Kevin Meynell

BFD, the bottom line is that whilst the national leagues (and I'm not just referring to the British leagues here) provide the riders' bread-and-butter, it's simply unacceptable to allow a competition organised for private benefit to ride roughshod over their businesses. The bottom line is that riders could not make a living from the SGP alone, and it's the national leagues who develop and pay the bulk of the rider wages. I know Pommy-bashing is a national pastime in Oz, and you no doubt see things differently because you don't get to see the top riders that often. However, without the national leagues there would be no professional riders to see at all. Its all very saying the BEL should go to one or two midweek nights, but it's proved not to pay for all but a handful of tracks. How many Aussies would front-up on cold Tuesday or Wednesdays to watch meetings, knowing they have to go to work the next day? Not many I suspect. At the moment, the GP hasn't really affected the Polish and Swedish leagues too much, but if it expands further, it will undoubtedly start running into conflicts with the Polish league because GPs reserve the following Sunday in case of rainoffs. Given that there is far more interest in league racing than the SGP in Poland, I don't imagine they'll be too happy when riders starting missing meetings there. It really doesn't come down to 'where's a good place for a GP', but where a local mug.. errr, promoter can be found to take the financial risk. Last I heard, the local promoter had to pay USD 50K to BSI for the privilege of hosting a GP (and apparently originally wanted to extort USD 100K, but had to lower their demands), and only got to keep the gate receipts, programme sales, and advertising from two boards on the infield. BSI kept all the television and sponsorship money, and took none of the financial risk of the staging the event. I think you'll find that's why there haven't been many willing takers up until now, and the experience of the guy promoting the Aussie GP probably hasn't provided much encouragement to others either. I suspect the GPs in the smaller venues make heavy losses, but are subsidised through the fund-raising activities of the staging clubs. Whether one thinks it's acceptable for grassroots tracks to subsidise multi-millionaires is perhaps a topic for another time.

It has perhaps prevented speedway from completely sinking below the radar, but I would certainly argue that it hasn't benefitted domestic speedway in any practical way. I'd wager that average attendances are now significantly lower than before BSI got involved in speedway, and whilst I certainly wouldn't lay this downturn all at their door, they have certainly not contributed to any material improvement at the domestic level. Some will argue that BSI were responsible for getting the BEL on television, and consequently getting some money from Sky. However, aside from the fact that the BSPA allegedly originally had to pay Sky to show speedway, the money has arguably only propped-up an ailing competition and allowed tough decisions to be put-off. That was more to do with introduction of the more cost-effective BPL (as a second division) in 1997, and arguably the BCL a year-or-two earlier. The spiralling costs of the 'big' BPL and BL2 before it had driven several tracks out of business, but the introduction of a three-tier structure provided more options. I think you'll find most of the new tracks started-up in the 1997-2000 period, before BSI got involved in the sport.

That's nothing to do with the SGP though, which pays a relative pittance by comparison. Aside from the fact that Britain shouldn't bankrupt ourselves trying to pay wages we can't afford, how on earth are we expected to improve the situation whilst the SGP takes prime racenights away from the league? The Russians are subsidised by dodgy oil money, the Poles race on Sundays which is the traditional day for sport in Catholic countries, and for some reason, midweek dates happen to work well in Sweden. The situations are entirely different. In cricket and rugby union, internationals generate most of the money which is distributed downwards to the clubs. In fact in cricket, there would be no professional domestic competitions without the internationals. More specifically though, international competitions are run by the national authorities for the benefit of their member clubs. Speedway is completely the opposite because the riders make their living in the national leagues, not from the supposed top-level of competition (i.e. the SGP). In fact, the SGP couldn't exist without the national leagues. Moreover, the SGP is run by IMG/BSI for the benefit of itself. The profits are not reinvested in domestic speedway, or to compensate tracks for the loss of revenue they incur through losing their prime race days, but instead go into private pockets. The (relatively small) licence fees they pay to the FIM for the SGP rights vanish into the FIM coffers (and were allegedly used to pay-out the prize money in the past) and certainly do not appear to filter back to speedway. BTW - Football is a slightly unusual situation because internationals have traditionally been used to generate money for grassroots football, rather than for the professional clubs. For many years this was considered an acceptable compromise, but now as everyone has got more greedy, the clubs have indeed started to challenge the concept of providing their players free-of-charge for no direct benefit to themselves. The competitions that generate the most revenue for the sport should take priority. Normally that will be the top-level, but this is not the case in speedway. I personally would have little objection to the SGP if it were collectively run by the major professional leagues, with the profits going back to their member tracks. I think it's completely unacceptable for a private organisation to be benefiting from a premier competition without returning anything to the sport. I say good luck to John Postlethwaite for seeing the opportunity and turning it into a nice little earner for himself, but that doesn't change the fact that the major national leagues should never have allowed the SGP to be relinquished in the first place.

That's exactly my point. I'm sure it's great for the riders, but there I was thinking they were the employees rather than the employers. The bottom line is surely about ensuring the sport can pay it's way, which ultimately means running the sport for the benefit of the spectators (and possibly sponsors) rather than the riders. I'm not sure which promoters are actually saying what a good thing the SGP is, but given the promotional abilities of many of the current shower, I'm not sure their views are especially valid. And why should the national leagues bend over backwards for the SGP? They're the ones that provide the riders' bread-and-butter (see how many riders would be prepared to only ride in the SGP if the leagues called their bluff), yet the SGP has choice of plum dates and race-days and the leagues have absolutely no say in the matter. Why should the British leagues be forced to run on less lucrative midweek dates, when they're the ones that develop and employ many of the riders that the SGP uses, only for IMG/BSI to skim-off the cream. As for 'getting better sponsorship', well what serious sponsor is going to want to get involved with a competition where the main competitors go missing every couple of weeks, and are replaced with guests of varying quality? It has nothing to do with paying competitive wages either, because the riders undoubtedly earn far more from the BEL over season already. The problem is that the BSPA have allowed the riders to have their cake and eat it (i.e. participate in the SGP regardless of the consequences to domestic fixtures).

Well that's very nice, but you can only have such meetings in such stadiums whilst there is an underlying infrastructure to support it. The problem is that the SGPs are parasitic rather than complementary, so may end-up killing the league(s) that provide and mostly finance the riders who ride in the competition. In addition, are you happy to watch just one meeting per season in the UK? No-one is suggesting that the British leagues are a wonder of organisation, but that could be fixed regardless of the SGP. As to the statement that the skill level is far far above what was seen in days gone by, well I'm afraid that's utter nonsense. With the exception of a handful of riders, the standard of the lineup in current SGP is very much below those of World Finals in the past. Zagar, Pedersen and Lindback - give me a break. Really? So why are attendances so absymal in Britain these days? How many extra fans does the SGP attract to regular league racing? Take away the prestige round at Millenium Stadium from the SGP (which always seems to have a suspiciously round attendance of 40,000), and what do you have? Five of the GPs had sub-10,000 attendances last season (and during the previous seasons) which is no better than the pre-BSI GPs. Wroclaw and Bydgoszcz had reasonable attendances (at 24,500 and 17,000 respectively), but so did the pre-BSI GPs and World Finals held in Poland. That leaves the Copenhagen GP which drew a respectable 24,892 fans in a decent stadium. But again, let's put this in perspective - the latter World Finals in Munich, Bradford and Gothenburg still managed more. The trouble is that the rest of speedway was so bad, that it made BSI look good. More to the point, they only have to organise a handful of meetings each season for which they are free to choose the optimal dates. In addition, they can also choose any riders they please, without compensation to the tracks that originally developed the riders and who rely on them for their own businesses, whilst at the same time paying prize money that by itself would not provide the riders with a living wage. By contrast, it is much harder to run weekly speedway where you don't hold all the aces, and that is where promoters must really earn their corn.

Some might also describe that as being a lottery.

That's as maybe, but perhaps the rest of speedway isn't worth watching because of the malign influence of the SGP? To be honest though, I don't really blame the SGP for the ills of speedway, because there were problems long before it came along. However, I would dispute the argument that the SGP has been good for the sport. At the end of the day, I don't really see the SGP as being speedway as we know it. Speedway for me is about weekly (or fortnightly) team racing, where you have an entity to identify with year-after-year. Riders come-and-go, but the teams remain (well mostly ). By contrast, I have no interest in watching the same 16 riders over-and-over again ad-infinitum. I can't identify any of them unless they happen to be riding for my team, so if it came down to the SGP or no speedway at all, I think I'd certainly be lost to the sport.

No they haven't been. They've very good for John Postlethwaite (and good luck to him), but the SGP has done sod all for the rest of speedway. Sure, speedway wasn't in great shape before BSI came along, but neither have BSI worked any special miracles when you scratch the surface. Furthermore, it only makes money because it's parasitically able to utilise everyone else's assets for almost free. The disaster of BSI's involvement in Reading show the reality of their promotional ability. Interesting that JP has kept a low profile since selling-out. The SGP would appear to be having diminishing returns, and IMG may find it harder to make money than they anticipated. In addition, if they try to expand the series further, they will undoubtedly start coming into conflict with Poland which is unlikely to want their own league programme disrupted.

King's Lynn is further north than both places, unless you mean it's lower in the sense of elevation. Regionalised leagues would cause more problems than they solve, for precisely the above reason. The teams on the edges of the regions (particularly the northern region) would still end-up with umpteen long trips and potentially no local derbies. The amount of money saved on travel would be minimal, and the issues of travelling fans is somewhat irrelevant are you're lucky to get a few tens of away fans at any meeting these days. The idea is just a non-starter, even if you ignore the problems of combining BEL and BPL tracks. Such a system would only work if you had regionalised conferences where you had more meetings against other teams in your region, but still rode against teams from the other conference as well.

The stadium has finally realised that athletics tracks are a waste of space then?

Surely penalising an already understrength team? Sounds more expensive than simply bringing back tactical subs.

] I'll laugh if Kroner, Tomicek and Kyle Legault qualify from this meeting.

Sounds more like a convenient excuse to me, as GPs were previously held in stadiums without a roof. I suspect Parken is too expensive and doesn't draw big enough crowds to justify holding a GP there.

Isn't it usual for one of the FIM Jury members at such meetings to be a delegate of the local federation?

If there were radical changes, I'd guess a more likely line-up for top-flight might be the current 10 BEL tracks, plus Oxford, King's Lynn, Sheffield and Birmingham. The remaining 12 BPL tracks might be joined by Plymouth, Scunthorpe and Weymouth (and possibly Exeter). What kind of crowds are Workington and Redcar getting these days? Perhaps they might be candidates for the top flight as well. I'd guess there would still need to be some sort of Conference League involving Buxton, Sittingbourne, Boston and BEL/BPL second teams. A 14-team BEL would mean 26 league matches, and probably 12 more league cup matches (2 groups of 7), for a total of 38. A 16-team BPL would mean 30 league matches, and probably 6 more league cup matches (4 groups of 4) for a total of 36. Then there's the various KOC and 'playoff' matches to factor in as necessary.

Although the two most successful US leagues are just called the 'American League' and 'National League'. For that matter 'National Football League', 'National Basketball Assocation' and 'National Hockey League' are pretty mundane. It's only 'Major League Soccer' that has any sort of superlative in its name, which is ironic considering how 'unmajor' that league actually is.

I think you just need to couch it in terms of "you must be available for every British fixture". The issue is more the number of times riders are competing in other countries (and when), rather than the number of countries they compete in. For example, riders might just be riding in the Italian and German leagues which only have a handful of fixtures that are ridden on Sundays.

I think the sport experienced a bit of a mini-revival for the couple of years the single league was in operation, which demonstrates that variety is preferable to supposed quality. Unfortunately, the league proved too expensive for some of the smaller tracks who ended-up closing, or who would have closed had it continued. Of course, the original BPL was still pitched as a league featuring all (or most of) the top riders, but the current BEL is in a much more precarious state. Clearly one big league still wouldn't be viable, but there are 10 more tracks now, so a two league structure isn't out of the question. The main issue is whether the BEL is prepared to 'lower' its standards to make it viable for 4 or 5 current BPL teams to move-up.

I'd imagine it would entail running the BEL (or top league) at a level closer to the BPL. Perhaps something akin to the level of the BPL circa 1995/96.

They would take some sort of international agreement, and I doubt that will happen. However, there's no doubt the Elite League needs to cut costs, so some of the top riders will have to go. Elite and Premier are silly meaningless superlatives anyway. I can understand why you might not want to use Division 1 and 2 when they're effectively separate leagues, but what's wrong with 'League One' and 'League Two', or even 'British League' and 'National League'?

I guess you could still run a third division for second teams, or teams without tracks of their own. Exceptionally you could allow marginal standalone tracks such as Buxton and Sittingbourne to join as well. Even without Buxton, Sittingbourne and Boston, there could still be two leagues of 14 and 15 tracks respectively (16 if Exeter returned).

Why is that not 'family oriented'? To be honest, I also much prefer the more tasteful 'tapes tarts' to the completely superficial 'Page 3 model' types that promoters used to book in the past.

To be fair, the 'fiddling about and bright ideas' came about because the previous laissez-faire situation ended-up being unsustainable and the sport nearly went under. You could equally say that rider control and other innovations led to another 'golden era' during the late-1960s and early-1970s. I would hesitate to use football as an example of how to run a sport well. Most football clubs only survive through continued injections of finance from wealthy benefactors. It just about works in football because there are enough mugs following football who are prepared to throw their money away, but speedway has nothing like the patronage of that sport. More to the point, a financial free-for-all has resulting in 3 or 4 teams dominating, with the rest making-up the numbers. Football might draw the crowds for now, but it's becoming a tedious spectacle.

No, and no.

Well, I could give you the 'blue sky' vision, or the more mundane vision which I've already offered. Unfortunately, the 'blue sky' vision would require the cooperation of several groups across several countries, so I suspect it'll never happen. Firstly, the major speedway leagues (Britain, Poland, Sweden and Denmark) should form a G14-type organisation (let's call it S14), to coordinate their national league competitions, agree which riders should ride where, and act as an powerful interest group to counterbalance the FIM. Eventually though, it should move towards being an organisation that runs its own competitions. The top teams in each country should eventually move towards forming a 12-16 team European League (run by 'S14'), in which the top riders should compete exclusively. This could either take the form of a monolithic league, or a conference-type system based on the existing national leagues but with international fixtures. It might be possible for 'S14' to peacefully co-exist within the FIM, but it should look to taking control of the SGP which would be run for the benefit of its member tracks, not a private company. If ways could not be found for the FIM to handover the rights under its own banner, then 'S14' should breakaway from the FIM and establish its own GP series and World Cup. Without any of the top riders, the 'official' SGP and SWC would soon cease to be viable. With respect to Britain, the remaining tracks should be organised into a couple of leagues of (say) 12-14 teams each. Without the four or five 'big' tracks from the BEL, the remaining teams might join with the top BPL teams to form a more financially viable (for the BEL teams) Division 1, perhaps pitched slightly higher than the current BPL. The rest of the BPL teams plus the standalone BCL teams might then form a Division 2 pitched around a similar standard to the current BCL. With respect to things that might improve the spectacle of the sport, priority must be given to reducing rainoffs. I've long thought that roofs that cover both the terraces and the track, but which leave the centre green uncovered, are the way forward in terms of spectator comfort and preventing rainoffs. The speed skating stadiums used at places like Assen (where ice speedway is also held) provide ideal examples for this, and I don't think they're vastly expensive to construct (although still expensive for speedway). Perhaps some consideration also needs to be given to developing electric or fuel-cell powered bikes. I realise a lot of traditionalists wouldn't like this, but in the days of noise and other environmental regulations, I think quieter, cleaner bikes definitely need to be investigated.