Improving the Sport Part 2

In Part 2, we're looking at Club Memberships, Match Ticket systems, Club Shops and Digital Media.

British Speedway League (BSL Club Membership)

BSL Club Membership could split some people, as every club will require total commitment to support the British Speedway League as a central entity. The British Speedway League Club will gradually replace the mishmash of different platforms British clubs use for their digital and club merchandise needs. Through this platform, supporters will buy their matchday tickets (in tandem with, not instead of cash turnstiles), club merchandise, and access digital content such as match highlights and interviews. We can also use the platform for premium streaming of live matches, possibly through a pay as you go model. 

Imagine a single place where you can reach any potential fans, helping entice them into this beautiful sport through promotional videos and slick branding to back it up.

Central Match Ticket System

Travelled from Redcar to Poole only for it to be rained off? Never mind, you can redeem your BSL purchase at a Redcar home match!

All British Speedway League Club Membership members get issued a club membership card. You can use the card to gain access to your home track and any other track in the country. Members who use their club card every week can build up loyalty points which, can be used for rewards such as free entry to away fixtures or a discounted home ticket. This way, we can encourage seasoned veterans and new faces to explore other tracks in their area.

One thing to remember at this stage, it's all about encouraging more people through the turnstiles. We will likely see a shortfall in income due to the initial discounts. However, the added value given to supporters will see attendances rise through referral marketing, one of the most substantial and natural resources available to promotors. 

You could put all sorts of benefit schemes in place to encourage loyalty. For example, if you attended ten speedway matches, you can enter one match at any OTHER TRACK for £5 or attend your local club for £10! Use it to discover what else is out there. If you're a Wolverhampton faithful, you can redeem your voucher for a £5 ticket entry to check out Leicester or Birmingham. 

The great thing about this is the rewards can be vast, but it doesn't have to replace cash and card on the turnstiles. If the older supporters want to pay their money and go, let them! We can give them leaflets explaining the benefits of BSL Club, but ultimately, we don't want to overcomplicate their experience. A confused mind doesn't buy.

Suppose BSL can offset the risk of losing your money to rain off's or other unforeseen abandonments. With the central system in place, we can encourage more advance ticket purchases, especially if travelling fans have the safety net of redeeming their credit at a home match due to cancellation.

BSL Club Shop

Allow all the clubs within the league to sell their merchandise through the BSL website. The system can also include Speedway GP and individual riders merchandise if promotions can make a deal beneficial to British Speedway. It's a system that works tremendously well in the USA's NFL. If all your speedway gift needs are in one place, the sport's chances of sale and direct profit increase for speedway. You could sell the usual things like shirts, hoodies, hats, but you can expand that range to BSL club ties, handcuffs, jewellery, phone cases, signed goggles or race jackets. There's a market for this stuff which you can see if you look on places like eBay. Why not capitalise on it for the direct benefit of the tracks.

Plus, fans can keep building their loyalty points. Again, this doesn't have to replace individual club shops, but it will require the respective clubs to either hand over merchandise needs to BSL or work closely with them. Buying power with BSL will increase through the central procurement resources. They'll be able to negotiate better supply costs for merchandise and, in turn, sell the products to the fans at affordable rates.

We could also start offering clubs matchday programs through digital platforms. It won't replace the physical copies bought at the track but gives an alternative option to new fans with a low distribution cost. 

There are many fantastic benefits for fans just for signing up, but we could offer even more incentives for people who sign up for British Speedway League Club Premium. Here are some examples of what could be done for premium members. 

• Get early access to match highlights (ahead of public release on public platforms like Vimeo and YouTube.
• Discounts on match tickets and programmes
• Annual membership packs - Including things like a pin badge, annual booklet with the fixtures and team line ups, a British League program board, Car Sticker etc. 
•  You could partner with Speedway Star and create a joint membership, the possibilities are vast.
• BSL Annual aimed at younger supporters, with rider profiles, history, full-colour images. Crosswords, paint by numbers, colouring, all that good stuff.  
• Potential for a central streaming service, pay per view for full matches or allow premium members access to some live streams, promoting the service even more.
• Keep live speedway on TV, interlace the youth races with the central meetings, keep the crowd entertained and give the TV coverage time to do interviews and ads.
• Put together a weekly speedway highlights package, covering every match with two riders giving their opinion to a head anchor, for example, someone like Steve Brandon.

Speedway Live Streaming 

• We would need buy-in from the companies filming the league matches to work—Clean Cut Sports, Speedway Portal, Re Run Videos etc. 
• We want BSL members to have access to digital streaming of matches and the license carriers for each venue to commit to highlights packages after EVERY MATCH. We don't just want to see single camera angle video footage of the racing. We want to see an exciting collection of shots from multiple angles, action in the pits, and the crowd's reaction. Show us something that will keep us interested alongside the action on the track.
• Make the highlight packages available within one day for members on the BSL Portal and three days to the general public.  

The International Test Stream was £14.99 from Glasgow; this gives you an idea of the current value placed on speedway from promotions.

I've mentioned loyalty points and rewards multiple times. It's a key part of building the fanbase and retaining new fans. When marketing is discussed, it's often referring to new customers, but maintaining your current fanbase and extending from within is far cheaper and more cost efficient. Members can earn loyalty Points through;

• Regular Attendance of your Local Track 
• Regular attendance of other Tracks 
• Merchandise Purchase
• Live stream Purchases 
• Social Media Interaction 
• Competitions

Bringing the Fan-base Together

The BSL Club can bring our fan-base together through a centrally managed system, giving promoters the ability to access all the fans with promotions, news and event details. Promotors could give reward vouchers to volunteers at the tracks, the lifeblood of the sport, with credit on their memberships to use on merchandise or tickets for away trips. We could put a referral scheme in place once the platform is established. Referral marketing is the most efficient type of marketing out there. Entire businesses are built using this system. It's cheap, easy to use, and provides supporters with an easy way to recommend the sport to their friends and family.

We all support our teams, but most of us support the sport just as much, if not more! The British Speedway League club will be the place to go if you're a speedway fan in the UK.

Improving the Sport

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