Even Cheesy Costs Too Much in 2009 for BSI Speedway's Showpiece Event in Cardiff

A snippet about entertainment at Cardiff that appeared in the lengthy coverage of the Prague Grand Prix (the first of the 2009 series) in this week’s Speedway Star inadvertently yet again reveals the desperation of the cost-cutting measures that BSI Speedway appear keen to undertake. Arguably, it also signals they have already planned for 2009 Cardiff revenues and/or attendances to decline from previous levels.

Since the inaugural Cardiff Grand Prix, the organisers have dictated that our pre and mid meeting entertainment should be of the cheesy faded, fallen star variety they apparently deem appropriate to the collective emotional and cognitive outlook of the average speedway fan. Though they might not be everyone’s fifth choice of musical artiste, the performers we’ve seen have enjoyed some element of name recognition and, often, a reasonable sized back catalogue of their own previously successful material.

To name but a few, some of the artists we’ve seen at Cardiff have included: Bonnie Tyler, the late great Edwin Starr, Belinda Carlisle, Chas & Dave, Tony Hadley (without Spandau Ballet) and Tony Christie. (We'll ignore X Factor losers like the McDonald Brothers or Ray Quinn) Obviously, there have been equipment problems (and some pitiful spiders with legs on stilts) but the veneer of genuinely wanting to put on a show at the Millenium Stadium has remained intact. You also have to think that all of these haven’t come (too) cheap. John Postlethwaite and his esteemed management team have hummed their cheesy, retro tune and we’ve dutifully sung along. This year - along with the traditional poor track surface, predictable format and field of participants - we’re informed that we’re now going to be treated to the pre-meeting entertainment sounds of a Queen tribute band!

Next year the ongoing logic of further BSI Speedway cost cutting at the SGP would dictate that the entertainment offered will probably decline even further to become karaoke with some extra coloured flashing lights. *

Why would anyone even think to bother to book a Queen tribute band? Hold on, actually, companies founded by John Postlethwaite have some previous here (and probably thinks “We are the Champions!” is the ideal signature tune to accompany BSI Speedway PowerPoint presentations of the SGP financials to IMG). Indeed, it’s less than three years since BSI Reading (during their ill starred attempt to ‘revolutionise’ the Elite League via their rebranded ‘investment vehicle’ of the Reading Bulldogs) tried and completely failed to entice/entertain the 2006 EL Play Off Final (first leg) crowd with – a Queen tribute band! If it’s good enough for Smallmead, I say it’s good enough for Cardiff. Obviously, I have no idea of the band booked then will be the one we get to witness at Cardiff. There are so many tribute bands, after all.

To give a flavour of what’s in store here’s a snippet – that also features dedicated Oxford Speedway trackman Nobby Hall - from my book on the 2006 speedway season Shifting Shale (now available for a bargain £10) that captures something of how the band at the Cardiff GP might sound:

“Far from seeking to innovate when it comes to the choice of music played to the punters at the premium speedway meetings they stage, the BSI as an organisation appears to pride itself to only offer music stuck in a time warp for a certain bygone era of mass entertainment. At Cardiff they at least have the decency to make ironic or slightly fey choices – though I must admit that the 2006 combination of Bonny Tyler and Tony Christie did appeal in a kind of kitsch-cum-retro type way – but tonight at Smallmead as a crowd we appear to have become trapped at speedway’s equivalent of Guantanamo Bay. We’re definitively a captive audience as we wait for the action to start and BSI Reading appear keen to infantilise us as well as beat us into psychological submission with some loud, garish and atonal music we haven’t actually chosen or can’t turn down. In fact, we have no choice but to sit passively and listen since it drowns almost all conversation. Judged by his coat, maybe a Queen tribute band is in fact John Postlethwaite’s favoured choice of music to relax to, though, much more likely, they’re somehow related. If none of these explanations apply, they’re probably just a rather condescending reasonably priced choice of what they think speedway fans would like to listen to. Whatever the reason, the lead singer greets us with a cheery “Hello Reading!” as though he’s mistaken this gig – so strongly redolent of an end-of-the-career booking - for the headline slot at the Reading Festival rather than its reality of the centre green at Smallmead. It must be a nightmare engagement - the chance to play to the older demographic in the form of an audience of uninterested speedway fans who really just can’t wait for you to stop. The volume is set at deafening so we’re all along for the ride, except for those with adjustable volume on their hearing aids. Sadly the singer affects to persuade himself, if no one else, that we’re actually all here to specifically see him and the band. He frequently implores us to rise above our default setting of catatonia throughout the ’gig’. “If you want to boogie feel free!”, “Show your hands” and “sing it” are uttered/screeched with apparent sincerity and great regularity, though without any appreciable impact. Apart from a touching lack of awareness, another factor that disrupts the performance is an apparent unfamiliarity with the basic lyrics and mechanics of the Queen oeuvre. “I’m going to sing something – sing it back to me” requests the lead singer before he noisily murders the rather appropriate choice of Another One Bites The Dust. Nobby isn’t impressed, “I can’t hear myself think, let alone speak”. With a few more failed imprecations to action or reaction from the stunned captive crowd, the band launch into the most famous Queen song of all which tonight, I think we can call, Bulldogian Rhapsody. Nobby shouts above the cacophony approvingly, “They’re all out of key now!” When the singer fails to simultaneously hit the high notes and introduces some unusual quavers into “mama, I just killed a man” you really hope that his mum isn’t here or, worse still for long-term future embarrassment of the whole family, isn’t a Smallmead regular as she’d never live down the horror and the shame of this execrable, almost post-modern performance that unintentionally verges on so-bad-it’s-good levels of irony.

Nobby shouts, “They’re better on Stars in their Eyes than here”. A short while later he points out a celebrity a row and few seats away, “that’s the dog that was on TV at Peterborough last week”. Boy, it is a cutely distracting dog and it sits throughout with its paws on the handrail to apparently follow each race with an intensity that is almost as absorbing as the on-track action. Before we get all the blessed relief of the loud roar of the bike engines rather than the loud violence of the ‘music’, we endure a final fruitless appeal from the lead singer, “come on Reading – big finish” before they grunkily segue into an atonal unintentionally post punk version of the Queen standard Radio GaGa. Nobby shouts wittily, “It’s all been GaGa!” At a different volume there might be a career for this band on the chicken-in-the-basket pub and club circuit but based on this display, to paraphrase Alan Partridge, their music would be better suited to the less discerning “spinal cord in bap” crowd.

When they finally mercifully kill the set, the silence is golden……”



* This might not be such a bad idea since I’m sure the always enthusiastic, good value and professional Cardiff presenter Kevin Coombes would definitely draw a considerable crowd into the stadium early to hear him croon a few choice numbers. If we could sponsor him and the monies raised were given to the Speedway Riders Benevolence Fund then things might really take off! And, indeed, also vaguely give something back to speedway rather than line BSI Speedway’s pockets.

Unanswered questions & secrecy mar launch of 2009 Speedway Grand Prix series

The new series of the Speedway Grand Prix is about to get underway but, arguably, finds the glamour of its start marred by cost-cutting, secrecy and prevarication. Sadly, the fanfare over the arrival of a new website for the Speedway Grand Prix fails to paper over the vexatious issues and unanswered questions that still beset this ‘competition’ run by “BSI Speedway – An IMG Company”. Weirdly, the look and feel of this new all singing and dancing website mixes a kind of corporate German 70s porn aesthetic with something altogether more funereal. Perhaps, unconsciously, BSI Speedway want to acknowledge the great impending unsaid of its terminal decline?

Whatever message BSI Speedway tried to send to the world via cyberspace this lunchtime, we were allowed to witness the live draw (be still my beating heart) for the Prague Grand Prix tomorrow night. Well, actually I couldn’t as the flow player refused to load on two different browsers but, afterwards, I was able to thrill at written version of the keenly awaited gate position and helmet colour news. All this activity indicates that the 2009 series is again about to start to widespread UK media disinterest. This is fortunate for the organisers since serious questions remain unanswered about the ‘success’ of the series or even the quality of information provided by BSI Speedway.

The astonishing achievement of a cancellation of an indoor meeting because of the impact of the weather remains a reminder of the management expertise and ability the organisation can call upon. Only a few months back, Paul Bellamy blithely told the Speedway Star that the news from the Gelsenkirchen post mortem remained shrouded in mystery because of unspecified “legal issues to be resolved”. This still remains firmly swept under the carpet and, despite the ongoing public relations disaster of Gelsenkirchen debacle, no member of the management team has yet provided the promised update or done the decent thing and resigned.

The derisory offer of free tickets to 2009 SGP events for severely out of pocket fans has inadvertently revealed that BSI Speedway will only actually stage three meetings in the series themselves during 2009 (Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Cardiff, I believe). We must assume the rest remain franchised out under the SGP brand umbrella to locally based promotions or stadium owners. BSI used to stage four meetings but the addition of Gelsenkirchen to their roster proved way beyond them and now is no longer part of the series calendar. The oft-heralded strategic success of the indoor stadia revolution lauded by BSI now looks to be hype or a possible misstep.

If the series is really the success that BSI Speedway imply and/or claim, you would imagine that the attendance figures for the 2008 series would have already been published by the F.I.M. by now? They certainly have been published by the F.I.M. in the past but, mysteriously, this information remains absent from the public domain for the 2008 series and, obviously enough, notable by its absence on the newly revamped BSI Speedway website! Though, at least this is consistent since this revealing detail remained unacknowledged on the previous iteration of their website. How the series can think it might be taken seriously in the wider media when suddenly attendance figures stop being produced is a public relations question we can all guess the answer to quite easily. To be fair, we have heard that Cardiff attracted 42,187 (a wonderful 920 or 2.22% up on 2007 but only 0.45 % or 187 up on 2002). Suspicions remain that this is probably the biggest success story of 2008 SGP series for BSI Speedway but, without the figures for the other events, we have no context to judge this either way. Under the management of “BSI Speedway – An IMG Company”, the jewel in the crown of world speedway did achieve a real first. Namely, it exhibited early but severe recessionary characteristics way before the credit crunch had really hit elsewhere and long before it had begun to decimate other industries and/or entertainment businesses. This is quite an achievement when you, effectively, run a monopoly business without any serious transnational rivals!

Though in the past these lamentable average attendance figures lacked any real independent verification (and ignoring the worry that so many weirdly symmetrical numbers were included that you’d have to assume that these were ‘rounded’ figures not exact ones) - there was the additional issue of whether these figures actually referred to ‘paying customers’ or might (or might not) also include discounted admissions (and/or comps) to inflated often pitiful totals. Whatever, the specifics of their tabulation, BSI Speedway’s (“An IMG Company”) continued failure to publish the 2008 attendance figures for the SGP series can only fuel rumours that the popularity of the series is in terminal decline with paying customers prepared to go to watch the action at the stadiums themselves. This waning interest would be a rational reaction given the predictably stale, same old, same old* nature of the series that’s served up nowadays. Of course, this lack of interest has been compounded by the staging doubts raised by the Gelsenkirchen fiasco, never mind the mixed message sent by the recent dramatic cost costing to the Super Prix prize money by the organisers. If a few tweaks to the website are breathlessly heralded as breaking and significant news, it’s reasonable to assume that if there had been an improvement in overall fan attendances that we’d have heard about it somewhere!**

Still, with the management team they continue to employ, you have to wonder if BSI Speedway (or, indeed, IMG) really care about in the flesh speedway fans that bother to turn up at these events beyond some standard lip service? A teaser video on the new website for the 2009 boasts “brutally fast machines”, “wheel to wheel racing” and “no brakes”. To the background sound of portentous Home Counties mansion man style classical music, great play is also made that “something is coming” That “something” is probably yet further damage to the remaining credibility of the management team at BSI Speedway, while the popularity of the once vibrant series declines further amongst the true fans who can be bothered to actually attend these meetings. Sadly, the armchair fans the sponsors can reach have become the target audience and they’re not going to care either way whether they watch monster trucks or speedway rider’s battle for supremacy.

* Obviously the Prague GP win for 19 year old Russian rider Emil Sayfutdinov shakes up the old boys network of the established order and adds a degree of unexpected excitement. The SGP remains essentially a parasitic organisation that borrows other peoples assets (or hires the self employed dependent upon your PoV)and uses them thoughtlessly. The SGP has yet to invest in or pay for the development of any speedway rider, let alone a SGP one! It continues to use the pitiful F.I.M. pay scales so if Emil's arrival onto the SGP scene does manage to boost attendances, television and/or advertising rights revenue - he (like all the other participants) definitely won't be able to retire on the prize money he earns.

** The publicly available average attendance figures we do have for SGP series (until 2007) exhibit a five year trend of decline from 2002 and, even if you accentuate the positive, the slight ‘rise’ in average attendances per GP in 2007 remains below 2002, 2003 and 2005 levels.

Savage 83% Super Prix Prize Money Cut Announced

It was only last year that the Speedway Grand Prix ‘organisers’ boasted on their website about the ludicrous concept of the Super Prix events. It was another of those new fangled revolutions that nobody had asked for or could really see the point of, despite hollow protestations that this “finale” would add to the drama of the SGP.

On the modest, self-styled “Number 1 website for League and World Speedway”, the Super Prix already has the stale whiff of the online equivalent of yesterday's chip wrappers. It boasts, “New for 2008 FIM Speedway Grand Prix Series is the introduction of four Super Prix events offering an additional prize purse of $200,000.” The prize money offered then was allocated as follows:
1st: $120,000
2nd: $40,000
3rd: $25,000
4th: $15,000

Under the headline ‘Not Super’, this week's Speedway Star reveals, “there will be no Super Prix finale with a big cash pot to conclude the 2009 SGP season”. However the lucky winners of three Super Prix rounds in 2009 – staged in Gothenburg, Copenhagen & Cardiff – will receive “double the normal prize money”. Wowy Zowy!

Let’s just remind ourselves of how pitiful the official F.I.M. Placing Prize money per meeting is for the SGP riders:
1 $11,000
2 $8,200
3 $6,900
4 $6,000
5 $5,250
6 $5,100
7 $4,650
8 $4,500
9 $3,850
10 $3,700
11 $3,650
12 $3,600
13 $3,550
14 $3,500
15 $3,450
16 $3,400
17 $2,100
18 $2,100

So, the SGP organisers have effectively announced an overall cut in prize money of 83.5% (S167,000). Strangely - as at April 2nd 2009 - the news of this savage reduction had yet to be relayed on “Number 1 website for League and World Speedway”. Now, the only way a rider can earn more prize money this season that it was possible to earn for victory in a SGP single race last season is if they win every single GP meeting of the 2009 season.

Hopefully, we’ll soon be able to read a full account of this decision on the SGP website Maybe this could be posted along with news from the long awaited allegedly sub judice investigation into the Gelsenkirchen fiasco. Quite what these savings from the prize fund will now be used for remains a mystery. However, thankfully we are informed, “the idea of a Super Prix bonanza race has not been scrapped”.