SCOTLAND1314

Someone may want to tell Eurosport :-) http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/speedway-hampel-wins-gp-opener-auckland-073036191.html A little glitch on the website

Liked today's Eurosport coverage, not least the commentary pairing. Johno head and shoulders above anyone else used to date. I don't know if it was my imagination but I thought some of the early racing picture coverage was a bit dodgy i.e. they seemed to have a bit of difficulty in getting more than one rider in shot and cutting between the various riders. Only a slight criticism and it did get better as the meeting progressed, I think.

Not the best GP ever but then again not the worst. Two or three good races and a few passes sprinkled throughout the meeting.

Nice effort from Woffinden. By the looks of things he may have got one of the fast engines he was hoping for.

Yes Scottish speedway needs a shot in the arm this year. Both promotions are making a great effort to improve their lot. I hope their efforts are rewarded. They both need to continue to strive throughout the season to keep selling the sport and improving. I do wonder though if there is scope to promote/advertise together? e.g. make a big thing of the Scottish Cup weekend this season (I believe we race on 6 and 8 Sept). Could they 'club together' some funds to have an advertising campaign to boost the crowd. Perhaps even with a fan event in between the two fixtures.. how about a fans night somewhere to watch the Krsko GP. The above is just an example. We both know that if one club club goes down the pan it's very difficult for the remaining club to stay alive. Thoughts?

Courtesy of Edinburgh Monarchs Speedway website http://www.edinburghmonarchs.co/news/article.asp?id=1271 Hopefully this is resolved quickly for all parties.

I'm Android also. Do you know if it is just a scoresheet? Or is it more than that? I guess I'm talking about a whole programme and some i.e. the links.

I loved the roar of the bike, the visit to the pits, the smell, following my favourite rider (fortunately he stayed with the club for a while), completing the programme, the cheering of the crowd. Nowadays the bike's are quieter, the pits can't be easily viewed (at most of the tracks I go to), favourite rider moves on pretty quickly, crowd is not as noisy... but I can still fill in my programme ;-) Just a thought could the club do an 'online' interactive programme? With the younger fan filling it in on their phone (or similar). With it having links to other speedway information/action for those quieter moments.

I suppose what I'm trying to illustrate is that there could well be a benefit to speedway by allowing betting at tracks as it may attract more younger fans (after all they've got easy enough access to betting as it stands) directly or indirectly, as in the same way a bar at the stadium may attract a few younger fans, currently. I don't think speedway should turn down any reasonable opportunity to attract more fans young or old. Personally I think the sport is slowly killing itself and has been for as long as I can remember. It needs a complete re-vamp not just in the way it tries to attract the younger fan.

And by the same token we'll be due to remove all our pubs and burger vans from stadia shortly. Nothing wrong with all of the above taken in moderation like I currently do.

I guess it comes down to the interpretation of 'younger' fans. I indicated younger fans would be 13 to 19. I know that when I was 18 plus there were lots of my mates that enjoyed a flutter and would go to the dog racing in order to partake of a decent night's entertainment and a flutter. Perhaps indirectly the adult that may have to take the kid along to the speedway could be encouraged to attend by the prospect of a flutter.

After reading those replies I think the term 'family sport' when used to describe speedway means 'it's not football'. Because football does attract wives, kids and other family members. In fact in my experience it attracts proportionately more kids and wives than speedway. I have heard bad language and seen a bit of fighting at speedway in the UK. And if you went to Poland you'd see bus loads of away fans being bused into an away pen and out again. Plus many fans that attend speedway also attend football amongst other sports. I just think speedway is no more a family sport than any other. Betting exists at many other sports grounds at which kids attend and it doesn't appear to cause them any problems in my experience.

I struggle with the term family sport even though I use it, but I don't really know what we mean by it. What do you mean by family sport?

This topic is quite a can of worms. The younger fans (the age range I refer to is 13 up to 19) need to hear about the sport? The sport individually and collectively needs to market itself better. Seems obvious but I've rarely seen any speedway advertised locally or nationally (and I know I'm not alone). We really don't know how many people would attend the sport if it were properly marketed. I appreciate individual clubs don't have lots of spare cash sloshing about right now however I'd urge a significant chunk of any future TV money (or other monies for that matter) to be set aside for marketing the sport nationally. Of course it may not be much but something is better than nothing. Over and above that the clubs need to do lots more themselves (which doesn't always need lots of cash), e.g. school visits, local gala days (or any large congregation of local people)... and do them all the time not just every now and again. What 'version' of the sport do we market? The sport currently tries to sell itself (on the very few adverts I've seen) in a schizophrenic fashion i.e. both family sport and 'sexy' exciting sport. It would be fairly safe to say it's not working. Like a few have suggested it needs to push the 'sexy', 'noisy', 'bad' side of the sport to encourage the younger fan. What self respecting younger fan would say '..I'm off to that family sport speedway tonight..' I think we know the answer. How to market to the younger fans? Again as has been said use the relatively cost effective mediums of Facebook, Twitter, Website etc. Last time I looked I'm sure a few clubs didn't even have a fully functioning website. Criminal. Having said all that I'm sure many promotions are terrified to target the younger fan for fear of driving away the existing fans (largely 55+). The speedway product. We know how good speedway can be but anytime I used to try and get my mates to attend (when I was a younger fan) they would simply state that it was a geeky sport with riders just going around in circles and whomever made the gate won. And the experience would involve standing about in a cold run down stadium for hours. And to be fair they had a point. So we have to make the whole experience memorable for the correct reasons. The GP's introduced a much faster, slicker and professional presentation of races but league speedway has yet to properly adopt this format. It needs to. On this point why is it a 2 minute warning? When was this time introduced? Can it be reduced to 60 or 90 seconds? Speedway is a colourful sport but many of the stadia are drab unwelcoming places - the surroundings need to be clean and colourful and welcoming. Presenters need to do more to generate a bit of atmosphere inside stadia. Build up the importance of matches, races .. Create characters and rivalries ... Yes to bookies. Although there may need to be a bit of a think re how logistically this can work inside the stadium if we are making the racing presentation slicker. I'm glad to hear that more clubs are opening up the pits areas for fans to walk about. I used to love watching the pits area prior to a match and even during it. But many stadia don't have great pit viewing facilities. There is countless other stuff to chat through on this topic but I thought I'd chuck in my tuppence worth.

Did the android/iphone app cost much to build and design? What is the app called?

I've no idea what the work permit rules are in this instance. However, Sam did ride in the Aussie Senior Solos Championship this year.

Courtesy of Edinburgh Speedway Website http://www.edinburghmonarchs.co/news/article.asp?id=1268

Thanks for the video, I like the time lapsed stuff.

Thanks.

Are the new mufflers being used in the GP? That may have a big influence on where the title goes. For my money whoever beats Nicki Pedersen will win the title. I think the rounds will be very competitive and I wouldn't be surprised to see lots of different individual GP winners, again. Over half the field have already won a GP!! Ward and Iversen could win a round or two also. A high quality field.

Courtesy of Edinburgh Monarchs Website http://www.edinburghmonarchs.co/news/article.asp?id=1260 Hats off to the promotion for listening to the fans and taking action to attract the younger fan whilst also thinking of the existing fans. Good stuff. Let's hope it does the trick and helps bring in more supporters.

What will Armando's duties entail?

The Home Highlights DVD night and Away Highlights DVD night have been close season events for a great many years now and are very well attended. Matty should do a decent job for Berwick.

Thanks to all that put on the Edinburgh Monarchs Away Matches DVD Night last night. Very enjoyable. Great to see such a large crowd as well, 200+?

I wouldn't want to be a promoter as no matter what you do you'll get people complaining of change or lack of change. If this change goes ahead I would imagine a lot of work will be involved in making it work. I praise the promotion for trying to change their lot.