Back when I used to write regularly, I was always trying to save British speedway. I’d make suggestions of how each problem that came up could be avoided or fixed, with the usual caveat that it wasn’t my money and that my ideas could always fail in practice.
However, it seems
to be the thing at the moment, with even the industry bible Speedway Star acknowledging that that
sport is on its uppers (although strangely quiet about the often-shambles that
is the Speedway Grand Prix series…), and so I thought I’d return to the
subject, with one last, desperate swoop at saving the day. Hey, I never
pretended I didn’t have delusions of grandeur!
So how to do it?
Well, the first step is to listen to the fans. In a sport like football, or
like cricket, or Formula One, the fans are an afterthought. They’re there to
provide atmosphere and their money doesn’t really make all that much difference
to the fortunes of the big players. It was theorised that the last big Premier
League football deal – the one before the giant one they signed earlier this
year – would have allowed clubs to take £20 off the price of each ticket
without any change to their fortunes, so you can kind of see that the fans
really don’t need to be listened to.
In speedway,
however, the fans bring the bulk of the cash through the turnstiles.
Furthermore, because speedway promoters aren’t actually very good at the
promoting bit (and those that are are hamstrung in the age of social media by a
restrictive media rights deal), it’s pretty important to get the fans on your
side. The traditional way of doing this has been to do whatever the hell you
like and expect the fans to turn out, regardless, because where else are they
going to go for their speedway? Unfortunately, many promoters are finding that
fans would rather do without…
There are many
gripes from fans about the current British speedway product, and I could be
here all day listing them. It’s probably better to ask what the fans want, rather than what they don’t like,
and with that in mind there seem to be three main desires – they want regular
speedway, they want to see the same team week in, week out, and they don’t want
to pay too much to see it.
Regular speedway used to mean weekly meetings. When I first
started going to Coventry,
you knew every Saturday would be speedway night. Well, except for the first
Saturday in every month, when stock cars ran, and the Bees would be away at one
of the other Saturday night tracks. The only time a World Championship meeting
interfered with things was the World Final, once a season, and fans got into
the habit of going every week.
The same was
repeated up and down the country and it’s paramount that we get back to that.
Again, using Coventry
as an example, in 2013 the promotion introduced National League speedway
alongside the Elite League Bees and were rewarded with healthy crowds for both,
despite a lacklustre campaign for the senior side. It’s no coincidence that
2014 & 2015, which have been disjointed and broken, saw crowds fall
alarmingly for the Storm, and rise by a little for the Bees, despite
much-improved EL seasons. You can get out of the habit, you see?
Whether it be
weekly, or fortnightly, there has to be a set pattern for speedway. Fans can’t
leave a meeting knowing there won’t be another for a month, or sometimes even
not knowing when the next one will be because rain-offs have yet to be
restaged! Get the fixture list right and you’ve got a captive audience for the
rest.
Quite how you do it
is another thing. The simplest way also impacts on the second fan desire – and more
of that in a minute – and that is to declare a unilateral fixture list. Being a
member of the FIM, and signing up to their international calendar, means that
you won’t always get first priority in the international fixture list, but
there’s no rule against running the meetings regardless, it just means
availability of riders is lessened. And that might a blow to some but its
impact – for me, at least – is offset by the gain from that regular racenight.
So, that (kind of)
sorted, on to the next fan desire: they
want to see the same team week in, week out. It used to be that your club
would declare its one-to-seven at the start of the season – often as late as
press & practice day – and, barring injury or dramatic loss of form, that
would be the seven that saw you through. They’d ride in the majority of
meetings, if not all, and guests and other facilities were minimal. Yeah,
sometimes your top man got injured and you’d use a guest, but often any gaps –
and certainly those lower down in the team – would be filled by a “junior”, one
of the unattached riders who rode second-halves at your track.
Nowadays, it’s not
unusual for half or more of the fourteen riders on show to be missing, replaced
by the horrid rider-replacement facility or a guest from other team. I’ve
always accepted guests for what they are but their use has gotten ridiculous,
and facilities are being granted for the flimsiest of reasons, and there are
other fans who’ve never liked guests,
drifting away from the sport or moaning into their programme boards on their
way to drifting away from the sport.
It’s accepted
wisdom that there aren’t enough riders to go around for our leagues, and I’m
not sure that’s true. But even if it is, is it not putting the cart before the
horse? If there aren’t enough riders to go around, there are too many teams.
But that’s the curse of a speedway culture that sees league racing as the only
thing worth promoting. For proof of that, they point to non-league meetings
drawing less than league meetings, but that ignores that those meetings usually
have a lesser field for the same price and that if there is a choice, people
will go with what they know. What if there was no choice? What if there was
only non-league racing? We’ll never know because it hasn’t been done for thirty
years…
But let’s accept,
for a moment, that there are enough riders. That you can find 196 riders to
fill team places at the 28 standalone clubs in the UK (with six-rider teams it falls
to 168). You then have to ensure that those riders put the UK first, ahead
of anything other than their own championships and league racing (and those clashes
are easily avoided when picking your team). Where is the logic in a UK team not being able to run a meeting – or utilising
a facility for a missing rider – when an Australian is riding in Poland? Or a
Dane in Sweden?
Baffling.
Fans want to know
that their riders care about their team. It may not be true – witness the “kissing
the badge” craze in football – but as long as the riders make a good stab at
pretending the fans are easily pleased. They don’t want to know that, actually, riders value their Polish and
Swedish clubs higher because they pay
more. It may be a fact of life that the different models of sport, politics,
and business in those countries allow that sort of cash-splashing, but it
shouldn’t affect how we do things.
No, find a group of
riders – and they are out there – who want to ride British speedway as their
first priority – and go with those riders ahead of any others. Again, like with
the issue of regular speedway, the loss of fans who only want to see the “best”
may well be outstripped by the gain from fans who find that, actually, having a
TEAM to support is much, much better (see Birmingham and Eastbourne this season
for proof of that…).
And that neatly
brings us to the fact that fans want
cheaper speedway. The cost of speedway has spiralled in recent years, out
of kilter with other forms of entertainment. None of it – or very little - has
gone into the pockets of the promoters, it’s that their costs have often
increased and the loss of fans – for so many reason, including those above –
has made things worse. It’s obvious, from when promotions run offers and are
rewarded with much bigger attendances, that there is a desire to see the sport,
it’s just the price that may be holding people back.
But even if there
was a will to reduce ticket prices across the board, how do you do it when the
costs are so high? Well, you either run at a loss (or increase other avenues of
income – tricky) or you reduce costs. I was privileged enough to get a look at
some accounts in recent years and rider costs for one team made up 65% of the
outgoings. That’s at least £12 of the £18 you pay at your local Elite League
track going to the riders, and maybe more because some teams are absolutely running
at a loss.
There’s an old
saying, “cut your coat according to your cloth,” which is being ignored by
promoters up and down the country. They’re stuck in an arms race, paying out
two thirds of their money to riders who are arguably not drawing the fans in to
pay for it. And part of that is because it’s become an accepted thing that
speedway riders are professionals, despite participants in sports with similar
crowds being very much semi-professional at best. And it never used to be the
case – the title-winning Ipswich Witches side of 1984 had only four full-time riders!
It’s not a case of
whether the riders deserve full-time money, it’s whether that full-time money
is there. And it’s not. And that, in itself, may help make the first two items
on fans’ wish lists more possible. If you are drawing from a pool of riders who
are not earning the big money – those unlikely to be missing fixtures because of
the SGP, SWC, Polish & Swedish leagues – then regular fixtures and
consistent teams become easier to achieve…
As an aside to this,
and because I’ve mentioned it above, one way to reduce prices is to get more fans
through the gate. You know a simple way of doing that? Get the product – which is
often very, very good – out there for
as many eyes to see. How do you do that? Videos on YouTube, linked to Twitter
and Facebook, and highlights on any page that will have them. Easy, right?
Especially in these days of simple uploading and wi-fi and 4G. Well, not if the
contract signed with Terry Russell prevents it. Imagine that – the most visually
exciting of sports going unseen by millions of potential fans!
There’s no easy
answer to speedway’s current problems. If there were I’m sure even those
promoters whose intellect we cast shadows on would have found it. It requires
bold and innovative thinking, broad strokes rather than tinkering with the
rules (and don’t get me started on the rules!), and a willingness to truly
re-shape the British speedway landscape.
(There are other, smaller issues that need
to be addressed, and maybe I’ll be back with those if there’s a willingness to
hear it. I understand it’s a difficult time for a lot of people in the sport but
time is ticking…)
