What will 2026 UK speedway bring?

[mikebv]

40 minutes ago, Steve Irving said:

Judging by the attendance when Ipswich staged the “Tiger’s academy open” meeting a few weeks ago, including the latest Great British hope Cooper Rushen, I’d say you’re wrong and spectacularly wrong.

Look, people on this forum are obviously die hard fans of the sport where any level of speedway is seen as great. But they’re in a tiny tiny minority. I’ve seen someone say on here recently that we don’t need the “GP Stars” because riders of a far lesser ability can provide “just as good racing”. But that isn’t reflected in the attendance the further you go down the Speedway pyramid.

The NDL is pitifully attended. You can literally stand there and count the supporters in between races. So not many actually want to see “Johnny Local” making his way to better things at all. The hugely successful Championship that has their “house in order”, is also embarrassingly attended. You’ll get the odd anomaly such as Poole and Glasgow who get decent crowds by Championship standards, but they are an exception to the rule. The majority in that league have pitiful attendance figures.

Any Poole fan by the way that comes on here and try’s to convince people that the crowd levels they’re seeing in the Championship aren’t that much different to the crowds they got when they had Holder and Ward ruling the roost, or Trick and Leigh Adams before them, are lying. Simple as that.

The fact of the matter is, that attendances has steadily declined in this Country over the last 10-20 years, and that has coincided with an ever dwindling number of world class riders that ride over here to the point we now have only a small handful left. There are other factors as to why attendances have dwindled of course there are, but let’s please stop pretending that having or not having, the best riders in the world riding here doesn’t make a difference! Of course it bloody well does.

Rider costs have spiralled out of control for the very top riders and any increase in attendance at tracks that manage to sign them, wouldn’t in all likelihood cover the financial outlay to get them over and that is the problem. It’s a catch22 situation unfortunately but getting shot of the ones we do still have, water the product down even further, and the death of the sport in this Country will gather pace at a rate of knots. You can forget any meaningful sponsorship or TV deal! Nobody will be interested. There’s a reason nobody, even back to the Sky Sports days, were remotely interested in showing anything below the top tier.

 

If the Colts at the NSS were the "only ticket in town" for Speedway they would get very decent attendances...

When they started at the NSS they got 800 and sometimes more at a tenner a time...

And that was with the Aces getting around 1700 on average..

The sport is down very much to its "die hards" who will attend "any" Speedway locally...

Oxford have shown by choosing to run in the 2nd tier, rather than the first, that the cost v return of the top riders doesnt make for a great business decision...

And Plymouth have shown that running on a Saturday, with all the same riders in attendance, can circa double their attendances from a Tuesday night...

Workington also changed their starting times on Saturdays and saw a significant increase. Same riders, just a more convenient time for fans to attend. I notice they didn't try and run Monday or Thursday afternoons...

The Peterborough team involved in any possible comeback have said crowds were similar for them whether they were in Div 1 or Div 2...

The unpalatable truth for some is that paying £20k out for two heat leaders for two meetings from your home meeting, (regardless of whether sponsors pay it or not), is simply ridiculous for a sport that, even in the top tier, can often deliver crowds of less than 1000, (and that alone shows their presence isn't pulling too many in)...

It also massively reduces jeopardy in the league as those "few" who can pay that kind of money will always be in the play offs...

(And that level of sponsors money would be better used marketing the club, and nationally, the sport)...

Poole are the perfect example of a team that simply haven't missed the "top stars" and run on the night they need to, to deliver their best crowd level..

Speedway is a tiny, tiny sport, with my lad playing amateur/semi pro football in front of bigger crowds than many Speedway teams get..

You can see by the fact no one is willing to move up that the top tier operating and business model is not fit for purpose...

To keep flogging a dead horse is madness...

[IainB]

8 hours ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

I’ve often wondered how much ford, bates, Louis, Godfrey, morris and the secretary’s wages come too every year ? Got to be honest I would do it for half 

Hopefully the admin staff and Phil Morris are being paid properly for their time, but you'd hope the directors aren't taking a salary and there's probably no dividends to pay out.

[Hawk127]

Whilst many advocate keeping today’s top riders gainfully employed in the UK at a cost that no club can afford without generous sponsorship, that is a questionable position hold in the overall scheme of things.

All who dismiss the lesser known riders and those coming through the ranks at NDL level as not being worthy, please explain where tomorrow’s top star riders are going to come from. Doyle, Lambert, Bewley etc. will not go on forever so where are the stars of the future coming from in the UK. The sport in this country does not have the facilities that the likes of Poland have who are able to have a conveyor belt of talent. 
Something has to give as the sport means diddly squat to all but a few thousand punters, it does not make good live TV and from an investment aspect you have to be a raving lunatic to put money into a business model where the terms of running are dictated by people and factors over which you as the club owner rarely have control.

The sport can survive and rebuild itself but it will never attract a mass audience in the UK to warrant big pay days for the top riders in the world so it needs to cut its cloth accordingly and all the banging on about the need to keep the top tier and top riders and TV deals are just topics that can be debated to death but the reality is that outside the loyal followers no one is interested or listening and while many ideas put forward on here have some merit it is it is not going to influence the way the sport is run now or in the future.

[IainB]

1 hour ago, Steve Irving said:

Judging by the attendance when Ipswich staged the “Tiger’s academy open” meeting a few weeks ago, including the latest Great British hope Cooper Rushen, I’d say you’re wrong and spectacularly wrong.

Look, people on this forum are obviously die hard fans of the sport where any level of speedway is seen as great. But they’re in a tiny tiny minority. I’ve seen someone say on here recently that we don’t need the “GP Stars” because riders of a far lesser ability can provide “just as good racing”. But that isn’t reflected in the attendance the further you go down the Speedway pyramid.

The NDL is pitifully attended. You can literally stand there and count the supporters in between races. So not many actually want to see “Johnny Local” making his way to better things at all. The hugely successful Championship that has their “house in order”, is also embarrassingly attended. You’ll get the odd anomaly such as Poole and Glasgow who get decent crowds by Championship standards, but they are an exception to the rule. The majority in that league have pitiful attendance figures.

Any Poole fan by the way that comes on here and try’s to convince people that the crowd levels they’re seeing in the Championship aren’t that much different to the crowds they got when they had Holder and Ward ruling the roost, or Trick and Leigh Adams before them, are lying. Simple as that.

The fact of the matter is, that attendances has steadily declined in this Country over the last 10-20 years, and that has coincided with an ever dwindling number of world class riders that ride over here to the point we now have only a small handful left. There are other factors as to why attendances have dwindled of course there are, but let’s please stop pretending that having or not having, the best riders in the world riding here doesn’t make a difference! Of course it bloody well does.

Rider costs have spiralled out of control for the very top riders and any increase in attendance at tracks that manage to sign them, wouldn’t in all likelihood cover the financial outlay to get them over and that is the problem. It’s a catch22 situation unfortunately but getting shot of the ones we do still have, water the product down even further, and the death of the sport in this Country will gather pace at a rate of knots. You can forget any meaningful sponsorship or TV deal! Nobody will be interested. There’s a reason nobody, even back to the Sky Sports days, were remotely interested in showing anything below the top tier.

 

To use the Tiger's academy meeting as an example is not really fair, it was very much after the Lord Mayors show on a dark October evening asking fans to turn out to watch a bunch of riders they have zero affinity with.

NDL is pitifully attended, that's because it shouldn't be being sold as a product and should be being included as part of the senior teams race night package imo.

All clubs crowds are pitifully attended in the terms of other "professional" sports with maybe only County Championship cricket being the exception, but they certainly make up for that with the other formats of their sport, in fact you could possibly compare the County Championship to our NDL.

@mikebv has pretty much covered the rest 👍

[therefused]

11 hours ago, TTT said:

I'm just very Pro-PREM while other Fans are very much against it which is totally fine as they're entitled to an opinion as am I.

I think thats a big assumption that everyone arguing for one league is not a fan of the prem. I am, but logic and history dictates its not working and not affordable in the current climate, if and when it gets to a point that it is then more the merrier, i would like nothing more than two full leagues of teams but it just isnt managable. 

[THE DEAN MACHINE]

Be honest, if you had a couple of million to throw at sponsoring British speedway, with the current state of the sport and knowing all your doing is giving it too the bspl or speedway futures (same people) to jizz up the wall again would you ? I know I wouldn’t not in its current business model 

Edited 28 minutes ago by THE DEAN MACHINE

[Phannan]

9 minutes ago, THE DEAN MACHINE said:

Be honest, if you had a couple of million to throw at sponsoring British speedway, with the current state of the sport and knowing all your doing is giving it too the bspl or speedway futures (same people) to jizz up the wall again would you ? I know I wouldn’t not in its current business model 

I wouldn’t no. Not until it had a total shake up from the bottom . None of this them and us rubbish regarding both the leagues. It’s all the same sport isn’t it . The two leagues should be intertwined. Meaning promotion and relegation. None of this I’m only racing in that league and on that night crap. I know riders race in different countries on different nights. Surely there’s a way to get around that. More complicated issues than that in life have been overcome. The current model doesn’t work, causes divisions. It’s only going one way. There has to be jeopardy to the sport to make it more attractive and entertaining. No doubt I’m living in cuckoo land wanting this though.