Humphrey Appleby

Thought I read somewhere that it was a 'seven figure sum' over 'several' years, but the actual figures will surface in due course.

How is it tarnishing someone's image if they rip off a sponsor? In fact, doing that is detrimental to the sport as that sort of behaviour will just discourage others from sponsoring in future. It's more than just a falling out it it's been settled by a CCJ and bailiffs.

Depends what Monster are paying (or not) for the sponsorship. Otherwise the list of sponsors is mostly tourist boards/municipal councils and equipment/media suppliers to the series. Be interesting to see how things develop, because the parent company has been hemorrhaging money for the past few years.

It was already explained some time ago. Something about filling up his private car with a sponsored diesel card if I remember correctly.

I can't really see where in Riga a GP could be held. Skonto is the biggest stadium in Latvia with a capacity of 9,500, but it's a rectangular football ground so unsuitable for speedway. Daugava Stadium does have an athletics track but is only 5,000 capacity, whilst the Latvia University Stadium is even smaller. Plus of course, Riga has no tradition of speedway (as far as I know) unlike Daugavpils.

How did it work then when there actually were 24 riders in the SGP for a number of years?

Not sure I follow the logic here. Other than the host team, none of the other teams are handpicked for the tournaments or because it's commercially desirable for them to be in. What's more, just about every country in the world has the opportunity to qualify, however remote. It's not entirely comparable to other sports because teams are needed to invest in and develop the cars. In principle though, there aren't any barriers to new teams joining F1 beyond large amounts of money. With respect to the drivers themselves, I think it would be hard to argue that most of the best drivers in the world aren't in F1, unless you discount those who've opted for other formulas.

Well yes, but there are only 50 or so countries in 'Europe' so nearly half will qualify for the new bloated tournament. By contrast, there are far more than 50 speedway riders in the world (maybe a thousand or so all told). Yes, but by that definition you should only have the top four or five riders in any competition, which is clearly not desirable. F1 currently has 24 drivers and the top tennis tournaments have 128 players, yet no-one seriously suggests the fields should be smaller.

It's a pretty poor indictment of speedway if the sport's premier competition can't find more than 16 riders of acceptable quality. In fact, it can't even find 16...

16 riders isn't really enough for a GP series, although I don't think the organisers want to increase costs by adding more riders.

Not really. There's no way for 12 riders to meet each other and ride against each other the same number of times unless there are 33 heats. Clearly not practical. That's the beauty of the 16-rider, 20-heat format. It's not perfect, but it's as near to perfection as you can get within a practical format. If the SGP went to 24 riders again, I think I'd stage 4 groups of 6 riders competing in mini round robins (12 heats), followed by a knockout (maybe repechage) format. That way every rider would ride against every rider in the same group at least once, although riders would still meet one other rider twice. However, this inherit 'unfairness' could be resolved by seeding.

Had IMG got the gig to run the Olympic Stadium post-Olympics it might have been a possibility. At the moment though, I'd be surprised if they took that sort of risk given that the SGP series isn't exactly coining in the money and IMG have a big hole in their finances because of other unsuccessful ventures.

I think it's apparent that something went on, and it was a matter as to the degree in which it was considered consensual or not.

I'd be quite surprised if that were still the case. I think football, cricket, rugby league, rugby union and F1 will have better viewing figures these days, and certainly the last figures I saw for speedway had seen a significant decrease from a few years ago. That's not even taking into account the likes of darts. Of course, it's difficult to compare like-with-like when it comes to viewing figures for particular sports, but I doubt speedway would even be in the top five nowadays.

I think it would be better to ask how complimentary tickets are getting into the hands of touts and being sold at knock down prices. Perhaps they actually are complementary tickets though - given out to make the crowd look bigger..

I'd imagine still very small beer compared to what Sky spend on football, rugby, cricket and now F1.

Well of course, the traditional press is on a slow and inextricable decline and I'd imagine they simply don't want to spend money covering minority sports any more. I'm not really convinced that mass coverage in the tabloids would make that much difference these days anyway. Of course, speedway also doesn't help promote itself by being run in such an amateurish fashion.

Bernie Ecclestone said much the same thing, but the public and television companies eventually said otherwise ;-) I'd agree that good race doesn't necessarily have passing, but if there's little passing in any race then I do think that's a concern. Why would the fees for disparate artists grow out of proportion? I think it's more likely the available budget for things decreased. Unfortunately, it puts the relative importance of speedway into context.

Not quite the glittering gala event then...?

I'd imagine they signed up the venue for a certain number of years, and so long as the money continues to come in, why would they care about the quality?

The Olympic Stadium or Amsterdam Arena might be a possibility, but who there would be willing to pony up the necessary cash?

Think it's already been hinted that Russia is off the agenda for the foreseeable future. Wasn't Warsaw already mentioned though?

Agreed that 15 riders is really too few for this sort of event. However, even if a suitable format could be found to accommodate more riders, I think the real issue would be the costs of expanding the lineup a lot more. You could have a 24-rider format with 4 groups of 6 riders each and then a knockout phase which would combine the best parts of the current and previous formats.

I don't know. Wasn't Scott Nicholls christened 'the beggar' by the acerbic Subedei?

It was a rhetorical question in that the amount presumably determines who might be willing to host, not whether "it's the turn" of a particular place or whether venue x or venue y would be a better place to hold it. IMG/BSI have the rights to the SWC do they not, so presumably it's them who charge the staging fees. There's probably also FIM inscription fees and paying the costs of the FIM officials, but nothing like 40k per meeting I'd have thought.