New tracks ?

[Youhave2minutes]

13 minutes ago, SteveLyric2 said:

Mr Tolley - in his final emotional speech after Birmingham's closure - made reference to 'his hope that Cradley would be back if not in 2026 then 2027!!

He also said he would still be involved in speedway next season!  Thoughts.....?

Northampton it is for Tolley then😹

[Delejt]

9 hours ago, singy13 said:

So the Polish teams, 8 of them says the post, only have 7 home fixtures from let's say April to September (24 weeks)????

My calculation has them with 17 blank weeks during Summer. How do they survive that ?

 

A few things:

- massive TV money. It's like 8 mln złoty (so around £1.75 mln) per club per season

- much higher attendances - average of Ekstraliga is almost 9500 per meeting. x60 PLN per ticket, that's around 570k PLN (£115k) on the gates. Times 7 in the season + play offs (at least 1 match, most often 2). That's before any merch, food sales, car park fees, etc.

- a lot of sponsors. And I mean a lot - sometimes even 2 big sponsors in team name (that's like 1 mil PLN per year, each).

That's numbers for Ekstraliga. Slightly less in 2. Ekstraliga:

- TV money @ 1.5 mil PLN (£300k) per club per season

- average attendances 5000 per meeting. x40 PLN per ticket = 200k PLN (£40k) on the gates.

- also lots of sponsors. Understandably, they pay less but still bring a good revenue to the club.

 

Probably also paying less for the stadium hire, as that's hired at cost from the town, not from the greedy greyhound franchises? idk.

 

They can afford it to a point that speedway clubs in Poland:

- have paid staff (up to a dozen different functions)

- can run closed and open trainings for their riders

- do a 2-3x weekly trainings for the youth academy (that's pretty much every club in Poland)

- and can run events for the youths at least once a week that are free for the spectators to attend and cheer on the kids.

 

Yes, there is a few failed clubs - Gorzów is struggling with debts since a few years (and went public with it last year), similarly Tarnów barely managed to get to the end of regular season, rumour has it that Częstochowa is not doing well at all either. But on the grand scale of things majority of the clubs can afford to keep driving the earnings of top riders (and not only, also "desired" riders which back in the day were low CMA ones, nowadays are the "Under 24" lads) higher and higher, so... 

 

[R87]

On 9/4/2025 at 10:46 AM, SteveArena said:

I see on the cover of this weeks Speedway Star they are talking about a new track for next season.

I havent bought the Star for ages so does anyone who does have any info on where this new track is?

 

They've got no chance

[dontforgetthefueltapsbruv]

27 minutes ago, Delejt said:

A few things:

- massive TV money. It's like 8 mln złoty (so around £1.75 mln) per club per season

- much higher attendances - average of Ekstraliga is almost 9500 per meeting. x60 PLN per ticket, that's around 570k PLN (£115k) on the gates. Times 7 in the season + play offs (at least 1 match, most often 2). That's before any merch, food sales, car park fees, etc.

- a lot of sponsors. And I mean a lot - sometimes even 2 big sponsors in team name (that's like 1 mil PLN per year, each).

That's numbers for Ekstraliga. Slightly less in 2. Ekstraliga:

- TV money @ 1.5 mil PLN (£300k) per club per season

- average attendances 5000 per meeting. x40 PLN per ticket = 200k PLN (£40k) on the gates.

- also lots of sponsors. Understandably, they pay less but still bring a good revenue to the club.

 

Probably also paying less for the stadium hire, as that's hired at cost from the town, not from the greedy greyhound franchises? idk.

 

They can afford it to a point that speedway clubs in Poland:

- have paid staff (up to a dozen different functions)

- can run closed and open trainings for their riders

- do a 2-3x weekly trainings for the youth academy (that's pretty much every club in Poland)

- and can run events for the youths at least once a week that are free for the spectators to attend and cheer on the kids.

 

Yes, there is a few failed clubs - Gorzów is struggling with debts since a few years (and went public with it last year), similarly Tarnów barely managed to get to the end of regular season, rumour has it that Częstochowa is not doing well at all either. But on the grand scale of things majority of the clubs can afford to keep driving the earnings of top riders (and not only, also "desired" riders which back in the day were low CMA ones, nowadays are the "Under 24" lads) higher and higher, so... 

 

I have heard that Jason Doyle earned £55k for his maximum in last week's Polish play off

 

[IainB]

1 hour ago, dontforgetthefueltapsbruv said:

I have heard that Jason Doyle earned £55k for his maximum in last week's Polish play off

 

Let's hope he buys an alarm clock with it ⏰️ 😂

[mikebv]

15 hours ago, IainB said:

Let's hope he buys an alarm clock with it ⏰️ 😂

And a sat nav....

[YeOldPitGate]

On 9/5/2025 at 12:22 PM, Youhave2minutes said:

Northampton it is for Tolley then😹

Lets hope not the old boy must be super successful in his other business but he's blind when it comes to speedway I can hear the conversation now

Stadium owner "Hi Nigel we have no speedway heritage the existing speedway clubs can't get an extra hundred new people in per season, you will need to find a thousand die hard regulars from the get go, Expect to drop a minimum of 100k per season, the track will be super narrow once the air fence is added and won't be conducive to good racing"

Nigel after a one second pause "i'm in"

 

[The Cheese]

Front page of tomorrow's Speedway Star seems to be suggesting a possible revival of Buxton in the NL. 

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

1 hour ago, The Cheese said:

Front page of tomorrow's Speedway Star seems to be suggesting a possible revival of Buxton in the NL. 

The soul of British speedway is back, should never been allowed to close 

[noaksey]

I'd guess at Lawrence Rodgers being behind the Buxton thing 

[heathen52]

3 hours ago, noaksey said:

I'd guess at Lawrence Rodgers being behind the Buxton thing 

That is probably a very good guess.

[RS50]

3 hours ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

The soul of British speedway is back, should never been allowed to close 

Part of the reason it closed was due to Sheffield switching to Sunday racing.

[Youhave2minutes]

The Buxton Bosoms

[R87]

11 hours ago, The Cheese said:

Front page of tomorrow's Speedway Star seems to be suggesting a possible revival of Buxton in the NL. 

Another fantasy 

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

11 hours ago, RS50 said:

Part of the reason it closed was due to Sheffield switching to Sunday racing.

The reason Buxton closed was because the likes of cradley and Kent and others were paying stupid points money to riders to ride in the national league and Buxton simply couldn’t do that and it became impossible to field a competitive team, until the last couple of seasons Buxton were pretty much the only team sticking to the pay scales and even when they went over them to compete it was less than half what others were paying 

Edited 5 hours ago by THE DEAN MACHINE

[therefused]

Hopefully Buxton do make a return, i will definitely make a visit next season if they do. 

[StevePark]

I( used to love my trips to Buxton when Newcastle Gems were there.  Good luck to them.

[SJA]

On 9/6/2025 at 2:02 PM, YeOldPitGate said:

Lets hope not the old boy must be super successful in his other business but he's blind when it comes to speedway I can hear the conversation now

Stadium owner "Hi Nigel we have no speedway heritage the existing speedway clubs can't get an extra hundred new people in per season, you will need to find a thousand die hard regulars from the get go, Expect to drop a minimum of 100k per season, the track will be super narrow once the air fence is added and won't be conducive to good racing"

Nigel after a one second pause "i'm in"

 

I've just looked on google maps at the Northampton track. On satellite view the entry to the bends looks very narrow. Factor in the width of a airfence panel and I would say its almost impossible to get good racing there.   

[Fromafar]

2 hours ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

The reason Buxton closed was because the likes of cradley and Kent and others were paying stupid points money to riders to ride in the national league and Buxton simply couldn’t do that and it became impossible to field a competitive team, until the last couple of seasons Buxton were pretty much the only team sticking to the pay scales and even when they went over them to compete it was less than half what others were paying 

Buxton were the only Team to stick to the principles that the League was formed for,the others started paying over the odds and look what developed from that.A financial mess that the sport is now in.

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

50 minutes ago, Fromafar said:

Buxton were the only Team to stick to the principles that the League was formed for,the others started paying over the odds and look what developed from that.A financial mess that the sport is now in.

This is a little story from the year after I finished, Buxton had a home match and had 2 riders missing as I think 1  was injured and the other rider had a match for his championship team on the same day so Buxton booked a guest,and used RR for the number 1, this guest was no superstar but it was the only rider really available, he wanted £35 per point plus Tavel plus a tyre plus fuel and he wanted a hotel for him and his Mrs as he was riding somewhere else the next day so was not going home, he was booked to ride at number 4 but on the morning of the match the championship match was called off so the number 4 was able to ride,so Buxton told the guest he would ride at number1 to which he said he wanted an extra £5 per point, for what exactly? ,the meeting was rained off anyway but he still wanted his hotel paid as he was still riding the next day,that was the sort of thing which killed off Buxton, well that and some teams paying gaurentees of £500 for their stars, I’m blowing my own trumpet here but when they had the chance the bspl should of put me in charge of the national league the day I retired. 

Edited 2 hours ago by THE DEAN MACHINE