What will 2026 UK speedway bring?

[Aries]

22 minutes ago, cowboy cookie returns? said:

At the time they dropped down the club was at a low point. Several years of poor teams the club had gone stale. When Louis junior took over the day to day running was when he made the decision to drop down. The position Ipswich find themselves in today is down to the hard work put in by Chris in rebuilding the club over several years. 
 

The ironic thing is even when we dropped the attendance levels were still quite good  but it needed a reboot.

sounds daft but Ippo must be happy with their attendance figures I guess most weeks it 2000

It’s such a shame others don’t have that same attitude and drive. There’s a lot out there that will do the absolute bare minimum to get by each year.

People don’t realise that Louis also paid out of his own pocket, for someone to go canvassing across local areas to every local business big and small, to garner any interest in sponsoring the club.

That eventually bore fruit. People inaccurately claim Ipswich are “lucky” because they have a “rich” sponsor who does all the leg work but that simply isn’t true. It’s the hard work of Chris Louis bringing in several partner sponsors, along with the title sponsor, that enables the club to be run efficiently.

The consistently healthy crowds (by today’s standards) also obviously help. They’re all contributing factors combined.

Edited yesterday at 05:44 PM by Aries

[cowboy cookie returns?]

5 minutes ago, Aries said:

It’s such a shame others don’t have that same attitude and drive. There’s a lot out there that will do the absolute bare minimum to get by each year.

People don’t realise that Louis also paid out of his own pocket, for someone to go canvassing across local areas to every local business big and small, to garner any interest in sponsoring the club.

That eventually bore fruit. People inaccurately claim Ipswich are “lucky” because they have a “rich” sponsor who does all the leg work but that simply isn’t true. It’s the hard work of Chris Louis bringing in several partner sponsors, along with the title sponsor, that enables the club to be run efficiently.

The consistently healthy crowds (by today’s standards) also obviously help. They’re all contributing factors combined.

I am aware of someone who came on board in the last 12 months as a sponsor & he has been blown away by Louis attitude & professionalism. 

[Aries]

1 minute ago, cowboy cookie returns? said:

I am aware of someone who came on board in the last 12 months as a sponsor & he has been blown away by Louis attitude & professionalism. 

There’s just not enough of this going on in the sport here unfortunately, and that’s the problem.

[Mick Bratley]

10 minutes ago, Aries said:

There’s just not enough of this going on in the sport here unfortunately, and that’s the problem.

100% correct. There are many hard yards to success, off the track.

[TB1]

28 minutes ago, cowboy cookie returns? said:

I am aware of someone who came on board in the last 12 months as a sponsor & he has been blown away by Louis attitude & professionalism. 

I think at Ipswich we are incredibly lucky because of this. I became very dissolutioned with the old Premier League between 2011 and 2018 as we had a succession of poor sides. However the management have done a grand job culminating in the success of the last 3 years.

[mikebv]

27 minutes ago, Aries said:

There’s just not enough of this going on in the sport here unfortunately, and that’s the problem.

Chris Louis is clearly ahead of the game, and is the brightest, most forward thinking, promoter out there...

Interesting that, in the main, the tracks that are run as "proper businesses" (that pay your mortgage), seem to be more successful than those which are ran by well meaning enthusiasts, who seem happy to use the sport as their own expensive recreational hobby...

 

[ouch]

9 hours ago, Mick Bratley said:

IMO Monday night Premiership racing is the worst decision ever made. Thursday is slightly better. Who wants to really go out on a Monday night especially parents with kids. And if you’re trying to attract a younger early 20s audience, generally they’ve spent out over the weekend. The majority of our meetings should be on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and if that means we have to lose the ‘stars’ then so be it, the sport is or needs to be bigger than any individual rider.

You use to be able to watch top flight speedway every night of the week as clubs had their own set days that worked for them. Poole moved down a league to keep their midweek race-night. It’s not always the case that weekend is best. Belle Vue ran on a Sunday this year (without top stars) and the attendance wasn’t anything to shout about. Imo, with everything on offer in Manchester on a weekend, Belle Vue would find the battle for the leisure pound in the area much tougher. For my five pen’orth, I only saw one Belle Vue team meeting on a weekend this year as I was busy for the others. In previous years I maybe missed one. 

[PhilTheAce]

Thursday nights are the nights for me. 
 

Thursday is generally the student night where things are much cheaper for them, 

 

go to unis, give them huge discounts to start there nights out at the speedway before partying the night away in the city centres. 

[StarBoy]

14 minutes ago, PhilTheAce said:

Thursday nights are the nights for me. 
 

Thursday is generally the student night where things are much cheaper for them, 

 

go to unis, give them huge discounts to start there nights out at the speedway before partying the night away in the city centres. 

The theory is great in principle, but it only works for 3/5 current Premiership teams. And even then:

NSS - 3.1 miles away from Manchester City centre
Owlerton - 2.8 miles from Sheffield City Centre
Beaumont Park - 3.1 miles from Leicester City centre

The logistics of it won’t appeal to the younger audience and if you’re at uni you typically won’t drive, so reliant on broken public transport infrastructure or overpriced cabs 

[Ben91]

16 hours ago, PhilTheAce said:

Thursday nights are the nights for me. 
 

Thursday is generally the student night where things are much cheaper for them, 

 

go to unis, give them huge discounts to start there nights out at the speedway before partying the night away in the city centres. 

In theory a good idea. In practice it’s a hard sell. Unless things have changed drastically since my student days the night out starts with the cheapest shop bought booze possible at home (halls or uni house) then out once nicely leathered to spend as little on booze as possible and try cop off with someone. Would be an uphill battle to try convince a Uni crowd that they should trade that in to start off at the speedway. 

[1 valve]

18 hours ago, PhilTheAce said:

Thursday nights are the nights for me. 
 

Thursday is generally the student night where things are much cheaper for them, 

 

go to unis, give them huge discounts to start there nights out at the speedway before partying the night away in the city centres. 

Although some places do have Thursdays as Student night - mainly because those nights are “dead nights” for the hospitality trade. Wednesday is the actual Student day for the majority of universities. 
Who deliberately schedule their academic timetables to leave Wednesday afternoons free from lectures and seminars, allowing a large number of students to participate in sports without conflicting with their studies. This tradition is often referred to as "BUCS Wednesday"
Strangely enough the fact that the next day is a school days doesn’t appear to hold them back from seeing the night out. 😱

Edited 4 hours ago by 1 valve

[WookieboyDon]

20 hours ago, cowboy cookie returns? said:

I am aware of someone who came on board in the last 12 months as a sponsor & he has been blown away by Louis attitude & professionalism. 

This should not be a surprise. The man is a class act...

[The Cheese]

3 hours ago, Ben91 said:

In theory a good idea. In practice it’s a hard sell. Unless things have changed drastically since my student days the night out starts with the cheapest shop bought booze possible at home (halls or uni house) then out once nicely leathered to spend as little on booze as possible and try cop off with someone. Would be an uphill battle to try convince a Uni crowd that they should trade that in to start off at the speedway. 

Might work for anyone interested in trying to cop off with a senior citizen.

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

So is the AGM taking place on Wednesday or not or is it January ? They certainly not giving anything away, it’s like the bloody mason’s with all their secrecy 

Edited 1 hour ago by THE DEAN MACHINE

[SteveLyric2]

11 minutes ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

So is the AGM taking place on Wednesday or not or is it January ? They certainly not giving anything away, it’s like the bloody mason’s with all their secrecy 

To be fair it has directly 'sweet F A' to do with anyone other than its members!😇 

Indirectly others are interested in the outcomes but it's only the members that do the team building, set their budgets and offer contracts.

Edited 1 hour ago by SteveLyric2

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

11 minutes ago, SteveLyric2 said:

To be fair it has directly 'sweet F A' to do with anyone other than its members!😇

With that attitude you should work for them, the point of speedway and therefor the most important people are the fans, without their money the bspl doesn’t exist, every decision should be made to please the fans 

Edited 1 hour ago by THE DEAN MACHINE

[1 valve]

13 minutes ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

every decision should be made to please the fans 

Not really. They would never be able to please all the fans all of the time - blimey just look at the mix of ideals and wants from forum members on here. 
In reality, any business needs to do what’s best for the business, and shockingly, that shouldn’t always be focussed on customers. Employees, suppliers plus legal & financial stuff have to be taken into account. And it’s no different with speedway - other than I’m not convinced the major stakeholders (promoters)actually work in tandem for the best interest of the sport thus providing something the customer actually want. 

[Ben91]

25 minutes ago, SteveLyric2 said:

To be fair it has directly 'sweet F A' to do with anyone other than its members!😇 

Indirectly others are interested in the outcomes but it's only the members that do the team building, set their budgets and offer contracts.

I think right now with the sport in turmoil it’s more important than ever that those running the sport are transparent. Let fans know when they can expect to find out the rules for next season. It isn’t hurting anyone, stops a lot of speculation too. 

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

8 minutes ago, 1 valve said:

Not really. They would never be able to please all the fans all of the time - blimey just look at the mix of ideals and wants from forum members on here. 
In reality, any business needs to do what’s best for the business, and shockingly, that shouldn’t always be focussed on customers. Employees, suppliers plus legal & financial stuff have to be taken into account. And it’s no different with speedway - other than I’m not convinced the major stakeholders (promoters)actually work in tandem for the best interest of the sport thus providing something the customer actually want. 

Then I urge all the promoters do what’s best for their business and come march no fans turn up anywhere at any track and see how that business works, the fans are number 1. My business which is as successful as I want it to be is so because I see what the customer requires and I deliver that service and they all require different service,customers are the be all and end all of any business, without them you don’t have a business 

Edited 1 hour ago by THE DEAN MACHINE

[TigerIain]

1 hour ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

So is the AGM taking place on Wednesday or not or is it January ? They certainly not giving anything away, it’s like the bloody mason’s with all their secrecy 

I'm beginning to think that they are delaying it because someone leaked the date!! Maybe they think is fans are gonna turn into the January 6th rioters or something! If it is delayed, hopefully it is too allow something good to happen, rather than their trying to stop something bad happening, but so knows. They don't like to tell the fans. 

1 hour ago, SteveLyric2 said:

To be fair it has directly 'sweet F A' to do with anyone other than its members!😇 

Indirectly others are interested in the outcomes but it's only the members that do the team building, set their budgets and offer contracts.

They are not building teams, seeing budgets or offering contracts at the conference. They are signing off on the structure and rules for next season hoping that FANS will support their decisions (or at least not walk away from the turnstiles).

1 hour ago, 1 valve said:

Not really. They would never be able to please all the fans all of the time - blimey just look at the mix of ideals and wants from forum members on here. 
In reality, any business needs to do what’s best for the business, and shockingly, that shouldn’t always be focussed on customers. Employees, suppliers plus legal & financial stuff have to be taken into account. And it’s no different with speedway - other than I’m not convinced the major stakeholders (promoters)actually work in tandem for the best interest of the sport thus providing something the customer actually want. 

You can't please all the fans, but surely speedway needs to focus on what brings fans through the gates and paying money in to keep the sport going. Fans aren't the only consideration but they are just as important as the other stakeholders in the sport.

I do find is strange that given importance of what is agreed at the conference with regards to what hairdryer the next season, I find it strange that they don't tell fans when the will hear the league structure, points limits, rule changes etc. And it also seems that some years they forget to announce some of the rule tweaks etc