With the loss of Long Eaton.........

[mikebv]

17 hours ago, The White Knight said:

There is a cracking Stadium in Sunderland which featured Speedway in 1964 and 1971 to 1974. The  Stadium is much improved since those days, but as far as I am aware there are no plans to reopen Sunderland Speedway either. 

You can't see why anyone would open a track these days given the massive costs to open it and then run it, and the lack of public interest in Speedway..

Maybe a "Buxton" could work at NDL level with 300 or so fans per week, and it got ran very much as a development team, with rider costs reflecting that...

Renting tracks is now very much fraught with the threat of closure, even if you are doing well, which also means those who own their own stadiums have an ever dwindling offering to their own spectators as these tracks close...

A five team league anyone?...

It will be great I am sure.....

[MajorMauger]

20 hours ago, Petecc said:

Sunderland is run by arc. The company who have just closed birmingham Newcastle Central Park Kent. Not good bed fellows of speedway.

Even if the stadium was still available at Perry Bar it surely was only a matter of time before Nigel Tolley got fed up with/ couldn't afford to keep s@unking hundreds of thousands of pounds propping up the Brummies?

 

Newcastle closed because a very weak team was attracting poor crowds so the promotor Rob Grant Jnr pulled the plug. Grant was handicapped when he bought Newcastle speedway cause the previous promotion apparently left a large unpaid VAT Bill which he knew nothing of beforehand. This combined with Grants insistence on pushing people away who could have helped him to make the venture viable resulted with the sad end result of closure. - Without Newcastle operating this increases the possibility that a speedway team at Bolden, Sunderland could be viable but the having same stadium owners who own Brough Park renders this very unlikely. Isn't there another greyhound track not that far away from the Sunderland area or has that now closed?

 

The new owners of Sittingbourne's Central Park stadium promised previous owner Roger Cearns that they would accommodate speedway and not make it unviable for any speedway promotion to continue running. A huge rental hike broke all these promises and a very well appointed stadium in an area that supported speedway in good numbers was lost to the sport.

 

Nottingham Greyhound stadium remains the most likely venue for a speedway revival in that part of the East Midlands other than a building a brand new stadium, though as a previous poster suggests, it'd take a very brave rich person to open a speedway track in the UK in current times.

Edited December 27, 2025 by MajorMauger

[1 valve]

On 12/27/2025 at 12:37 PM, MajorMauger said:

Even if the stadium was still available at Perry Bar it surely was only a matter of time before Nigel Tolley got fed up with/ couldn't afford to keep s@unking hundreds of thousands of pounds propping up the Brummies?

 

Newcastle closed because a very weak team was attracting poor crowds so the promotor Rob Grant Jnr pulled the plug. Grant was handicapped when he bought Newcastle speedway cause the previous promotion apparently left a large unpaid VAT Bill which he knew nothing of beforehand. This combined with Grants insistence on pushing people away who could have helped him to make the venture viable resulted with the sad end result of closure. - Without Newcastle operating this increases the possibility that a speedway team at Bolden, Sunderland could be viable but the having same stadium owners who own Brough Park renders this very unlikely. Isn't there another greyhound track not that far away from the Sunderland area or has that now closed?

 

The new owners of Sittingbourne's Central Park stadium promised previous owner Roger Cearns that they would accommodate speedway and not make it unviable for any speedway promotion to continue running. A huge rental hike broke all these promises and a very well appointed stadium in an area that supported speedway in good numbers was lost to the sport.

 

Nottingham Greyhound stadium remains the most likely venue for a speedway revival in that part of the East Midlands other than a building a brand new stadium, though as a previous poster suggests, it'd take a very brave rich person to open a speedway track in the UK in current times.

At least there still appears to be an actual base for a speedway track at Newcastle. 
One would need to be created at Sunderland & Nottingham stadiums, the latter not made easy by an apparent pond in situ on what would be the middle of bends 3&4. 

[arnieg]

2 hours ago, 1 valve said:

At least there still appears to be an actual base for a speedway track at Newcastle. 
One would need to be created at Sunderland & Nottingham stadiums, the latter not made easy by an apparent pond in situ on what would be the middle of bends 3&4. 

If we are looking at tracks with ponds how about California? That has one on the second bend.