Think Like a Fan………
This was the advice given by Len Silver, presumably to
other promoters in a recent edition of the Star. He believes the most important
aspect of being a promoter is to put yourself in the
place of the fans and acknowledges that some promoters/tracks don’t seem to
grasp this fundamental point. Len is dead right and I am sure that we all know
the suspects. Mr Silver acknowledges that things like the toilets, the visual
aspects of the stadium, the availability of car parking and presentation in
addition to the quality of the racing all have a bearing on whether customers
will come or not. Without covering old ground, presentation in particular,
especially in this day and age is arguably more important than the product. I
am not a great advocate of all the hype that surrounds most things these days,
in fact only recently we had examples of this. An overlong 2 hour TV programme
dedicated to two boat loads of students rowing down a river and various people
running the streets of London
with a rather large fag lighter and eventually lighting a barbecue outside a
large tent in an industrial wasteland. These events prove to me that you can go
too far but in comparison Speedway
isn’t out of the traps yet. Only recently on a late night phone-in show on
Radio 2 reference was made to a speedway venue – I won’t mention the name, but
its in south Wales, comment was made in general terms about speedway and the
track in particular – the presenter seemed to know something about the sport
and knew of that particular track. In response the person phoning in made a
fairly negative comment about how long it now takes to run a meeting – great
stuff a wonderful advert for an insomnia cure! And I am also aware of another
track that on their opening night of the season, true to form ran on until
10:15 pm from an alleged 7:30pm start. This was of course on a cold and windy
night and given previous form at this venue was the very reason I didn’t go.
Well what else, the dropping of the bonus point. Only a matter of a couple of weeks into the season
and there are calls for it to be reinstated. Yes certain tracks have made hay
with this one in the past, but arguably it did help to keep the interest going
in those matches that were over as a contest by heat 6. Those with a perceived home
track advantage, Sheffield and Ryehouse it seems to
be suggested gained an unfair advantage and probably Exeter in years gone by. But have they ? Well according to “The Star” stats published recently
there could well be some truth in it. Over the last 11 seasons who are the top
bonus points scorers? With an average of 10.09 a
season well er its Sheffield
closely followed by Kings Lynn on 10.02 (based only on a 5 season average
however). Isle of Wight are next on 9.0, Ryehouse are 4th best on 8.0. There’s not a
great amount to choose between the rest and Birmingham’s result of 9.0 based on 1 season
is not thatithtically relevant as Chrith
Ewbankths would say. In the Elite league 3 clubs seem
to be a bit ahead of the rest, Coventry on 9.45
a lot to do with last season’s efforts I suspect, Swindon on 9.5 and top of the
shop Poole on 10.18. Now who were the
promotions calling for the reinstatement of the bonus point er
let me think …..oooh er missus it was ….. well you
should already know and it wasn’t last years champions ! 3 points for an away
win sounds good but how achievable are away wins ? and what about those matches where the result isn’t really
in any doubt at about heat 6. What is the point of an away side “going for it”
when there isn’t really anything to go for apart from any early shower ? Will some teams back off in attempt to lower their
average come the end of the season as some cynics amongst us have already
suggested - only time will tell. Interestingly going back to the stats over the
years most teams have only averaged about 2 or 3 away wins anyway. Exceptions
to this seem to be Coventry (6) and Birmingham (7) and these are probably not
representative due to Coventry’s blinding season last year and there only being
1 years figures for the Brummies. So what does all
this tell us ? Well in Speedway the home side has the advantage
barring accidents or the weather cancelling out all the track preparation – thatithtics I mean statistics prove they will be pretty
unlucky to lose on home shale. Anything introduced then to make the second half
of a match interesting when it’s pretty obvious which way the result will go
should be a good thing for the sport as a whole. Hang on a minute though,
a couple of tracks can get more of an advantage – well better scrap it then. It
hasn’t been thought through has it !
A lot has been said about team averages and its
clearly frozen a number of riders out of the scene this year but what of next year ? With a combined team average of less than what is required
to win a match you would expect a greater number of teams to be above the limit
come next season – is this to allow for a surplus of riders for all the new
teams clamouring to join the league next season, will the limit be raised ? or will more riders be without a track ? Has it been thought
through ? is there a long
term plan ?
Then there are the startling revelations about Nicki Pedersen and the alleged share out of the £60,000
purse for the big meeting at Poole. Was it a
magnanimous gesture on his behalf or was it a pact between the four finalists –
it’s not clear from what I have read on the subject. Some of us are old enough
to remember when “The Sunday People” ran a story on speedway for three or four
consecutive weekends apparently blowing the lid on “race fixing“ within the sport. The stories amounted to much the same as
this incident – but that was when speedway was billed as the second most
popular spectator sport. It sold papers then, now it’s a bit different, not
many of their reader’s probably even know what speedway is. Arguably the Sunday
People and their revelations helped put it where it is today.
Finally what about the Elite League pairs meeting ? Its not the
first time fans have been treated to a fiasco like this - what has been learnt
from past experiences ? Well obviously nothing – there are the same
recriminations between riders and promoters. There still seems to be no plan to
deal with such eventualities. I could understand it if the British Isles had
similar rainfall patterns to the Sahara. Why
was there no reserve date for such a big meeting ? Come
to that why on earth was it called off in the first place – meetings have been
run under worse conditions. Maybe some of those involved ought to take heed of
what Len Silver has to say while we still have a sport left.
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