Survival of The Premiership?

[mikebv 10,277]

Free ticket giveaways on their own are not worth doing...

Free ticket giveaways, to a targeted market, with communication details, and an ongoing dialogue, can work..

One offs don't work..

Maybe getting them to come four or five times would? 

As has been said, these people are not attending now, so you are not losing out...

Modern technology can give you a database of all your customers (with most tracks sadly not needing too many GB's or Bandwidth to collate this info)..

Imagine having names, addresses, emails, mobile numbers, birthdays, kids birthdays etc of your customers, so you can keep in constant communication.? 

Imagine knowing who attends, when they attend, and how often, so you can make them offers and provide loyalty discounts on admission and merchandise?

Then imagine how much more succesfult your business would be knowing all this information...

BSN constantly contact me with what they are offering...

I never get an email from Belle Vue...

Literally several million quid will be spent as a collective this season by all the teams in the leagues...

Much of which given to riders seldom local people will have ever heard of...  

With hardly a jot spent on collective targeted marketing to these very same potential customers...

And ultimately all done to acheive?

Edited July 4, 2023 by mikebv

[BluTiger 21,697]

17 minutes ago, Phil said:

If the idea is to get extra people into the track then they need to work with a very large employee in the area. e.g Council / NHS / Union / car plant etc. -  Offer all the staff reduced price price tickets (e.g £10 or £12) every meeting on ideally a place like standing only where they can upsell if they choose to.   Maybe in return the company offers sponsorship in the future. 

      

Most people under 60 wouldn't go to speedway these days, even if it was free. It's dying a natural death...

[Byker Biker 472]

2 minutes ago, Daniel Smith said:

The best thing promoters could do is set up a gazebo in town & city centres every weekend during the season & conduct a survey. 

Have just 2 surveys available: 

• Have you ever heard of Motorcycle Speedway? 
• Did you no longer attend Motorcycle Speedway? 

The sport does not need to hear from those attending weekly, but those who don't. Giving away freebies could work for a very short time but because thw products broken it's unsustainable. The promoters desperately need to get it through their heads why people just ain't interested. It'll be the only way they'll listen. 

Promoters need to actually do some work for a change. 

 

Rick Frost and his team did this at Peterborough, Neil Machin and Nigel Hinchiffe did it throughout Yorkshire, hundreds of free tickets given away and not even double figures utilised. Machin even gave away a free DVD that got them free admission if they showed at at the turnstile.

[paulrickett 15]

16 minutes ago, Byker Biker said:

and if I believe what I was told some current paying supporters joined Unison to gain cheaper admission not withstanding those that joined the National Union of Students to all of a sudden earn concessions which is why Machin binned it.

It wasn’t Neil. It did work well for starters but the Unison head honcho was latterly asked why they had stopped coming and the general answer was that they didn’t enjoy it.

[bloom89 496]

4 minutes ago, Byker Biker said:

Which is why Promoters shy away from many of the ideas mooted on this thread. They can't win if they introduce a low cost initiative like free tickets the existing customers harangue them

But why should two different people pay different prices for exactly the same thing? Like going to Tesco getting a ham sandwich I’m paying £1.50 but you pay £4 for exactly the same sandwich it doesn’t make sense.

I totally get trying to get new customers but you also need to keep the current ones happy because the speed they are walking away from the sport is alarming, you might give out say 200 flyers and could get 20 new people coming regularly but if you have 30 current customers leaving because they know speedway inside out and they’ve had enough then what do you do? This sport constantly shoots itself in the foot time and time again because the promoters are so self centered they don’t care about if there’s a league next year or the year after they just want to what’s best for there club, the way half of them are going they won’t have any clubs to race against in 5 years time. 

[steve roberts 9,246]

14 minutes ago, Daniel Smith said:

The best thing promoters could do is set up a gazebo in town & city centres every weekend during the season & conduct a survey. 

Have just 2 surveys available: 

• Have you ever heard of Motorcycle Speedway? 
• Do you no longer attend Motorcycle Speedway? 

The sport does not need to hear from those attending weekly, but those who don't. Giving away freebies could work for a very short time but because the products broken it's unsustainable. The promoters desperately need to get it through their heads why people just ain't interested. It'll be the only way they'll listen. 

Promoters need to actually do some work for a change. 

 

Steve Purchase (Oxford) was very good communicating with fans (I recall a survey being carried out when fans were issued with a form on one particular occasion) but grew disillusioned with the sport. Following Promoter Nigel Wagsraff had some novel ideas (I actually did some promotional work at schools and outside Tesco's).

[Byker Biker 472]

5 minutes ago, bloom89 said:

But why should two different people pay different prices for exactly the same thing? Like going to Tesco getting a ham sandwich I’m paying £1.50 but you pay £4 for exactly the same sandwich it doesn’t make sense.

I totally get trying to get new customers but you also need to keep the current ones happy because the speed they are walking away from the sport is alarming, you might give out say 200 flyers and could get 20 new people coming regularly but if you have 30 current customers leaving because they know speedway inside out and they’ve had enough then what do you do? This sport constantly shoots itself in the foot time and time again because the promoters are so self centered they don’t care about if there’s a league next year or the year after they just want to what’s best for there club, the way half of them are going they won’t have any clubs to race against in 5 years time. 

I think these are separate issues, incentivising someone to make a purchase by offering a discount (even if it is 100%) is common practice no doubt you will remember George English doing an offer through Groupon, it made him bleed and always said never again.

[StarBoy 165]

Just now, steve roberts said:

Steve Purchase (Oxford) was very good communicating with fans (I recall a survey being carried out when fans were issued with a form on one particular occasion) but grew disillusioned with the sport. Following Promoter Nigel Wagsraff had some novel ideas (I actually did some promotional work at schools and outside Tesco's).

Even what Oxford have done this year, getting riders and a bike around the town is a damn sight more than the so called elite clubs in the Premiership have accomplished. 

[truthsayer 234]

The question of how to build attendances is not unique to speedway, it is factor for every form of entertainment.

We consume things differently. Television and other streaming media brings entertainment to us. It presents it more accessibly, cheaper and usually better than going in person. It gets people used to the elite level of sport. Going out to pay to see an inferior level of sport is not what most people want to do.

Me, I get my fix from watching GPs on TV. I went to my local track last about 10 years ago. The experience was not as good as watching on TV. Most sports have the same issues. Football is great live, but you see more and get more insight on TV. Even subscribing is cheaper than going.

Successful sports have monitised their TV offering. Going out to a rickety old stadium was all you had in the 1990s. By the 2000s it was a transitional period but now the norm is to consume sport in a different way. Professional speedway's product is at the level of non-league football, but the overheads to run it are so much higher.

[bloom89 496]

2 minutes ago, Byker Biker said:

I think these are separate issues, incentivising someone to make a purchase by offering a discount (even if it is 100%) is common practice no doubt you will remember George English doing an offer through Groupon, it made him bleed and always said never again.

Maybe so but they go hand in hand with there actually being a sport to follow. Speedway in this country is just not a popular option anymore and we have to accept that. Football especially is the main attraction in this country and the biggest draw for people and then cricket and rugby. There are too many things for people to spend there money on now and with the cost of living speedway is a low low priority, some people are struggling to put food on the table there not going to want to waste the money they do have on a 3rd rate sport which has no credibility imo. We the fans constantly get the pee taken out of us and a total lack of regard for us in the way they manage and inform us, they can’t treat us with any kind of respect so how on earth are they going to get new people through the door.

[Byker Biker 472]

2 minutes ago, steve roberts said:

Steve Purchase (Oxford) was very good communicating with fans (I recall a survey being carried out when fans were issued with a form on one particular occasion) but grew disillusioned with the sport. Following Promoter Nigel Wagsraff had some novel ideas (I actually did some promotional work at schools and outside Tesco's).

Many of the suggestions on this forum have been tried over the years by "modern thinking" new promotions but there just doesn't appear to be a sustainable level that will improve revenue streams. Sadly many of those promotions left the sport for financial reasons and gave it a bloody good go and others were driven out by the politics. Just look at some of the past efforts put in by; Steve and Vanessa at Oxford, Waggy and Brian Griffin at King's Lynn, Rick and Julie at Peterborough, Stuart Douglas at Lakeside, Peter Oakes at Skegness and it goes on. These people not only put fortunes into the sport but they invested in marketing, corporate entertainment facilities, getting out and about in the community and more. They all believed they could make a difference, we saw some brilliant stuff coming from Waggy and a team at KL to die for so with respect to every contributor on this thread I just don't believe local initiatives are the way forward.

I do agree with Mike BV that the sport should be marketed centrally with a national budget but sadly I fear that opportunity is long gone with the mega bucks that were put into the Gerhard GRT engine project.

[Phil 303]

32 minutes ago, paulrickett said:

It wasn’t Neil. It did work well for starters but the Unison head honcho was latterly asked why they had stopped coming and the general answer was that they didn’t enjoy it.

....and there is the problem.  

[Baldyman 6,243]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is a sign the age of people that go.   No one has mentioned influencers,,,, invite a few of them. They play a huge part of what the younger generation do and don't do today,, and how and where/what they spend their money on.  You can guareentee the crowd going up just so they can see and meet the influencer. 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Baldyman

[truthsayer 234]

2 minutes ago, Baldyman said:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is a sign the age of people that go.   No one has mentioned influencers,,,, invite a few of them 

Costs a lot of money to invite an influencer with clout. 

Agree with the sentiment, however there's a big cost attached and unlikely to be recouped with increased attendances.

Main problem is that the product is rotten. Ultimately no poor product survives, that's just how it is. You can promote all you like, but if people don't like what they see you won't get their repeat business.

[ch958 2,395]

free tickets - just give us your email address and we'll send it. Then you can target in the most accurate way possible - straight into the inbox of someone who showed an interest, however slight