You just can't make it pay!
By TMX Archives on 12th Jun 09
WHILE Gareth Hockey tells you like it is on page 4 editor JD sticks his oar into the choppy waters of contemporary MXGP promotion...
BRITISH MXGP promoter Gareth Hockey's words on page 4, printed directly opposite here, do not make for comfortable reading. Not only do they tell us what many of us have long suspected – that given the current circumstances it is all but impossible for a promoter to make running a MXGP financially viable.
Gareth also hints of skulduggery from some of those within – about which I know no more than you – but I know that Gareth doesn't make things up, and he really is upset about some of the goings-on at Mallory.
The stuff I do know about? Well, I hate to bang on about this but it is the same old story that I've gone on about for years. As long as we have would-be Bernie Ecclestone's running ‘our' sport then the individual promoter is always going to struggle to make it pay.
Look, I'm sure that Youthstream do a bloody good job. They have a dozen artics jam-packed with stuff like the mechanics' signalling tents and the TV equipment and green fencing and media stuff and who knows what else. Artic trailers hold the best part of a lot of stuff and I'm sure they don't bring one more truck than they need. Imagine the costs involved sailling that little lot across the channel?
Keeping this piece to the nuts and bolts, all this costs. And someone has to pay for it. Youthstream pay up front – and then look to each GP promoter to pay their whack – plus a bit of profit. Youthstream have already paid the FIM up front for the privelege of running the show. The FIM run away laughing.
This is great if there is a great wodge of cash sloshing around in the system. But I think we all know that there isn't. Even in the good times there aren't too many firms willing to hand over a quarter of a million quid to get their name on the programme advertising the British MXGP. At this moment in time many event promoters would snatch your hand off for £25.
Which leaves YOU – good old Joe Public – to pay for the whole shooting match. Again, fair enough if all you are paying for is a straightforward motocross, as the sport managed with for decades. But given all the stuff that you don't particularly want or don't benefit from, but which you have to pay for, there is no doubt that many people who would otherwise love to watch the British MXGP stayed at home – ironically to watch it on the telly! Funny isn't it, those that go to watch live pay for the stay-at-homes!
As I have said so many times that you are as sick of reading it as I am of writing it, if some great conglomerate of a company wants to pick up the tab for all this then great, I'm for all the self-indulgent VIP hospitality and whatever else they want to splurge the cash on. When it is me paying for it it's a different story. Personally, I'd never go anywhere near the VIP hospitality, even if I was invited. It's of zero interest to me. I watched this year's Mallory like I watch all racing, with the fans on the terrace.
Yes, factories want to outdo one another with the biggest most extensive fleet of shiny trucks and bloated teams with lots of hangers-on in their pilot shirts, monogrammed jackets and white trainers.
All the paying fans want to see is an afternoon full of motocross racing. End of.
Without the huge, and it is huge, fee that has to be paid in order to run a MXGP I am 100 per cent certain that Gareth Hockey would have put on a motocross of the highest standard, drawn a bigger crowd who would have paid less – and made a few quid into the bargain. As it is I don't even like to think how much he has lost.
First and foremost Gareth is an enthusiast and an unfailing optimist. He really does believe that there is a pot of gold at the end of the British MXGP rainbow.
Not exactly brimming with gold coin but at least containing enough used tenners to make all the hard work worthwhile. The simple facts are that in reality the sums just don't add up.
I'm not a Luddite and all things being equal I don't begrudge the teams their fantasies, the officials their expenses and everyone who gets their noses into the steaming gravy train is welcome. But all things are NOT equal and if there is nothing in place to sustain the flagging economy then the answer is to cut your suit according to your cloth.
World Trials, both indoor and outdoor, is doing just that even as we speak. There is no magic solution, the powers that be just have to work it all out between them. You have an event or a show and you have to run it to the best of your ability within a budget. It isn't rocket science – nor is it easy.
It's an exercise that motocross will, sooner or later, have to copy...