Humphrey Appleby

So last year's fans apparently have just 7 days to buy their tickets to watch some sort of mickey mouse select meeting the following day? Quite pathetic...

It was probably only a rotting portacabin though. You were probably better off outside in the cold...

Certainly an enigma in terms of starting businesses that don't work out, and I'd imagine it's tough on the investors in those. Whilst Stadium Australia was undoubtedly too big, it was at the time a white elephant looking for a purpose, so maybe it was as cheap to hire as a smaller venue. I seem to remember it being reported from Down Under at the time that Lander was unhappy about being charged for things that he shouldn't have been charged for, amongst other things.

Non-league footballers have also played in Sunday League football for years.

The beauty of Twenty20 was that it didn't fundamentally change the game into nonsense. It's better than ODIs in that respect, what with the endless tinkering of power plays and super subs etc.. The one change I'd make is to stop allowing players to play with tree trunks rather than bats. Does the ball really need to be going out of the stadium every over? BTW - they have tinkered with the test match format over the years.

I think the American and National Leagues are still generally considered worth winning in their own right, even if the big prize is the World Series. The Stanley Cup has a more interesting background as it was historically a challenge cup that teams from different leagues could play off for, subject to the approval of the trustees of the cup. As such, I don't think it technically belongs to the NHL and as such other leagues could challenge for it, although there are now none of sufficient standard so it's not happened for years. Aussie Rules has the best playoff system, whether it be the Final Four, Final Five or Final Eight system currently used (the Final Six system used for a while was rubbish though). Finishing higher in the league table (although it's not a full home-and-away round robin) gives more advantages to those sides - whether home advantage, bye or double chance.

I did once, and regularly went for 25-odd years. Like many before me though, I eventually tired of the farcical organisation and found better things to spend my time and money on. I do occasionally go to the odd meeting - I might even have gone to Melbourne if I was in Australia this month.

What did the Spar's sponsorship of the Knockout Cup actually amount to? I seem to recall the sponsorship was quite long lived, so was it just that they bought the trophy one year or provided a couple of crates of beer for the winners each season? Genuine question...

Does anyone else?

How is it any different now, except the promoters (assuming it's the Ethiad themselves) won't have the stadium costs> They manage to fill it for NRL matches during the winter, and nearly 90K made it for the NRL Grand Final last week (which was also live on TV), so it can't be the whole reason. If indeed the Sydney GP did pull 32K fans (although I seem to recall the figure reported at the time was 25K), then I'd have said that was pretty decent as I can't imagine there are many more speedway fans than that in the whole of Australia. The sport has gone into even further decline since then, and Melbourne isn't a speedway city (or at least hasn't been for many years), although conversely flying around Australia is cheaper than it's every been and Melbourne is at least a destination. It will be interesting to see how Melbourne does, but more specifically how long it lasts... Not sure why it wasn't staged in the (new) Sydney Showground next door in the first place. Interesting how both Lander and Buckley both ended-up falling out with BSI, albeit under different leaderships.

The ubiquitous chap at work, eh...? I don't think the NFL, MLB, NHL or NBA do? The UEFA Champions League? I think that's pretty difficult to quantify. You'd imagine 1 out of 7 would have a bigger impact than 1 out of 11 or even 1 out of 45, but it really depends on the position. You'd imagine losing a star quarterback could have a big impact, whilst conversely a speedway team could be strengthened by having a star guest rather than having to rely on another squad member.

How many paid though?

As I said, without full access to financial and logistical information, it's not possible to advance any meaningful solutions. BSI are also looking to maximise their revenue from hosting fees, which likely rules out a number of suitable and even better tracks from the equation even if it might otherwise be financially viable to run a GP there. They have shills to do that. Do they? I think many have pointed out that other than Cardiff, local promotion of GPs is pretty poor to non existent. Okay, Philippe will come on here and big up the merits of venue X or Y, despite it being apparent to everyone else that the track is the wrong shape, is totally undeveloped, or is in the middle of a field. But then just as quickly make all manner of excuses when it all goes pear shaped, and move on the next one hoping that it'll all be forgotten in a week or two... We can all have our wish lists, but it comes back to the first point. I think a couple of GPs in smaller speedway countries is fair enough, and Latvia is as deserving as most. There's a small but apparently thriving speedway scene there, and Daugavpils is a decent enough stadium even if in a provincial town, but certainly no more provincial than Krsko. Riga could potentially have been an even better venue, but was another one stuffed up by BSI incompetence.

Without fully knowing the costs of running at particular venues, how much money BSI want/need to extract from the hosts, and a number of other factors such as stadium availability and sponsor/television requirements, it's almost impossible for the casual observer to suggest the best approach. In a perfect world I think you'd want to run most of the rounds in general purpose stadia in bigger cities, but clearly that's not currently sustainable cost wise, and there remains a big question mark over the quality of temporary tracks. So I think the SGP can realistically only run 3 or 4 'prestige' venues with the rest held at regular speedway circuits. However, they should be held at reasonably well appointed speedway stadia and not in what are effectively fields in the middle of nowhere. Nor do I see anything to be gained by hosting GPs in non-speedway venues in provincial towns if they're completely non-conducive to putting in a decent track. I do actually support trying to take the odd GP to places like Australia, but it should absolutely be where there's some sort of speedway scene already. In conclusion then, I don't fundamentally have any issue with the mix of venues that BSI are using, although some lame ducks (e.g. Tampere and Riga) have certainly crept in through lack of proper oversight and no doubt some greed as well. Similarly, Warsaw could have been a magnificent development, but that was stuffed-up through the sheer incompetence of the organisers. What I actually rail against is the parroted fiction that the SGP has been this wonderful success story. Some sort of new dawn was promised 15 years ago, and whilst I'd agree Cardiff has been a reasonable success, there's never been more than 3 or 4 of 'big city' venues in any one season and none of them other than Cardiff have ultimately lasted. This does suggest there's not just a case of 'build it and they will come' even in speedway strongholds. Personally, I do think speedway is a hard sell these days, and it's also an expensive sport to stage with middling crowds. In reality though, the SGP is not any further forward than the old World Championship was 25 years ago in terms of attendances, and only marginally better in terms of being held in one or two venues which simply didn't exist in the old era. For all the hype, does it actually make any difference to the amount of money coming into the sport or the numbers of fans who follow the sport? I have little doubt that riders would love to ride in big stadia in front of packed audiences, but I'm sure they'd also like to ride on billiard smooth surfaces, have a working set of tapes, and earn a million pounds into the bargain. I'd also like to earn a million pounds a year, but I'm afraid it's just not going to happen...

Erm... they're flocking to Stockholm and Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Auckland before them? Even the 'big city' Polish tracks haven't been sell-outs I don't think. Sure they'll pull more than tracks in the middle of fields because travelling fans can more easily get to city venues and there's more to do when they get there. However, you've got to offset that against the undoubtedly higher staging costs. It's basically Cardiff that pulls a decent crowd. Warsaw did as well, but BSI mucked that up, and Melbourne is as yet unproven.

Or a women's basketball tournament...

Thought it was reported there were only 1,000 tickets left...

I believe Slough is close to Windsor though...

The 2002 host lost a packet which is why it only lasted a year, and the NZ host also decided enough was enough. Nothing to do with a lack of coordination but a lack of promoters willing to lose money on an ongoing basis. It's not really up to 'Australia' and 'New Zealand' (whoever they may be) to coordinate anything anyway. That should be BSI's job as series organisers, although the cost savings of doing an Antipodean double header may not be as much as people imagine.

They'd need to find hosts first, which was first a problem in Australia and now in New Zealand.

It doesn't matter what the planning application says. It's not within the gift of Manchester City Council or Belle Vue Speedway to insist that international speedway meetings will be held there. And what does 'requiring international speedway' actually mean in practice? How many meetings per year, what competitions, and for how long? I think the FIM modified their guidelines to suit potential SGP circuits.

Yes, you can't even guarantee one complete meeting on an indoor speedway track...

I don't think anyone can seriously suggest that Sky isn't a successful company, but operating profit does not necessarily mean actual profit. For example, I think it excludes investment in capital equipment and servicing loan payments which is likely to be very high for a satellite company. I think it's well known that Sky has had to tighten its belt in the last few years, and I think has a less certain future ahead. It operates around somewhat outmoded distribution concepts and has an inflexible business model, and will increasingly face competition from cheaper to provision Internet broadcasting. Sky's main strength is the relative exclusivity of its context in specific geographic markets - for example if you wanted to watch live test matches you had to pay for Sky. That's changing though, and quite aside from all the pirate streams you watch test matches on, I think the legality of geographical rights is going to be challenged. It's a completely different era. In 1974 there were just three television channels (far less the Internet), none of which broadcasted 24 hours per day and frequently repeated content when they were broadcasting. There was no such thing as live league football, and it was probably only the FA Cup Final and the odd international that were ever shown live in those days.

That was 15 years ago before the financial 'success' of the SGP was established. It seems everyone involved with the organisation has got 'pay rises' down the years, whilst the riders have I think had only one or two modest incremental increases. I also think it's easy to hide behind the fact that the FIM set the prize money, but really it shouldn't be like that and I'm not that's the arrangement even with most other FIM competitions. BTW - making a wildcard pay their expenses to get to a GP is pathetic and embarrassing.

What difference does that make? Of course we know that speedway doesn't have anything like the revenue of other sports, but we're talking about percentage of revenue, not absolute amounts. Paying the riders under 7% of revenue is extremely low by the standards of most sports, and I'm surprised you should seek to justify it as an allegedly impartial observer.