RobMcCaffery

Sadly I doubt you'll get your money back. These streams provided by Kodi add-ons are notoriously unreliable and prone to disappearing, with replacements popping up in due course. Sometimes developers lose interest or are caught by the copyright holders. Are you able to update your box by changing the add-ons? If not, you've been truly 'had'.

They bring in some, just far from enough, sadly.

If I could I would watch speedway live almost every night of the week and have very happy memories of when I could do so - and did, and I was paying at the gate, long before I worked in the sport! Sadly, ill-health and the cost of travel and admission today precludes such delights and I have to rely on TV coverage instead most of the time. Thanks for the 'couch potato' jibe - it's a great comfort. I presume you pay at the gate as well for your fun? Anyway, regarding Poland, I don't have any jealousy regarding a version of the sport that needs to segregate its crowds like football does here. I find it fascinating to observe but not to my taste. Others thrive in that kind of atmosphere. I saw enough of the poison in football. I'd rather have a British match, even with all of its problems, if only to know I'm (normally) in a safe, friendly environment where the rivalry doesn't usually turn nasty. Each to their own. The message surely is clear though that British and Polish speedway are going to have serious problems coexisting, especially the Poles are now ';turning the screw'. Whatever the rights and wrongs and who's to blame I see something I love being choked to death and its distressing to see some Brits gloating over this.

Back in the seventies when Britain was running two leagues with nearly forty tracks, the upper league tracking almost every top rider in the world, and a Wembley World Final every three years that there were jealous eyes outside, wanting to see it fall, so they could instead have the benefits. Well we saw the old World Championship 'nibbled away' at with rounds and even the final being allocated to totally unsuitable venues as these forces started to use their political clout. They ate away at the system until they'd brought it down to their own level - amateur events on Sunday afternoons in front of relatively small crowds. The rot set in at Norden and took hold. Without being able to give regular bookings to Wembley we lost it. Eventually the World Final was small enough for there to be a need for several of them a season. The Grands Prix would always damage British speedway with its heavy reliance on Friday and Saturday nights. Adding more and more rounds and now the emergence of One Sport's events have top level speedway in Britain virtually at death's door. Yes the BSPA made serious mistakes. Yes the BSPA were arrogant. Well, you've got your revenge. You've all got your pieces of a shrunken pie. You have the top riders and control. Well, until the money runs out. Cracks are showing in both Poland and Sweden. Riders will one day envy their predecessors who could get almost daily fixtures in Britain. All the talk has been about expanding the sport, but in reality who has benefitted from all of this bar Poland?

I agree that Ted Sear was one of the best. As for your comment about me I really couldn't give a dam. Every job I did in speedway I did because someone asked me too, including the TV work. I was a fan trying to do the best job for the sport I cared for and the team I loved. I must say that people like you have almost killed those loves - they've certainly spoiled it badly, which I suppose will give you twisted pleasure. You insult everything about Ron's efforts to keep the Rockets going. Being on the sidelines I suppose you can't be expected to know much apart from terrace gossip. What you omit to mention is that we had some truly awful 'supporters'like yourself. The wonder is that you still turn up. Perhaps it's just some twisted desire to 'poison the well'? I did my stint on the terraces at Rayleigh and Rye House for nearly twenty years before I held a mic at the track. Thankfully some appreciated my efforts and those of Ron. You don't. Who cares? Some try to achieve something and some just stand by and whinge pathetically. I'd rather be in the former group. Anyway, my chief mistake at Rye House was assuming I was talking to an intelligent audience who gave a damn about the Rockets. Clearly in quite a few cases, especially yours I was wrong. Some of you think you can just insult people's efforts in the safety (cowardice) of forum anonymity. You seem to think that we're not allowed to respond. You're wrong.

I was merely answering questions. Now, regarding this one, last season none of the add-ons that I have installed offered links to Polish coverage with just a tiny handful offering a direct link to NSport+. Apart from one very brief spell all links failed. I use add-ons frequently to watch international TV, not just speedway and football, mainly out of curiosity top see how various countries make TV (the Alpine folk singing on an obscure French provincial channel being one highlight - although brief!) and Polish links tend to be less frequent and less reliable than those to the major European nations such as Germany and France. Many of those streaming via Kodi are using it as an addition to their activities on the web, accessed via web browsers, such as cricfree and mama HD. Kodi is a more stable platform although the whole thing is far from stable. Regarding Andy's point about needing equipment like an expensive Android box to watch Kodi on a TV, I find using a cheap (£30) Chromecast usb stick does the job fine if I want to watch the output on a TV. Cabling would do the same job if I wanted to. Devices like Android boxes sell on the concept of offering something for nothing - once you've paid that initial cost, and hoping the buyer doesn't realise he could do it for himself far more cheaply. Returning the thread back on topic, has anyone heard anything about Swedish speedway being picked-up by anyone yet?

Yes, and I've seen Premier League Pass on the Operation Robocop add-on on Kodi. Superb HD coverage of every premiership game and £100 cheaper than an Android box.

Kodi is free as are the add-ons that allow reception of these channels. £100 is a complete rip-off. What mustn't be lost sight of is that much of the programming available via Kodi is also available via a straightforward web browsers on Windows. Kodi was originally developed as a media browser for X-Box, I believe. What also has to be understood and accepted is that many of the links provided are erratic, often do not work at all and frequently go offline abruptly. A few add-ons give access to NSport+ in Poland but again they are more usually not working than they are. While picture quality can sometimes be very good, even if you are receiving an HD channel the pictures won't actually be HD. By the time they've been processed and fed to the net the picture quality often deteriorates significantly. Overall, this undermines the business model of pay-TV and the extortionate prices charged to put sports agents and their clients in a life of luxury. Sadly though it also undermines the ability of sports like speedway to get life-saving subsidy.

That was a rarity. No wonder it's now gone.

I've checked the Google Play Store and can't find such an app. It must be well-hidden. There are ways to watch BT Sport, or indeed any other pay-TV sports channel online, of equally dubious origin and legality (on the part of the sender, not the viewer) and there are apps that say they can do that, but not by the name quoted. Sky and BT are not allowed to show 3pm Saturday kick-offs but all premiership games are shown overseas and there are various ways to access such channels. If the poster has found such an app it's very unlikely to show full HD. Anyway, back to the speedway.

It's not about a 'pc brigade', it's about using a brain to realise that the confederate flag is a universally-recognised sign of racism and it was stupid and irrelevant tom use it on a British speedway race-jacket - in Oxford in 1972, White City in 1976 and Somerset now. It's a matter of sensitivity and intelligence. Thankfully the Somerset promotion have it but it's no surprise that members of the BSF can only see fit to ridicule and crawl behind the 'pc' defence. Pathetic.

Likewise might Premier Sports be interested in resuming their taking of the feed in the UK and Ireland?

I certainly don't remember even seeing your post let alone criticising it. In any case this is about principles, not your pride.

Zenmate is free. I bet they get Poles complaining about having to pay out for extra subscriptions........

I think we have to accept that ukmartin is totally blinkered and obsessive when it comes to Polish speedway matters. If we just accept all is perfect perhaps we can return to a sane discussion of matters on track, or at least the surviving tracks rather than the juvenile "My choice of speedway's better than yours"? Whatever OneSport are doing, I think we can be certain that they're doing it for the benefit of no-one other than themselves. The international fixture list is cluttered enough already.

It is of course a wyvern, not a dragon and is a commonplace emblem in the county so much more relevant than the second-hand use of the Oxford/White City Rebels design. It's great to see a promotion using intelligence over the use of a questionable design as the confederate flag, widely recognised as the symbol of racism and totally irrelevant to Somerset. Of course this will be irrelevant to many, as we have seen in this forum thread and will be ridiculed by the ill-informed but there will be plenty who respect this little piece of intelligence. Success is often down to attending to the minor details.It's good to see some in speedway can see the bigger picture.

The EL ceased to be viable from the point where riders could make far more money racing in the GP and Poland at weekends, plus a few 'extras' in Sweden and Denmark rather than up to six days a week in Britain. It's taken far too long for the BSPA to realise this. British speedway needs to stop kidding itself, rebuild from the ground up, not top down and by developing the sport make it capable of attracting these 'names' in the long term. Having top international names may attract the odd speedway supporter but it's the outside world we need to attract and most of them have no idea who Tai Woffinden, Greg Hancock or Nicki Pedersen are. Time indeed to stop living in the past, employ only riders who have a commitment to Britain and let the others go off and bleed the sport dry abroad - while the gravy train's still on the rails, that is. If we are to try to get them to race here it clearly needs a very short series of meetings on high money to attract them - unlikely to be a league as we know it and running as an addition to the normal domestic season.

That's good to hear, Philip following the concerns that Sky might block them from the world feed. I suspect BT's studio side will be excellent. The fear was that a general bike commentator would be used - a repeat of Eurosport's Burnicle error.

Sadly that sums up Eurosport.... They're fine with events that have continuous action and they can just stick on for hours to fill time like winter sports, tennis and cycling but anything that takes a little more production is sadly beyond them. It's ironic considering it started out as the sports service of Eurovision. (There's more to the European federation of broadcasters than a song contest). All they had to do was monitor Premier Sports coverage before muscling in. Bear in mind that they were taking an international feed from CMore so obviously all the Swedish language presentation and interviews were lost to them and could only be filled by the endless 'locked-off' wide shots that should have been covered by ES' own presentation, ideally from a studio. Poor research, as shown by the choice of Jack Burnicle as initial commentator, clearly originating with "Oh, he does bikes, he'll do". I do hope BT don't fall into a similar trap re commentary. No, that's not a job application. Quite happy to leaver all that and all the baggage that comes with it to others now. There are add-ons to Kodi that allow the user to stream individual sports events and sports tv channels, just as you can using a normal web browser. It's not exactly an easy matter unless you're well-versed in the use of Kodi. There's plenty of help articles and You Tube videos out there. Obviously this is as much of a 'grey' area as using websites. Please bear in mind that although it uses Kodi the Speedway Portal is not part of this - it does not give links to live streaming. I'm sure Andy would prefer there to be no confusion over that since such a misunderstanding would compromise his good work. Kodi is a very wide-ranging media player and of course can be adapted to all kinds of uses. It does take a fair bit of work to understand it though.

I fully agree about Sweden. They were excellent matches on the whole, on more technical tracks than the flat-out Polish ones. I don't think having washouts in the first two weeks helped Eurosport but by the end they clearly only showed it if they had completely run out of alternatives. David Rowe did a great job on commentary too but Eurosport's typically chaotic scheduling didn't help matters.

BT Sport indeed have the SGP/SWC but have not made any statements about which channel will carry it. I expect it to be bundled with Moto GP which is restricted to the pay package of BT Sport 2/Europe so I fear you might be out of luck but, as I say, nothing's been announced yet. Indications are that Eurosport have ditched the Swedish Speedway which given its poor commitment to regular coverage last year is sadly no surprise. The SEC/Pairs was on a separate deal with Eurosport Poland for international coverage unlike the Grand Prixs so should be still on there this year. As for Sky we are in the midst of a five year deal so I would expect there to be coverage as before. Obviously no formal launches yet but BT are including speedway in their promos for the year ahead.

It's a little ironic to see the Express & Star being criticised for switching to overnight production when it was one of the very last to do so and held out right until the end long after almost every other 'evening' paper had switched to morning publication. It is still the highest-selling regional daily in the country by a substantial margin. You have to bear in mind the huge fall in local newspaper circulations in recent years. The industry is in freefall, although not quite dead yet. Sadly these are the modern realities of the newspaper industry which of course is run as a business, not a social service. Having said that, I miss the Argus and Sporting Star and their counterparts around the country, badly.

The Bet365 experience does suggest again that Go Speed aren't that adept at setting up, or understanding the full consequences of deals. Either that or they just have to take what's on offer. I just wonder whether there is any analysis by the BSPA of the decline of attendances in 2014 and, logically if the streaming was losing them customers, the rise back in 2015. It would be interesting to know exactly how damaging it was in reality, rather than in theory. Okay, the Go Speed deals have fairly regular league matches on Sky and in the case of the earlier deals a useful sponsorship subsidy. I get concerned though that other aspects of the deal severely restrict people being able to promote the sport via social media due to Sky having such exclusivity. If something remarkable happens at a meeting there's no chance of it going 'viral' due to the restrictions. A lot of promotion online is by someone (professional or amateur) posting photos or video that get shared, and shared, and shared. It's pretty tough to do that in speedway. I think we're missing an opportunity. If one of the video companies catches some remarkable incident it should be out there, getting the sport noticed!

Look, I presume that you are not working in your first language but you (and those liking your post who really have no excuse) are failing (I do hope accidentally) to understand my post. It is absolutely ludicrous to interpret my post as blaming the problems on big gates. I said EVEN WITH big gates that it's possible to screw-up speedway. Of course excessive payments are the problem. Let me try again and perhaps the three of you might understand. Despite big gates Poland is managing to screw up speedway by paying out far too much to riders. There, will that do or can you find some some petty point to latch onto and please ukmartin and iris123 or can we talk about speedway? At least a fan of Polish speedway can see that things aren't as perfect as others choose to think for some odd reason.

Don't be put off by the standard BSF negativity/cynicism Wildcat Steve, I can understand your excitement about George's return and I do hope it all goes well. As time goes by people will begin to realise that the NL, despite its faults, is a vital foundation of any British Speedway revival. Imagine a league without stupid double points rides, with reasonably stable teams, good racing and affordable. Who needs big names? Well, some do and they can cling to what's left of the upper levels of the sport as they disintegrate.