Steve Shovlar

Each club receive £13,000 a year. Not enough to cover the loss of punters for a single meeting let alone multiple meetings.

Over your childish strop yet Craig? What on earth does an oppo rider expect when he throws his toys out of his pram in front of the home crowd? It was comedy gold the crowd could see he wasn’thurt as it was a simple slide off and he got straight up.

Cook was on a mission to make a complete and utter dick of himself last night and he succeeded with aplomb. You will always get a few cheering when an opposition rider slides off, but his antics during the meeting with his massive roller followed by two tape exclusions were instant karma. The huge strop he threw on track gave the crowd the ideal opportunity to let out a loud cheer. Judging by his twitter post he was still in a strop on his long journey home. What a pillock !

Yes. We are now in a playoff berth. Be afraid. Be very afraid........

Shame Belle Vue were so outclassed. Need two teams to make a meeting. Only one turned up.

Has to be said. Belle Vue were a complete shambles tonight. Fricke had his best meeting at Poole and was ably assisted by Scott Nicholls who tried in all his heats, but the rest of the aces were a bit of a joke, topped off by the antics of Craig Cook who was determined all night to jump the starts. In his second ride he got a monster roller and the crowd was stunned he got away with it. It wasn’t even close. The crowd made their feelings known to the ref. In his next ride Cook tried it again but went through the tapes. And then to top it off, in his next he did it again. He chased after the Poole riders but over “cooked” it on the last lap and slid into the fence. He tried to drag his bike out but then had a tantrum. That was the last we saw of him. Hope he isn’t injured but frankly a ridiculous performance. The Belle Vue reserves were completely out of their depth and would have scored a minimum but for Jackobsens back wheel to come loose on the last lap and rub bringing him to a near halt off the last bend, allowing Etheridge through. I was looking forward to seeing Dan Bewley but was very disappointed. Did nothing all night. For Poole it was back to the form of against Kings Lynn. Solid all the way through. Threw away points along the way but the result was never in doubt allowing Middlo to thank Covatti for an excellent guest performance by giving him heat 15. Pirate fans might be a bit worried tonight after Kacsper took a nasty fall and withdrew from the meeting after trying to go around the outside of Fricke. Onwards and upwards for Pirates who looked the part tonight.

I said earlier bt pay the hosting club £3000 to televise the meeting. I was wrong. BT pay the hosting club nothing. Zip. Nada. Ziltch.

No I said no Tungate strengthens Aces as has been proved in Nicholls heat where he missed out on a heat win by half a wheel. Garrity hasn’t ridden here for years. Doubt he would have done much. Jackobsen looked very impressive in heat 2 rerun where all four piled up onfirst bend. Oh, and Cooks just got away the monster rollers of all monster rollers! Crowd have let their feelings known.

BT meetings don’t attract more fans to tracks and bt don’t pay any proper money for the meetings. Rather speedway took the money generated by subscriptions than bt who get profit for nothing.

Tungate averages 6-7 points at Poole. Nicholls normally does better at Wimborne Road.

Linus riding far better than Grazonek. Nicholls certainly strengthens Belle Vue at Poole. A fixture. Rohan Tungate- R, 2, 0, 1=3 A fixture. 5. Scott Nicholls 3, 3, 2, 3, 2' = 13+1 Swings the balance to Belle Vue.

Yes there’s a lot more to it than that. For starters just because it’s streamed doesn’t mean you have to watch it on a laptop, ipad or anything in between. I watch internet streamed Polish speedway on a sunday afternoon in HD on a 55 inch TV. You can either do this directly through a smart tv, or you could use a laptop or ipad, or iphone, or android phone, to stream via Google Chromecast for a 30 quid outlay. I use Chromecast to watch youtube on tv. All extremely simple to use.

Two Poles at reserve? Tungate is not good at Poole. Has he ever had a really good meeting? Nicholls carries far more threat.

What money? £3000 doesn’t go anywhere near covering the shortfall left by stayaway fans watching on the box. The experiment of charging a tenner never worked either as clubs didn’t make up the shortfall with fans coming in.

I am also a fan of broadcast speedway. I like the coverage on BT as I enjoyed the coverage previously on Sky. But these multi billion pound companies should not be dictating that they can have British speedway for nothing. By doing so we have now seen the collapse of one club and many others are struggling. If they want the product on their screens they should darn well pay for it. They pay millions of pounds per football match. Crystal Palace v WBA costs something like 9.3 million to screen. 9.3 million for a whole season of speedway would be good vfm. And yet they pay a club 3000 pounds to screen a live speedway meeting which takes up similar air time. Even if the excuse that more people watch the football, how many £3000 go into £9.3 million? There isn’t THAT many more fans watching (x3,100) Ten times more perhaps.

But so what? BT are the ones to benefit, not speedway. They have a unique product, and they can sell advertising. By all accounts viewing figures are favourable. So a win for them. What does speedway get out of it? Lower gates at the televised meeting. Time for speedway to take control of their product and make some money through streaming. Other sports do it alreading including ice hockey. If it works for them there’s no reason why it can’t bring money into uk clubs.

Having incorrect captions is down to their crew, not the equipment. No, the standard will not be “broadcast quality”. Having broadcast quality would be overkill for an online stream. Subscribers would expect, “good enough” but wouldn’t expect broadcast quality with fancy graphics and Pearson and Tatum. They could have a good dvd commentator like the guy from Belle Vue. Plus a guy doing interviews from a fixed position in the pits. Four cameras would do a decent job. BT bring nothing to the sport. They pay nothing and take away fans from the stadium. No benefits. Unless they are prepared to pay a good price the contract should be terminated imo.

Hearing a statement is due any day. Bad news. The cackers have had the prefab stands away to the scrappers. Osborne, with sad look on face, says there’s no more to be said and is offering a couple of tins of b&q paint for the back straight bogs. ’I received a call this morning, informing me that the stands have vanished, said a distraught Osborne. ‘I immediately headed over to the storage in South Wales, and discovered all our stands, which were about to be shipped down the M4 to Blunsdon, had mysteriously disappeared. We are disappointed. We will now have to start from scratch and unfortunately this will lead to a lengthy delay before any work gets underway’.

Not even half of one of those stacks. We are not talking broadcast setup. No cafe bus. No producer, scaffolder, satellite links etc. really is cheap to do. Sabmar in Poland do exactly this. If you have seen their internet broadcasts you will see what can be done on a budget and its free from them. The advertising pays for everything.

Much, much cheaper than you would think. There’s a lot of companies manufacturing completely affordable equipment. Several thousand would have a very pro setup. The studio mixer is a laptop. A quality internet connection is the main requirement but nearly everywhere has fibre broadband nowdays. Certainly good enough for this. Any of the video boys could have a setup running in no time. All revenue to speedway for minimal outlay plus wages for the guys.

Fair enough the price I gave was just an opinion. Didn’t think £2.50 a meeting was too expensive.

The deal that the BSPA have with BT is not worth it. A few promoters argued this at the time and I was one who thought it was imperative that speedway in the UK had a tv deal. Now I have changed my mind and believe BSPA should pull out of the deal and get a streaming channel up and running for next season. The BT deal brings in no money. In fact it costs clubs as the hosting club loses revenue when BT are in town. Unless BT come in with a deal similar to what Sky were paying, then time to say goodbye. In its place, a monthly subscription to a streaming service. £20 a month for 2 live meetings a week, one from the Prem and one from the Championship, as well as behind the scenes shows, interviews, q&a sessions live where fans can ask questions to riders/promoters etc, which are being produced by companies such as speedway portal. The money is then divided up between clubs. This will bring in far more than BT are offering. Promoters may think they would lose money as fans would watch online and not attend. But I wouldn't’ attend Belle Vue v Swindon but would pay a subscription to watch it. And then clubs would benefit. There would be no problem having video companies do the streaming. I bet Pete Ballinger or Speedway Portal would be keen as mustard to get the chance. Thoughts?

Great meeting. Thought Leszno had that sewn up. What do I know. Great comeback.

1.Frederik Jakobsen - 1,1,0,1,1 = 4

Never rode over here. Belle Vue in the 90th anniversary, that’s about it. Rode at the Poole P&P in March. Looked quite good.