AndyJ

It varies but Belle Vue for example were £16.50 (£11.50 concession) in 2013. http://www.bellevueaces.co/stadium.aspx Programme an additional £3.00 Parking (£2.50 I think. Paid to the GRA. Many either risk the main road or park on the local cinema for free) Poole were £17.00 (£14.00 concession). http://www.poolepirates.co/ticketoffice Eastbourne were £17.00 (£15 concession). http://www.eastbourneeagles.co/index.php/information/track-details

Presumably that is based upon; @ home: paying rent, insurance, medical, referee, own team's points money/travel costs in full and standard points money for opponents. @ away: paying the variance between standard points money and contractually agreed rates for own team plus travel costs. If 1000 full-fee paying adults attended the home match, @ £17 each, that only yields £13,600 in net gate receipts. Considering the proportion of matches with less than 1000 supporters, and Tsunami's suggestion that 37% of paying customers are concessions, it shows just how critical sponsorship and TV money are in making up the financial shortfall.

What I meant by this is that, ignoring the TV money, £17 entrance money would yield a certain amount of gate receipts. (1000 x £17 = £17,000. Ignoring VAT) Dropping entry to £10 and actively trying to draw in more fans is a risk and may result in lower gate receipts (1500 x £10 = £15,000) An element of the TV money could perhaps be used as an insurance to mitigate these potential losses. This is basically what I hoped would happen when Sky first got involved - that promoters would primarily focus on growing the fan base.

Several people still suggest a North/South split. Look at where the clubs are located. I can't see how such a split could be fairly accomplished.

Personally I think a sizeable chunk of TV money should be used to try and drive up attendance levels. Advertising/marketing/promotions. An insurance to subsidize more realistic entry prices. Sitting in an empty stadium numbs the sensation of even the most exciting racing. Sport needs atmosphere.

The "just a few weeks" bit of that post suggests that some promising news is soon incoming. Really do hope that this is the case! Even the most blinkered of optimist must surely be fearing the worst with regards to this long-running saga. Combined with the likely cessation of the TV funds and the widespread reported losses I honestly expected the next news to be the announced closure of Belle Vue. Fingers firmly crossed that you're correct on this....

Surprised there isn't an added incentive to take out the 52 weeks subscription. With both 26 and 52 weeks costing the same per issue it makes more sense to me to pay for the smaller one.

If knowing what a club can afford to spend forms part of the decision making process, how is it that many clubs seemingly overspend by tens of £thousands? Is it simply that promoters expect to lose money and deem tens of £thousands to be an acceptable loss? Or are their forecasts detached from reality?

Doesn't that 138 riders include those who, without the Sky money, would be deemed to be too expensive for British Speedway? If so I guess another 7-10 may need dropping from the 138...

Just listened to the interview via the "listen again" service on the talkSPORT site http://talksport.com/radio/listen-again/1383645600 and agree wholeheartedly with the above posts. It was uplifting to hear the apparent enthusiasm from Colin Murray towards experiencing live speedway and kudos to him for posting the YouTube clip on Twitter. With 46,000 followers it hopefully reached some people whose interest might have been tweaked. Damned shame this is taking place now rather than just prior to the season start....

Jumping away on a tangent from the original post but in response to the above... Personally I'd like to see British Speedway run along the line of MLS soccer http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24751629 -run as a single entity and decisions made for the whole rather than single clubs. Each club run by investors/shareholders to the whole. However I guess that, given the fact that most clubs regularly post losses, such an idea would be crazy and perhaps impossible to implement. Basically I suspect that too many decisions are tainted by individual concerns. Far easier to ensure adherence to a strict wage policy, etc, if the combined profits and losses were pooled and the sport operated as a proper business. EDIT: to fix hyperlink

Quoted in order to make the above post readable for any members who lack microscopes.... EDIT: my view is that adding an extra rider would incur additional cost/risk with regards the incoming rider and therefore additional cost to the promoters. Irrespective of whether or not it would yield an improvement from a points perspective I can't see it being something that would be eagerly embraced. The old TS rules would have been expensive based upon the likely pay rates of the incoming heatleader versus the outgoing reserve. The current ones are probably the most cost effective compromise and, in my opinion, likely to stay unless TS/TR is abolished.

Whilst it undoubtedly has benefits in that the extra racing opportunities help to develop riders I think the doubling up system is a real problem. Looking at it from an EL perspective here have been far too many occasions where we've had to field an understrength side due to conflicting PL fixtures. With GP and other leagues also placing demands on our riders it is too common that teams need to field R/R or guest riders. If 2014 sees a continuance of our 3-tier league system I'd prefer not to see doubling-up still in place.

Main League : EL Positive: those moments of pure brilliance where the quality of racing reminds us why we fell in love with this sport of ours. Negative: the fact that UK speedway appears to be in terminal decline and that little appears to be being done to tackle this constructively.

Also perhaps a viable business decision for them too if it helps entice a decent number of Sky customers via a relatively modest outlay.

It'd be intriguing to quantify how much we speedway fans are really worth to Sky. How much we pay for the extra Sky Sports package or even the entirety of the package for those who will shift to an alternative, such as BT vision, once it is crystal clear that speedway coverage has now ended? How many may then also shift away from Sky Broadband too? Doesn't take that many (1500 or so?) before the loss of subscriber income exceeds what Sky were pumping into the speedway coffers each year. If BT Sport were to step in and pay for the broadcast rights, how many would ditch Sky in favour of this?

Looking at it another way; If we only consider the first 20 heats from each GP * Tai scored 124 points from 59 races. This equates to a five-ride average of 10.51. * Emil scored 89 from 45 races. Average 9.89. Semi-finals and finals * Tai scored 27 points from 16 races. Average 8.44. * Emil scored 25 from 12 races. Average 10.42 Overall * Tai scored 151 from 75 races. Average 10.07 * Emil scored 114 from 57 races. Average 10.00 Interestingly (well it is to us statistics nerds!) Darcy Ward's equivalent figures; * (first 20) scored 91 from 42 races. Average 10.83 * (SF and F) scored 15 from 10 races. Average 7.50 * (overall) scored 106 from 52 races. Average 10.19

Cheers for the heads up

Another story that shouldn't hit the news until the accused is actually convicted.

Hmm.. just stumbled across the below article from 2007. Seems that their opinion wasn't just a throwaway comment courtesy of a lack of knowledge about our sport. I suspect the below deal didn't work out brilliantly for the station then.. http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?p=13849850

Sadly a perception of our sport that is shared by many outside the speedway world. None of us can deny that, at it's worst, speedway is exactly as they described. However if races were always decided this way I doubt that many of us would have stuck around to become fans. Thankfully we do have those moments of pure brilliance (e.g. Ward v Kasprzak or Miedzinski v Hancock) that keep us watching. Perhaps the likes of Hawksbee and Jacobs would benefit from watching some of the coverage from this weekend. Maybe they'll never be fans of our sport but it would be nice for them to eat their words and accept that there is far more to speedway than their throwaway comments. Anyway, shouldn't the station be called 'TalkFootball'? Every time I've listened to the station the talk has been almost exclusively football. Their website has links to a small number of sports but the home page is entirely football right now.

Wouldn't it be the "BL 18-heat Match" format listed via the same link? This has 18-heats and 8-man teams..

Wouldn't that just have been the standard 13-heat format? http://www.speedway-faq.org/miscfmts.html#BLClassic

The equivalent form for officials http://www.scbgb.co.uk/pdf/application_forms/Track%20Officials%20Licence%20App%20-%20New.pdf seemingly lacks such guidelines/expectations.

As per the 2013 Rider Registration form with the SCB (http://www.scbgb.co....egistration.pdf)