It's not every day that I get to be proved rig
By TMX Archives on 9th Dec 05
Last month's comment centred on the problems surrounding supercross in the UK and the inability of all the interested parties to pull together to present a united front. The December issue had been on sale for barely a week when we received a press release stating that the RHL Activities-promoted ACU Datatag British Supercross Championship was cancelled because of 'poor ticket sales'. At the time it was a bit of a bombshell but once the news had sunk in - about 60 seconds after I opened the email from RHL to be almost precise - it ceased to be a surprise at all. The simple truth is that supercross is a minority sport in the UK. You could argue quite correctly that - at least compared to baseball, basketball, NASCAR etc - it's also a minority sport in America as well. But size really does matter and a minority sport in the US can still draw from a huge potential audience. There's also the whole thorny issue of effective promotion to a non-SX - ie mainstream - audience but I'm not going to go into that apart from pointing out that we don't enjoy the exposure over here that the sport gets in the States where SX is big, big business. And AMA SX is the thing we all aspire to, the benchmark, the standard all national supercross championships will always be measured against. It's also an unrealistic goal - try to emulate that and you'll inevitably come away disappointed. Supercross in the UK would only be classified as Arenacross in the States. Cardiff's Millennium Stadium apart, the venues our various events are held at are not large enough to hold a full-on SX track - or an American-sized crowd for that matter. Sure, we've got plenty of venues big enough - nearly every major city in the country has at least one football stadium that would do the job nicely - but show me a promoter who's willing to risk splashing out on hiring, say, Old Trafford for the evening and I'll show you someone who's about to go bankrupt. But we don't need to be looking at getting 60,000 bums on seats - well, not yet anyway (and I can only marvel at the guts and enterprise John Hellam and his Future West company show every year by returning to a venue the size of Cardiff). The sport is only as exciting as the racing and we all know how exciting it can be in the UK. Matt Bates and his Events 22 outfit have shown that with a good track and evenly matched riders supercross is financially viable - the fans turn up, pay their £25, are treated to a night of first-class entertainment, go home feeling they've got value for money and will return the following year for more of the same. And the beauty is they don't have to be full-on petrolheads - or even know anything about the sport - to enjoy the spectacle. And that's where SX has the potential to expand the sport in this country much more than motocross with its muddy fields and sub-standard toilets ever will. And that's why it's so important we get this right. There is no easy solution - there rarely is for something that matters so much - but a little bit of common sense would be a good starting point. The ACU bill themselves as the governing body of our sports in the UK and, like it or not, an ACU endorsement does carry credibility when it comes to getting the right riders to the startgate. So how about it Rugby? Swallow some pride, try and rebuild a few burned bridges and make a real effort to get all the interested parties around the table. Base a series around established SX venues in this country, put some of the licence-payers' money into supporting the promoters and start building for the future.