2013 to watch speedway as it did in 1987

 

The strategy of accounting for lost fans by simply upping admission was always going to produce the results it has

 

These figures are don't look right, but the conclusion certainly is!

 

The 1987 average wage was £8,140 ( £17,857 in 2010 prices). The current figure is around £24,000. That's a factor of three increase which would make the equivalent admission fee £9 (the data goes up to 2010, so that would probably be £10 by 2013).

 

So admission prices have gone up way faster than average earnings

 

If they had gone up in line with inflation the admission price would be just : £ 7.50

 

Source: http://www.measuringworth.com/ukearncpi/

[Woz01 3,589]

£12 would be reasonable i think. There are plenty of Bees fans in Coventry that i know who only attend 3-6 times a season due to costs, im sure they would attend more with lower admission prices.

[oldace 1,678]

These figures are don't look right, but the conclusion certainly is!

 

The 1987 average wage was £8,140 ( £17,857 in 2010 prices). The current figure is around £24,000. That's a factor of three increase which would make the equivalent admission fee £9 (the data goes up to 2010, so that would probably be £10 by 2013).

 

So admission prices have gone up way faster than average earnings

 

If they had gone up in line with inflation the admission price would be just : £ 7.50

 

Source: http://www.measuring....com/ukearncpi/

 

The site I went on showed the average to be £13,500 in 1987 which from memory I agree seems a little high but £8000 doesn't seem correct either.

 

Whichever way you look at it though admission in real terms is 3 times what it was in 1987.

 

The thing was though before I finally gave up on the sport the constant inflation busting increases only served to lower my spend per annum on the sport. From attending with the wife and 2 kids home and away the soaring cost saw my wife give up going along with my daughter then we dropped away matches moving onto selected home matches before finally nothing at all.

 

The actual cost though is not the real issue, the issue is that for £20.00 I want £20.00 worth of entertainment, speedway falls short so I don't go.

[dj350z 2,266]

Found my programme last night and a look at the scores confirm what everyone (except me!!!) was stating! Copy below:

 

You will notice the cost of the programme was 25p. Normal programme prices in 1979 was 15p. Admission prices: Pop enclosure Adults £1.70 child 85p. Main enclosure £2.20 child £1.10. No mention of concessions (SCB would have been pleased!)

 

[Gemini 4,894]

Brilliant and thanks for the confirmation that I haven't gone completely senile yet.

Don't suppose you know what the first leg score of the Leicester v Coventry match was? Hardly worth us turning up really for that battering. (I say 'us' because back then I was supporting the Lions.)

[martinmauger 584]

That was one heck of a nite: 15 coaches from Hull, Viking flags on sale in stadium car park (I still have mine), terraces packed all the way round - but wrong result. Yes, I know Hull really lost the league earlier in the season with rider no-shows at Swindon and (in)famously at Wimbledon where the 5 remaining Vikings battled only to lose by 6 or 7 points. Shared champagne with Bees fans afterwards so it wasn't all bad.

 

I recall Coventry got pretty reasonable crowds in the late 1970's / early 1980's and you had to find a good spot to watch from. My last attendance at Brandon back in 2003, v Hull again in the British League Cup (or Bacon and Lettuce Cup), was revealing on a couple of levels. Admittedly we arrived an hour or so before the start but my companions for the nite thought the speedway must be off already as they had recently visited Coventry on a stock car nite and the car park would apparently already be packed at that time. I reckoned it was because it was a pretty much a non-event meet. The Vikings never got near Coventry on that nite and were already heading for the Premier League wooden spoon though we won the treble in 2004. Chatting with some Bees fans we sarcastically remarked that "as Hull are going so well (not) we had obviously (not) pulled in a big crowd, LOL!".

 

The Bees fans were a bit dumbfounded and replied "but we only get this many here every week". I was genuinely shocked as the crowd was maybe 1/3 of the numbers I recalled at Brandon. Sadly, it's probably the same everywhere these days.....

Edited January 30, 2013 by Martin Mauger

[dj350z 2,266]

Brilliant and thanks for the confirmation that I haven't gone completely senile yet.

Don't suppose you know what the first leg score of the Leicester v Coventry match was? Hardly worth us turning up really for that battering. (I say 'us' because back then I was supporting the Lions.)

Aggregate scores from the programme was 93-63 (see below) so the score at Leicester must have been 35-43. Probably got that wrong again!!