IainB

I've just had a look at Nottingham Panthers (just picked them at random) Ice Hockey Web shop as speedway is often compared to Ice Hockey and well... their offerings put speedway to shame. Looked at a couple of others, similar story

A lot of the shirts with any hint of a design are produced by a Polish company called dispeed.

Surely "quality" merchandise is part and parcel of "promotion" these days. It seems to be in most other sports. Have "the powers that be" approached a proper clothing manufacturer to produce it? In the same way that they do with the TV deal. It's not like clubs are in competition with each other with merchandise, a Glasgow fan is never going to buy an Edinburgh shirt and vice versa

I'm aware of a supermarket that went bust... doesn't mean the model is wrong

I'm taking about Jack Holder gate

It's strange then that many riders sell merchandise, one assumes at a profit, yet clubs seem unable to make it pay. I wonder if Eastbourne and Poole make money from it and if so what they are doing right and with all respect to yourself what you were doing wrong? Perhaps a sport wide model is needed rather than individual clubs doing their own thing.

I remember during Alan Grahame's testimonial year you could get "Big Al'" underpants lol

I'm sure it works very nicely indeed for Jaybea. Does it work for speedway in general and the club individually though? If I were a club that didn't want to do my own merchandise I'd be looking to sub it out to Eastbourne or Poole!

It would be interesting to know whether the excellent offerings of Poole and Eastbourne are actually reflected by visibility of these items on the terraces. Didn't Poole recently have a pop up shop at a shopping centre for pre Christmas merchandise celebrating one of their Championship victories?

I'm opening this one up as a general topic following on from a "discussion" I've been having on the Leicester thread and their range of Championship & Shield winning merchandise available from the "Club Shop", which in my opinion is woeful. I've been to all the club sites and seen what's on offer elsewhere and to my surprise the results were very different. I've not gone digging too far and only looked for links from the club's website home page Premiership: Belle Vue: Pretty basic compared to the best but better than most Ipswich: No club shop Kings Lynn: No club shop Peterborough: Disappointing Sheffield: Pretty basic Wolverhampton: Pretty basic Championship: Berwick: No club shop Birmingham: No club shop Eastbourne: AMAZING! One of the clubs that all others should be aspiring to be like Edinburgh: Pretty good... I do like the look of those tartan shirts! Glasgow: Shop coming soon, disappointed in that, I expected better from Glasgow Kent: No club shop Leicester: Pretty basic, hardly anything cashing in on the clubs success Newcastle: No club shop Plymouth: Quite impressive from the newcomers, very similar to the Eastbourne offerings Poole: AMAZING! One of the clubs that all others should be aspiring to be like Redcar: Shop on website showing nothing available Scunthorpe: No club shop Some clubs seem to be running their own merchandise operation and others have subbed out their operation to a company called Jaybea designs who look like a from the bedroom using a mobile phone company. There's money to be made in club merchandise and many don't seem to have cottoned on (forgive the pun) to this. It's easier than ever in the age of the internet to get merchandise produced and sold. Some clubs are not even offering branded face masks in a global pandemic... Some people wouldn't know a business opportunity if it walked up to them and hit them in the face shouting "I'M A BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY".

There also plenty of examples of clubs doing it themselves and making a shedload

I've just looked at the range of Redcar merchandise on the website... Awesome!

Normally in business when services are "subbed" out there are service level agreements and targets to be met. Judging by the "Championship Winners" range on the Jaybea website it doesn't look like there was a clause in there about producing merchandise to cash in on the success

And Speedway Riders

How many times have we seen statements like this from clubs. If the bloke in charge can only come up with Scott Nicholls is coming to town as the only selling point there's no chance. I went to the Redcar match the other week after they restarted and the track was awful billowing large clouds of dust, the vantage points for a decent view are almost non existent unless you go behind the glass in the restaurant. It's been shown numerous times over the years that sadly Birmingham just isn't a Speedway city. As much as it pains me to say it they should probably just cut their losses and shut up shop and maybe look at opening up somewhere else.

How constructive! It's only £17 at Leicester You'll see the best riders in the East Midlands on that particular night, you can bring a pack up and to be fair the atmosphere is pretty good... Don't expect to see much in the way of good racing though

Well, that was a marathon! Was appalled at how long it took a first aider to get to Przedpelski, absolutely no sense of urgency (with anything in Swedish Speedway), first the flag man turns up to pick the bike up and has a good look at Przedpelski, then his mechanical team arrive and finally a first aider ambles along! It's a good job he didn't need immediate attention. I didn't notice until after the incident but there were no first aid teams on the centre green area, is this usual in Swedish Speedway or was it just last night? It was great to see Zengi in action again, I've not seen him in a while, has he been injured or something?

Do the Poles bribe their own clubs mid season to release riders like they did with a certain British club?

I now use the www.trolley.co.uk website to "plan" my shopping

And they've managed to track 3 Premiership heat leaders into the bargain!

BT Sport was rumoured to be the other

You should get yourself on Twitter for up to the minute information, not just from the clubs but also the riders who can often give you a better idea of whether a match is going to be on and what the line-ups are going to be.

Isn't that written by the guy who's got his book out and giving the proceeds to the SRBF?

He'd essentially be a "free agent" then though

I was thinking while watching the Swedish match last night that Luke Becker must be on the Ekstaliga clubs radar, like Holder, Lidsey & Bewley have been and that if a rider for one of these clubs were to get injured, or I were looking to make a change to bolster up the side, Becker would be one of the the first riders I'd be looking to sign. "The Little Missile" already rides, Poland, Sweden & UK, so something would have to give, could there be a suitcase full of Zloty's heading the way of Monmore Green anytime soon I wonder?