Humphrey Appleby

Hasn't expanded much beyond Europe (and not to Russia), charges host venues too much, poor prize money, relatively closed shop... Obviously some think they can do better.

There were republics in the Commonwealth even before that point - not least India. The Commonwealth was one of the first political unions with common citizenship and free movement, but various nationalist movements wanted to break that up. It would have made sense for the likes of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to have maintained that, but that time has gone and the world has moved on. There's not really any serious movement to move back in that direction globally, although there are regional EU-type initiatives amongst the Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean, Far East and possibly Africa as well.

Because we've agreed reciprocal freedom of movement with EU/EEA countries but not Australia and New Zealand. They don't offer allow British citizens to go and work there unrestricted, so why would they expect the same the other way? I don't see what the Queen has to do with it, not that she's the reigning monarch of all Commonwealth countries anyway (e.g. South Africa).

Why would UKIP be any more likely to make it easier to let Commonwealth immigrants in? It was UKIP-types that initiated the original restrictions on Commonwealth citizens years ago, when previously they had total freedom to come to the UK.

Didn't even invent Budweiser. That was the Czechs originally!

Revolutions in sport tend to emanate from capitalising on the premier events. Cricket has been infinitely enriched by selling the rights to the various World Cups and test matches, from which the ECB in turn the counties and grassroots sport directly benefits. The same with probably a dozen other and more sports to varying degrees, and even in football, a lot of money still filters down from the World Cup despite all the corruption. I think we'd all accept that speedway has nothing like the commercial leverage of some other sports and likely never will, but it's also almost unique in giving its commercial rights away for nothing. Yes, I know it'll be argued that the FIM is benefitting, but how much of that money does speedway itself actually receive? Not the fault of BSI I'd fully agree, but yet this arrangement has never once been discussed or questioned by the Star as far as I'm aware. Why not ask the FIM where all the money goes? As for revolutionising the World Championship, I'd agree that Cardiff can be considered a vast improvement over Pocking and Norden, and Copenhagen and Stockholm similarly if they prove to be sustainable. Countering that though, is the ex-gulag in Riga and Terenzano for the past few seasons (now off the circuit thank goodness), with the rest of the venues being largely middling circuits where speedway has always been staged. On the commercial side, no real blue chip companies getting involved after 13 years, and clearly such an important sport for Sky that it was consistently moved to the red button before they finally cut it from their schedules completely. Maybe that's revolutionising the World Championship in the eyes of some though..

The attendances at many sports had a downward trend from the 1970s onwards, but that was also driven by outdated (dangerous) stadiums and restrictions on capacities for safety reasons. No-one would disagree the World Final wasn't what it was, but we're not comparing then with previously, but then with now. The fact remains that attendances for latter-day World Finals held in decent stadiums were comparable and in many cases higher than the equivalent GPs today. The larger speedway countries probably didn't have a lot to gain from the introduction of the SGP at the time - it was sold on the basis of being beneficial to the smaller speedway countries who might gain their own annual 'World Final'. If attendances were still holding up for the World Finals, it would be a harder sell to persuade them to basically hand over the commercial rights to the FIM, whereas previously I think the host countries keep the profits. Of course, for the FIM it was always about selling those rights and accruing the fees for that. 1990 was still early days for satellite with limited customer penetration, and before the introduction of digital television which limited bandwidth for channels. That didn't really happen for a few more years. Yes, someone probably needed to go and knock on Sky's door and sell the product, but equally Sky were likely to be more receptive than old school broadcasters. I believe they were actually local distributors or dealers of those products. For example, KFC was actually KFC Poland, and I'm not sure they actually paid up either because their sponsorship was listed as a bad debt. Sure, but neither have BSI particularly revolutionised the sport in 13 years either. To be clear, I'm not advocating a return to the old World Final system. I can perfectly understand how it's easier to leverage television and other commercial deals on the back of a series rather than several knockout rounds, and the BSI shareholders were probably modestly happy to be paid a dividend at last. What the SGP has not done though, is generate any sort of return for the sport itself in the way that the premier competitions of other sports do, nor improve the financial condition of its competitors (although there may be indirect benefits from being involved in the SGP). It has also not really improved attendances at either its own or other meetings, opened-up any new markets, or raised the profile of the sport. It has perhaps prevented a quicker decline, and for some that might be considered an achievement, but that's hardly a criteria of overwhelming success.

Said they wanted to ride on a well prepared track...

I don't think anyone has ever criticised Bill Buckley, but fan promoters doing things out of charity is not a sustainable way to run a sport. Fine if it's kickstarting a longer-term enterprise, but apart from his personal satisfaction, what will the sport have gained from its 3 year tenure in Auckland? You can't really build any fan or rider base over such a short timescale, and at the cost of thousands if not millions that might be better targeted on developing the sport nationally.

Rich coming from you, given your obsession with the McCanns...

Yes, no-one would deny the World Finals were dying, but they were dying as much because they were increasingly held in the middle of nowhere as anything else. The crowds for latter World Finals held in proper stadiums in cities such as Munich, Gothenburg, Katowice and Wroclaw still held up pretty well, and the presentation was arguably no worse than some GPs I've seen. A conspiracy theorist might even suggest the World Finals were deliberately run down to justify the introduction of the SGP that the FIM would stand a better chance of selling the rights for. I'd agree that BSI made a reasonable start to reviving a World Championship that had been run into the ground (in the World Final and early non-BSI SGP era), and credit should be given for getting the British GP at Millennium Stadium. However, the Millennium Stadium also came along at right time (not being available before 2000) and was desperate for events to pay off the huge building and operational costs (even now it's close to bankruptcy), so let's not get too carried away by the scale of the achievement. Similarly, whilst the sport is on television much more than it used to be, it was inevitable that with the rise in satellite and digital television and its need to fill its schedules, that cheap content from minority sports would be needed. For goodness sake, even my local kart club has some of its meetings shown on Men and Motors, so puts the 'achievement' of getting on the box into context. Scratch the surface a bit further as well, and with the odd exception, the series is going to much the same stadiums that the old World Championship did, playing to similiar-sized crowds, and paying its competitors much the same money. Neither has it greatly leveraged commercial sponsorship, which in reality isn't much above the "Bob's Motors" type of association you get down at your local track. I think the original BSI didn't get the returns it expected from the SGP, and that coupled with apparent other bad investments in the group meant it had to scale back on its ambitions with the result the SGP never really made the progress it might have. Unlike BSI, IMG would appear to be big enough to put more backing in the series, but the parent IMG(UK) suffered big losses on its own bad investments so probably has been told to keep things tight for the speedway part of the business which at least seems to turn a moderate profit. In terms of revenue, this has little more than doubled over 12 years and from more events, so when you take inflation into account, you can't really say the SGP has been anything more than a modest success in financial terms, and certainly not for the wider sport. Perhaps it's simply not possible to market a sport with high overheads that's only raced in a relative handful of countries, but I think it would be generous to put describe the SGP as achieving some sort of revolution in the sport. Getting back to the original topic, you couldn't expect any sort of analysis along these lines in the Star.

Yes, but that would not be difficult. I'm not convinced that the SGP has done for speedway what Ally Pally and the like has done for darts, or what Superleague has done for rugby.

Have they?

I'd agree that speedway would disappear further into obscurity without the SGP, but I don't think it's especially raised the game. It looks good in comparison to the rest of the speedway shambles, but that's a very low bar indeed and I don't think the SGP has really progressed the sport as it should. The Millennium Stadium round is clearly used as something of a showcase, but I think if you held a World Final there today you'd probably get a similar attendance. Beyond that, GP attendances are reasonable in Poland, but elsewhere not better than in the latter years of the World Finals. Mainstream media coverage is still virtually nil, and the list of sponsors basically seems to be tourist boards, local media and the companies of the host promoters. Monster was probably the first 'big' sponsor the series has had, but what they're actually paying is a big question. As for taking the sport to big cities, well BSI can reasonably point to Cardiff and Copenhagen and the recent addition of Stockholm (and Auckland perhaps), but that has to be offset against small obscure venues that would probably never have been considered for World Finals (although if you can go to Norden and Pocking then you can go anywhere). So on balance I don't think the improvements are actually so dramatic. Yes, it's a fair point the sport may well have declined further without the SGP, some revenue has been generated that may not have been there before, but neither do I think the sport has been revolutionised either. Finally, you can't compare the SGP and British speedway. The SGP is 12 events organised with the pick-of-the-dates and on the basis of getting the participating riders on the cheap. Even a single British track organises more meetings than that per season, but having to work around all sorts of constraints with dates and rider availability. They also have to pay the going rates for wages, put up with the vagaries of the weather (particularly early and late in the season), whilst also providing the opportunities for riders to come through the ranks.

I think Munich was reported as 50K which was probably exaggerated, but the stadium was fairly full (unlike Cardiff). You're also assuming the Cardiff (and other GP) figures aren't exaggerated as well, which many believe are. And others on here have also reported tickets being given away on the day for low prices.

I was in Munich and the stadium was fairly full. I think its capacity at the time was around 50K, so it's not unreasonable to assume it compared to if not exceeded Cardiff. As to how many actually paid is another issue, but then you could say the same about Cardiff. Yes, the track was rubbish but since when has a good track been a pre-requisite for GP either?

Not really. The Munich World Final the year before Bradford would have had a higher attendance than Cardiff. Demonstrating that if held a World Final in an attractive place rather than a field, then people would come.

And cut through your waffle and the point was that if Cardiff had been available for a a World Final then attendances may have been considerably more than for Bradford. Bradford was capacity limited and not a particularly attractive venue for the casual fan.

Bradford was about 24,000 which would be quite comparable with many of the GPs today. Wroclaw in 1992 was probably 25-30,000 as well. Perhaps the crowds fell because they were held in out-of-the-way unattractive venues, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that the World Final was dying. If Cardiff had been available for a World Final at the time, then I'm sure it could have attracted 30-40K as well. I don't suggest that we should return to the one-off World Final system, but when you cut through the hype of the SGP, the truth is that the attendances at many of the GPs are no better and in some cases worse than for even the latter World Finals. Bradford was about 24,000 which would be quite comparable with many of the GPs today. Wroclaw in 1992 was probably 25-30,000 as well. Perhaps the crowds fell because they were held in out-of-the-way unattractive venues, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that the World Final was dying. If Cardiff had been available for a World Final at the time, then I'm sure it could have attracted 30-40K as well. I don't suggest that we should return to the one-off World Final system, but when you cut through the hype of the SGP, the truth is that the attendances at many of the GPs are no better and in some cases worse than for even the latter World Finals. A 15% return is not terrible, bearing in mind that some of the expenses are with other companies in the IMG group. You can also consider at least half of the amount going to the FIM to be 'profit' as well. 2.5 million is quite small beer by the standards of some sports, but it's 2 million quid that's apparently not going into the sport.

From BSI's own published figures. In 2012, they recorded a profit of 1.6 million of turnover on 10 million, after apparently paying the FIM around 1.5 million for the commercial rights. So there's a surplus on operational costs of just over 3 million, split between the FIM and BSI. Bear in mind that other IMG companies also make various charges that will be deducted before profits are calculated, so it's clear who the main beneficiaries are. I'd imagine those costs are covered by the inscription fees. Of course, this is why it would be useful to get a breakdown on where all the money goes. I dug out the above information in a matter of minutes, so I can't believe it's so difficult to investigate. I don't suspect anything. In fact, the SGP finances appear to be fairly open and transparent if people care to look, but that doesn't entirely answer the question of what the FIM is doing with the 1.5 million quid it's making every year. Yes, maybe half goes on prize money, but what about the rest? That's the sort of thing that should be asked.

Well maybe, but are fans not interested to know where around 3 million quid a year from the GPs is going?

Goodness, how strange that fans should be curious about various aspects of the sport. For matter, why should we wish to read the ins and outs of riders' lives in the Speedway Star?

The government has made the silly rules because the public demands they do something about immigration (or migrant workers). The reality is that when you apply knee-jerk solutions to knee-jerk reactions, this is what you'll end up with. I'm not entirely convinced speedway riders should all be considered high-skill migrants anyway. I think it could be argued that British riders could fill many of the vacant positions, and speedway riders are certainly not essential to British industry. My own personal view is there should be freedom of movement between Australia/NZ and the UK anyway, but if people on the one hand want more restrictions, then I don't see any compelling reasons why speedway should be exempt.

Of course there's no legal obligation, but I do think it comes to certain sectors like sport, it's in the public interest to know what is and isn't being paid and who's taking a cut. Digging into FIFA by investigative journalists uncovered a litany of bribes paid to officials and millions embezzled at the cost of the grassroots of the sport, which ultimately led to prosecutions. Then there were all the bungs paid to managers and agents. I certainly wouldn't suggest anything like that is going on in speedway (not least because there's nothing like that sort of money floating around), but why shouldn't the public be told where all the money goes in the sport? Some people may not be interested, but that's up to them. It's not the same thing as asking someone about their earnings or the value of their house (although you can find out much of this information anyway). We're talking about companies here, most of whom ultimately have to produce public accounts anyway.

Well probably at least a million (net) per year to cover operating losses of the BEL tracks, but probably 1.5-2 million per year if you wanted to invest in the grassroots. Would be more than the previous deal. Those tractor production figures are looking impressive though...