Post by coombes on Oct 3, 2018 8:44:54 GMT 1
Will our leagues be the same next year and will we be stuck with the same limited fixture list with large gaps in the season. There's been a lot of talk about merging the leagues and having racing seven nights a week.
One Big League
Is it feasible? Here's some rough numbers. The Premiership has 20 riders that don't double up and thirty that do. More than half of the 20 are unlikely to want to ride in one big league. If rather optimistically ten do and are added to all the riders in the Championship, you get 90 riders to be shared over 18 teams ie 5 per team. So every team would need 1 NL rider just to have six man teams. A big dilution of standard for Premiership fans who quite rightly would expect a corresponding reduction in admission prices.
18 teams in the big league would give 34 league meetings and throw in a couple more for Cup and challenge meetings so around 38, certainly less than forty. This season doubling up riders had over 50 meetings so the big league would represent a 25% reduction in meetings and presumably with a lower points rate an even bigger reduction in income. Can't see this working.
Big time Premiership
Are the Premiership promoters going to soldier on with just seven teams? You would expect they would try and persuade some of our league to join them. Does this sound like the NL/PL from over 50 years ago? Ipswich, Sheffield and possibly ourselves might be likely targets. Woukd they then go for a single fixed race night, possibly Thursdays, meaning the GP riders could have a weekly programme of Poland on Sundays, Sweden on Tuesdays and the UK on Thursdays with the GPS on alternate Saturdays. One GP rider per team perhaps. Would this work and could tracks afford it. It would be the ladt throw of the dice for top level Speedway in the UK?
Reduced Cost Championship
Whether we choose to admit it or not, the current standard in our league is one clubs can't afford and we need to reduce costs dramatically. This year we went for a league competition of roughly half the meetings that we had the previous year. Was this to reduce the number of loss making meetings and hence half teams losses. How we do it is more difficult. How do we get riders to become semi professional. Pay policies have never worked so some league wide set scale for points money is a non starter. This is the dilemma facing our divisions promoters this winter.
One Big League
Is it feasible? Here's some rough numbers. The Premiership has 20 riders that don't double up and thirty that do. More than half of the 20 are unlikely to want to ride in one big league. If rather optimistically ten do and are added to all the riders in the Championship, you get 90 riders to be shared over 18 teams ie 5 per team. So every team would need 1 NL rider just to have six man teams. A big dilution of standard for Premiership fans who quite rightly would expect a corresponding reduction in admission prices.
18 teams in the big league would give 34 league meetings and throw in a couple more for Cup and challenge meetings so around 38, certainly less than forty. This season doubling up riders had over 50 meetings so the big league would represent a 25% reduction in meetings and presumably with a lower points rate an even bigger reduction in income. Can't see this working.
Big time Premiership
Are the Premiership promoters going to soldier on with just seven teams? You would expect they would try and persuade some of our league to join them. Does this sound like the NL/PL from over 50 years ago? Ipswich, Sheffield and possibly ourselves might be likely targets. Woukd they then go for a single fixed race night, possibly Thursdays, meaning the GP riders could have a weekly programme of Poland on Sundays, Sweden on Tuesdays and the UK on Thursdays with the GPS on alternate Saturdays. One GP rider per team perhaps. Would this work and could tracks afford it. It would be the ladt throw of the dice for top level Speedway in the UK?
Reduced Cost Championship
Whether we choose to admit it or not, the current standard in our league is one clubs can't afford and we need to reduce costs dramatically. This year we went for a league competition of roughly half the meetings that we had the previous year. Was this to reduce the number of loss making meetings and hence half teams losses. How we do it is more difficult. How do we get riders to become semi professional. Pay policies have never worked so some league wide set scale for points money is a non starter. This is the dilemma facing our divisions promoters this winter.