Humphrey Appleby

You haven't disappointed me. Some basic research suggests the unlikelihood of a GP in Riga unless some serious money is spent. Rather a shame as Riga would be a nice city to have a GP.

If you have to lay the track over the pitch, the pitch will almost certainly have to be relaid in parts. Maybe okay during the close season, but certainly not okay if the pitch is needed for a match the following week.

Phil Rising wasn't explicit, but presumably only the Skonto Stadium would be big enough. I think Daugava and Ventspils are 5,000 or less.

The Millennium Stadium has the pitch on removable pallets, and isn't the Danish GP raced at Parken during the football close season after which the pitch is relaid? The Latvian League is a summer league though, so the stadium is used for football throughout the speedway season.

Would have thought it can only be a mention, as how do you get a speedway track into an 'English' style rectangular football stadium? The Daugava Stadium would be more practical, although that's only got a capacity of about 5,000 these days.

Yes, it's a bit controversial. The Latvians insist that you have to speak Latvian to become a citizen, but that excludes many of the Russians who were already in the country at the time of independence.

God help us - if people think Pearson is a bit shouty...

I think nearly half the population of Latvia is Russian, and Daugavpils nearly 80% Russian. Lots of Russians went to work there in the Soviet era.

I don't know what his current relationship with BSI is, but he certainly has been directly involved with them in the past, and don't Pinegen do the GP programmes? Yes, the old 'we should be grateful for everything in speedway' argument. The Star showed general disdain for the Internet until the SGP had a run of poor publicity, and then suddenly 'a source close to BSI' starts participating on here. I therefore don't think we're lucky, although I'm not unappreciative of his involvement on here.

I don't think anyone really is, but Phil Rising is probably on here to generate some positive publicity for the SGP. That's fine and not unappreciated, but equally why shouldn't people ask pertinent questions or accept everything at face value?

Maybe they're required by the FIM or television contracts to run a certain number of GPs, possibly in a certain number of countries, and Italy is cheap and cheerful enough to fulfill that requirement?

Why not then stage a GP in Outer Mongolia, or maybe move 2 of the 3 Polish GPs to other speedway countries? I struggle to understand the rationale as to why it's beneficial to have a GP in Italy as they don't really have any riders of note and there's no mainstream interest in speedway in Italy. I also doubt that BSI would deliberately organise a loss-making round in what is a relative backwater in speedway terms (even if Italy was once more prestigious), so it can surely only be down to the money from the local tourist board.

Don't think I've ever actually asked, but if people are interested, I don't see what they shouldn't speculate or indeed why there shouldn't be an investigative media. It'll probably be possible to work out in due course anyway, and whilst I wasn't particularly bothered to know, perhaps I will make a point of it now...

Maybe sourced parts?

Yet ask what a GP promoter gets charged for the privilege, and that's none of our business...

I think we have a reasonable idea of wages for various categories of rider in Britain, but earnings are also dependent on how many other leagues they do, how many meetings they miss through injury, personal sponsorships, and so forth... What's clear is that the general levels of wages are more than be sustained from revenues alone, and that ultimately determines what they 'deserve' to be paid. A few years ago I looked into the financial condition of most of the BEL promotions at the time, and I must say that I'm now more sceptical about these sorts of things.

Well a Permanent Under-Secretary earns between 150K and 250K, if that helps...

We're not asking how much individual riders get paid, but the value of sponsorship of one commercial company by another. Entirely different matter, especially as there's a degree of public interest in how much the FIM accrues and where it goes. Most companies with significant sponsorships normally want to trumpet them to high heaven. No they don't have to tell anyone, and the public doesn't particularly have a right to know about. Nevertheless, it's usually easy enough for interested people to find out in due course, and indeed sections of the media are devoted to such matters.

Why is it not? In more mainstream sports, the media, consultancy companies and even academics make it their business to find out and report on such things. It's relevant in speedway because the size of sponsorship reflects the sport's commercial value to some extent, plus it may open discussion about where the money goes. All things that journals of record should be asking, but this of course is speedway...

Or free as in they don't pay anything... I don't know, but unusually for sponsorship deals, no actual amounts have been mentioned and it was suggested that Monster might be providing promotion in kind.

Although all it does it confirm what we've already worked out on here. Don't see any mention of dates when construction will start, or even when planning permission is expected, and that's the key issue.

So they're not paying anything to be associated with the SGP series then (as suspected)?

They still televise sports that aren't especially telegenic though. Who in the modern world would have come-up with a sport that may or may not last five days, that has bizarre and arcane rules, and which frequently gets rained off, yet Sky and other companies devote whole channels to the coverage of cricket. Is the Joker really a prerequisite to the televisiig of speedway?

It may well be no longer the case, but the SGP taking prime days away from the British leagues undoubtedly didn't help. Yes, British speedway was in decline before the SGP came along, but the SGP has hastened the outflux of riders over the past 10 years. Yes, but it could equally be argued that the World Final was dying on its feet precisely because it was being held in venues like Pocking and Vojens. Attendances in places like Munich, Gothenburg and Wroclaw held up pretty well even in the latter years of the World Final, and had somewhere like the Millennium Stadium been available at the time, it might have been a different story. Similarly, attendance at the early GPs held in places like Abensburg were pretty awful too, and frankly still are at some of the minor GP venues today. Personally I think some sort of GP series was inevitable and was not necessarily a bad thing for the sport. However, it was established in completely the wrong manner with no benefit accruing back to the domestic competitions that provide the riders (and in the case of the British leagues abdicate their prime race days), nor indeed directly to the riders taking part. The converse example is cricket whereby the county teams totally play second fiddle to the England cricket team these days, but in return they share in the proceeds of international matches (to the tune of something like 2 million quid each per year). Okay, speedway didn't have, and probably never will have the leverage that cricket has, but distributing a 3 or 4 million quid annual surplus amongst the countries running professional speedway would still amount to a useful sum. Did they really care? Not sure how the SWC is actually organised compared to the GPs, but maybe the Czechs underwrote any losses.

Councils give over land to athletics stadiums that would be lucky to pull that sort of crowd on one night a year, and there are probably numerous other 'minority' sports that get similar sort of support. There is value in supporting community facilities and the fact they're even considering accommodating speedway can probably be taken as a positive, even if the figures seem a bit unrealistic as pointed out.