Humphrey Appleby

More to the point, how much do they have to pay to host these meetings?

In fact, you could also run two the Semi-Finals as a double header, with the host team in one of them. If they win their Semi-Final they go directly through to the Final; otherwise they're seeded to the Race-Off.

It wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility to stage the Race-Off and Final as a double header if you ran each event as 16 heats. That way you'd get the home crowd in the stadium, and even if the home team went out in the Race-Off, you'd still have the crowd in the stadium.

Yes, but it comes down to who'll pay for it. The likes of the Open gets thousands of paying spectators over the 4 days, so there's more amortisation of the investment. There's also a lot of British golfers in the event so plenty of home interest. The SWC is just a couple of 2-3 hour events at best, and with far fewer potential spectators. And if the home team isn't in a round, it could be even more disastrous. If not a lot of up-front investment is required then the risks are lower. It's always been a mystery to me though, why crowds for the SWC have never really been that good as it's always a much more interesting event that the SGP. Even in the old days, the WTC never drew attendances that were comparable with World Finals either. Quite simple - money. If I were a Croatian promoter, I'm not sure I'd want to take the risk of staging a big final without local interest. It might just about work in Britain where there's enough interest in club riders to follow them in the competition even if they're from another country, but otherwise how would you sell an event where the participants are not only unknown, but the chances of any local interest are virtually nil?

Presumably it'll come down to who's prepared to pay the requested staging fee? No mates rates available?

Undoubtedly money. It stopped because it was a financial disaster. Hardly anyone turned up to the rounds where the host nation didn't feature. The other reason was that 12 teams riding at the same stage of the competition meant too many no-hopers being involved.

Then when would they play the European Championships? And before anyone says every other year, when would the qualifiers get played given that the qualifying competition for both the World Cup and Euros takes 18 months? In addition, more World Cups would mean more hosts like Qatar. The competition is tarnished enough without having twice as many editions.

There aren't really enough teams to make biennial or quadrennial competition worthwhile with the current format. And a more involved head-to-head match format would rule out all but about 6 countries. The current competition is one of the more interesting events of the season, and there's not a great deal wrong with it (by speedway standards) except there should be reserves. There always used to be when the same format was used in the past, so one can only assume it's a cost cutting measure. In the past, reserves could be used as a team manager wished, and so long as they can't take more rides than anyone else then what does it matter?

Given that the SGP is now 12 rounds and again uses the less arbitrary round robin format for each GP, it would be reasonable to say the top part of the GP rider rankings and the world's best riders are synonymous. What the GP rankings don't tell you though, is how good riders who don't race in the series are by comparison, and where riders are picked as much for television and sponsorship reasons, there could well be discrepancies in this respect. Outside of the SGP, by far the best determination of ability is league averages. Whilst obviously not every rider competes in every league, as you say there's enough of a crossover to work out a reasonable coefficient for each league and thereby how an average established in one league might translate to an average in another league. What is less certain though, is where riders compete in more than one league, how should their 2 or 3 averages be weighted relatively to each other. For example, if a rider competes in Poland and Sweden, should they take 50% of each average to work out their overall ranking, or maybe 60-40 in favour of Poland?

Doubt it has anything to do with the FA. The FA had to borrow a fortune to re-build Wembley and so are desperate to put anything on that will help pay the bills. They couldn't give two monkeys about the pitch given that they let American football rip it up every year. It's far more likely to be down to the stadium being too big and not cost-effective for BSI, combined with the lack of a roof.

Quite simply because local promotions have to pay to stage GPs and need to try to recoup those costs. For those GPs promoted by BSI themselves, I'd imagine they also have substantial hosting costs that need to be clawed back. Whilst people are willing to pay the prices, they're going to keep charging.

Nothing new in that - they were saying that more than 10 years ago. The problem is the GPs in the big cities were too expensive and weren't successful enough. It will be interesting to see whether Warsaw could be a success, given that the speedway following in that city is pretty low. A decent track at Cardiff would I think be a first... Different stories for different audiences?

Where will the money come from? The German and Australian GPs were not financially successful, and Slovenia finished as soon as the financial contribution of the local authority finished. As yet, no-one in the US has been willing to stand the financial risk of a GP there.

Well BSI wouldn't have 'gone up in the world' without it...

Like the old second-halves. Idea is fine in principle, but the extra cost will be the prohibitive factor.

Maybe, maybe not, but probably not otherwise the airline or handling agent would be listed as sponsors.

If you don't know the figures then how do you know the estimates are unsubstantiated? I actually don't expect IMG/BSI or associates to divulge what is potentially commercially sensitive information, but I hope you don't mind if speedway fans then indulge in speculation. What GP hosts might be paying is of interest to the speedway community because it's money that's potentially going out of the sport, and it also provides an indication of what could or should be going to the FIM and national speedway authorities. I accept it can be argued that money is generated that otherwise wouldn't be in the sport, but it's certainly something that should be of (speedway) public interest. Well perhaps, but it's usually based on some research. I don't see it being any different to some of the SGP claims about television viewing and other things. Well we can agree the FIM are ultimately the issue, because they're the ones who cut the deal for the SGP, and it's not really clear where the money raised from speedway actually goes. And yes, it's all a healthy debate...

Always happy to stand corrected, but you rarely provide any actual facts or even approximations.

You're once again dismissive of those who try to put facts and figures to things, but the answer to how much freight was involved is indicated in BSI's (quite interesting) video on the SGP website (see http://www.speedwaygp.com/news/article/1178/pack-up-new-zealand). Each rider gets a crate that comes to around 550 kilos, so if we assume 16 riders, that's about 9 tonnes. There's probably other BSI paraphenalia to ship as well, but I'd think about 12 tonnes maximum. AFAIK, IATA airlines (of which Emirates are one) have standard tariffs per kilo that can be found in various places online. Whilst I'm sure deals can be done, I don't see Emirates listed as a SGP sponsor so presumably fairly standard commercial rates were paid. I also wasn't aware that Emirates flew from Auckland or Sydney to Los Angeles, so even if some special deal is being given to the SGP organisers, it wouldn't help for a US GP.

<p> I was making a wider point was that if you buy into a franchised 'product', you generally expect to get some sort of support from the franchiser. I wasn't commenting at all on the individual case of the NZ GP. A quick check on air freight costs suggests it's at least if not more expensive to ship from Auckland to LA than from London to Auckland. Then you'd have to get the stuff from LA back to Europe which would probably be nearly as much again. You're increasing costs by (say) 50% but dividing by 2, which is a saving of only 25-30% per GP.In principle adding an Australia GP would reduce the unit costs a lot more, but it seems to be relatively expensive to ship from Oz to NZ.

Well yes and no. If you buy (say) a McDonalds franchise, whilst it's ultimately you that carries the risks, you expect the support and backup of the global corporation, In particular, the promotional and marketing machine that gets customers into your branch.

Errr no, freighting costs would actually likely go up. It's true that it might be possible to amortise some of the costs over Australian and NZ GPs, but it's a long way from there to the US plus all the way back to Europe, and that would add a lot of extra freighting costs. I don't know how many times it has to be pointed out, but IMG/BSI don't promote most of the GPs and it's therefore irrelevant to them whether they're loss-making or not. If a GP promoter makes a loss and pulls out, then the circus moves on somewhere else for another promoter or club to 'do their wedge'. IMG/BSI also don't give two hoots about the overall experience and perception of the sport beyond the need to extract as much money from it as possible. They're certainly not going to be intentionally subsidising GPs for the overall good of the sport, and frankly as soon as the SGP becomes unprofitable for them, you won't see them for dust Whatever the spin put on this, the reported losses from the recent NZ GP would suggest that unless attendances vastly increase or some sort of government subsidy can be obtained, it'll be very difficult for him to break even. I actually do hope that Bill Buckley can make a success of things because I do think GPs in traditional speedway countries like NZ can help revive interest there, not to mention that only a genuine enthusiast would put money into speedway at the moment. Unfortunately though, I fear he'll end-up with a hefty bill and great deal of disillusionment about how the global sport is run...

This discussion is entering the realms of a religious debate, and I suspect it doesn't matter to some how much evidence is presented, However, whilst the Johnnie Hoskins article is an interesting ancedote (even if it does seem overly romanticised), it actually doesn't shed any further light on the subject.

Quite a few years ago, there were rumours doing the rounds that BSI were asking for GBP 100K per GP, but in the end had to cut that to GBP 50K. However, more recently a Polish newspaper reported that Gorzow were paying GBP 300K. One would guess it varies from GP-to-GP, depending on what IMG/BSI feel they can squeeze out of each host.

Well it was recognised one of the failures of the (old) old National League was that too much talent ended-up being concentrated in the hands of a few teams, which lead to one-sided matches and escalating costs. I think it was the Provincial League that therefore introduced rider control to try to ensure as many teams as possible were competitive, and that continued when the British League started. There's nothing wrong with the principle of team equalisation, and although it was before my speedway watching time, I'm not sure that it was actually worse than the current incarnation of the points limit. Some of the basic principles were sound, and I believe 'home-grown' riders were generally not moved around, but as with anything administered by promoters it was undoubtedly subject to inconsistencies and outright bias.