mikebv

One of the major flaws is the failure to use these "grand gestures" for long term growth... Expecting a family to fork out over forty quid the week after they got something for much less, or even free, is the disconnect... I would suggest you need four or five visits to start to "follow" the sport, so these "specials" need to be used as a starting point for long term growth, not a "build it and they will come", game plan.. There should be constant communication with those who got the free tickets, with further special offers to keep them engaged... The IT world we live in is perfect for marketing to the right target population.. My old company would send you coupons if you went six weeks without using your loyalty card... Someone controlling attendance tracking at a Speedway Club would be worth their weight in gold... Kids' (and Adults), names and birthday details, sending Xmas cards to addresses, etc, etc, are absolute winners when it comes to keeping your name in the frame, and any free tickets shoukd only be given out with that info locked into your system.. A constant dialogue to get you attending by using promotional offers is very rewarding for growth...

Maybe with six teams the cut off dates could be delivered? Or five maybe? Or should we just have four to be on the safe side..??

2013?.... Did it work?

Sounds like a good old fashioned meeting... Plenty of needle, plenty of moaning, and plenty of atmosphere... Should sell the 2nd leg very well... More of the same there to keep the crowd involved...

Asking them to lay out circa £40 for mum and dad, (over £50 if sat down as the kid gets charged too), to watch something they know very little about, will always be the challenge.. Even more so on a school day during term time... Seems daft to have all those empty seats near bend four for so many meetings, when some cheap tickets/freebies, may engage some parents and kids to attimes.. And you don't need the same ones attending each week, just keep flooding the locale with cheap tickets... When I worked in marketing for a couple of years, doing a head office secondment, I was amazed at just how low freebies, or low price offers, via coupons, were redeemed... Around just 11℅ to 15% was the averaged/expected/budgeted for, take up... Glasgow are giving away 3000 tickets which should therefore see a redemption of 330 to 450 using industry numbers, which shows how "big" the clubs need to think when doing these trade driving ideas... Hope it works for them, and they have a plan to keep those newbies personally engaged to revisit several times enough to become "hooked" and see the full admission costs as VFM..

I like the idea of a "Super League", with maybe five rider teams? Could Glasgow and Poole be tempted to go into it? Them plus the current six would mean just 40 riders of say four point and above averages... Home and Away once, with top four play offs, and play downs if other clubs want to join the year after... Franchise Speedway, keep your spot or lose it... You can then run the same teams in a hybrid Championship/NDL level with the top riders missing... The big league, home and away once, and top six into the play offs, given the number of teams to keep the league interesting... 3rd v 6th, and 4th v 5th to qualify to the last four... First and Second then pick their opponents in order.. And then one "Super League" that you sell to the TV companies... (With no F***ing Guests in the Super League!.. Twenty quid for Super League, fifteen quid for the hybrid one....

Where would riders come from for any new tracks? Six teams seems to the maximum to be even semi competitive in the top tier... Andt seven, maybe eight, in the 2nd tier... All the tracks lost over the past few years, and still doubling up is fundamental to the sport...

When Poland decide Mondays and Thursdays are the best nights to run their Speedway on every week, then I think we will be ahead of the curve.... As Plymouth has shown, and I believe Leicester has shown in the past, running weekend Speedway delivers bigger crowds, even if riders are missing or of a lesser standard... Clubs need to target kids aged 4 - 11, like McDonald's do, as they know that the loss leader "Happy Meal" will get sold alongside the Adults getting profit making meals too... They also know that on Monday morning the kids who attended little Williams birthday party at McD's on the Friday evening, Saturday or Sunday, will be talking about it, and those who attended will be mithering their parents to have their parties there... And those who just heard about the party, but didn't attend, will be mithering their parents as well!! Flood local infant schools with free tickets for kids and reduced price tickets for their parents or guardians.. There may be some who attend now, but not many, so what you may lose is nothing compared to what could be gained... And just charge a tenner for the Adults, as the vast majority of tenners will be new money, not regulars getting in cheap... But. And this where "grand gestures" never work in isolation.... "Build it and they will come" doesn't work... You then need to keep these people coming at a scaled reduced price, until they get hooked and are prepared to pay full price... And you do that through constant communication via email and phone... Lets be clear though, running on a Monday or Thursday during school terms won't encourage those parents to attend, regardless of whether VFM or not... As for those older kids? Sponsor local football, cricket, rugby etc etc leagues... Attend the games with bikes, and marketing gazebo. Some places have ten games being played at once, meaning hundreds of kids and hundreds of parents.. The beauty for Speedway is you don't need thousands more to attend at each track, just hundreds... Even a very, very basic local marketing campaign will deliver that, for not much outlay, if the right market is targeted, and you keep in communication with them.. Or, alternatively, carry on doing exactly the same thing but expect it all to come good..

Had the dog at the vets.... But not interested in replying anyway.....

And it has done zero to to deliver an extra discernable level of punters in.. Like in the Sky years, the money pays for the top riders rather than help subsidise lower admission costs... Brum were quoted as having to fork out £15k from a home meeting to pay for BZ, which they clearly were not going to do/afford, however, if they did then that would have just brought more inflation to the overall costs of the rest, as the second and third HL's would have demanded more, with the SS's then also knocking on the door... TV has delivered very little as Promoters havent used that two hour free advert to paint a positive picture of their business... Instead we have cameras panning around "one man and his dog" crowd levels which does nothing to build a positive brand, and nothing to bring some FOMO to those watching at home.. Ironically, no TV would bring in bigger crowds given so many currently give TV matches a miss when they are meaningless play off matches, or when the weather is a bit dodgy....

When the sport was "successful" it had only the top riders as fully pro... The rest rode part time for very, very decent money when compared to their other job... With second strings earning more in one night than they earned in a week in their "main job"... Now we have pro juniors.... But we also have crowds one tenth of the days of when the sport was successful... And we also have promoters quite happy to indulge Poland and have their leagues lack credibility due to playing second fiddle to them.. We also have promoters happy to indulge riders when it comes to their own individual ambitions by simply running a meeting anyway and borrowing from elsewhere when these riders are unavailable... They even sign riders from Denmark who cannot race on Wednesdays..... For me, all the things many of us have regularly said as being ridiculous on here, have been allowed to actually become part of the fabric of the operating model, so I truly cannot see a way out in all honesty... It has been a slow inexorable death by a thousand (self inflicted) cuts... Three times major radical changes should have been made... 1. When the GP's started to impact domestic Speedway... 2. When Poland started to impact domestic Speedway... The sport should have built its own destiny, instead it fudged and appeased other organisations and riders, meaning the fans got pi$$ed off watching guestfesf after guestfest and voted with their feet... And the third time? Covid... What a chance for a reset, thousands of die hards and thousands of even more lapsed fans eager for the sport to start up again... And what did we get? Well, the current situation clearly shows the answer ..

Spot on comment about there being an appetite for Speedway... At the NSS there have been two good crowds this year, yesterday and the PCMM... One being ran on a BHM and the other being ran early in the season with a top class field.. If those who attended, me included, saw enough in the product to attend more regularly then 2000 plus crowds would be the norm... Running on a normal Monday simply restricts crowds, weekend is "leisure time".. Running several meetings as "meaningless", as the play off positions are set in stone from May, simply restricts crowds... And running meetings when you know (well in advance) that riders will be missing, but happily replacing them with competitor's employees, simply restricts crowds.. It costs me over fifty quid for me and my lad as he works PT and has much better things to spend his money on, meaning we attend three, maybe four times a season.. Get it down to thirty quid for us both and it would easily be double figure attendance for us both... Personally, given the Mickey Mouse operating model, neither of us care who wins (like many others who sporadically attend), as the credibility of the competitions is almost zero, but we do love watching the racing at the NSS as it can be breathtaking... As you say, that disconnect needs to be sorted... They could start by running meetings on the best night for the fans to attend in the highest numbers.. Run with less riders per team to make supply exceed demand for adhoc and longer term replacements, which then brings credibility.... And set an admission fee that reflects the standing of the sport in the UK, and the 15 mins or so of entertainment that is actually on offer... The core product is still very watchable, the nonsense surrounding it doesn't do it any favours...

My car is in front of the stand....

And lots of Aces fans too.... Perfect for a Sunday afternoon in the countryside at NDL level, so no issues with missing riders being elsewhere...

No.... Just running scared... The Ipswich "Devon Loch" Witches usually find a way to blow it.... I can see Hawkins doing a Kevin Keegan style meltdown when the pressure is on.. Not sure who I love to watch more when the TV zooms in when they are losing... Him or Stead....

Is it just yourself you are trying to convince...?

With only 500 attending, even with a winning team, you would still not be hitting a huge 100% increase... And, even if you did, that would still be only 1000.. The bottom line is, the people of Birmingham, like so many other major cities in the UK, are just not that interested in Speedway...

Like Mark Loram.... Malta's first World Champion.....

And nothing says more Mickey Mouse than a policy that allows teams to plan in meetings knowing riders will be missing and replace them from other teams, rather than running the meetings when the actual team can be there.. The guest system isnt a "necessary evil", as some term it, it is now a fundamental key part of the operating model.... A chance for some riders to earn more money, and a catch all safety net to complete the season, driven by the signing of riders who, knowingly, won't be available to represent the team..

Another major issue the sport has... In business, being "Brand Damaging" is avoided st all costs... In UK Speedway, it could be argued that to damage its brand isimply isnt possible, given the way it is ran has delivered a very low bar... "Any Speedway is better than no Speedway" appears the only mantra, hence four guests and RR is "perfectly acceptable" in the eyes of those in charge.. With the untold damage done to the sport further down the line, never for a moment considered it appears.... "Saving from themselves" might also be a good mantra to follow, as well meaning amateurs do their level best, but never learn about best practice, and how to deliver it...

Gerry Facenna in the Star this week talks about how the racing is paramount to the sports future success... As it brings the punters back... Preparing tracks just to win, and not to provide entertainment, is something he simply doesn't agree with... He must come on here looking at the ideas he has to improve his business.......

Excellent piece in the Speedway Star about the Brum closure... Nigel Tolley has put in two thirds of a million during his tenure... An incredible amount and he deserves great thanks from everyone who were able to keep attending... Crowds of 500 were the main issue and he said it costs £12-13k a match to run a home meeting... And then had the away costs in top! He said that having more UK based riders was vital for the sport, given the cost of flights, hotels, etc... Exactly what's been written in the letters pages of the Star for about three decades, and on here for 15 years or so...!!! If only promoters had realised that...! BZ wanted £7.5k a meeting so didn't get signed... A good interview with Brian Buck too, another who deserves great thanks for playing a huge part in the resurrection of the sport in Birmingham.. Another excellent publication this week from the Star team...

Are you Shovvy in disguise? Are you Shovvy in disguise?

As I have mentioned before... Just ask TR and CO why don't they just use the Abbey given their low projected numbers... Car parking too shouldn't be an issue using their crowd projections... A perfect sized stadium has been built if those numbers are correct .. So just use it...

Over 20,000 in attendance. Tickets bought in March for an October meeting to ensure you got your usual seats.. One rider from every team ensured at least 16 teams had fans there, some in big numbers... Dozens of coaches from around the country .. 100's of bikes lined up in the KL car park (hardly see a biker at Speedway nowadays).. Red shale gleaming under the lights and a crackling atmosphere.. As the night porter said to Georgie Best in the Savoy, when he entered his room with Champagne,on ice, tenners strewn all over the bed from the casino, and his girlfriend, (Miss World, Mary Stavin), relaxing on the bed ready for an evening with the great man .. "Where did it all go wrong?" ..😁