Has The Premiership Supporters Cup Been A Success?

The Swindon Robins travel to Manchester tonight as they take on the Belle Vue Aces in the inaugural final of the Premiership Supporters Cup. But has the new cup competition that was aimed at getting fans more involved in British Speedway been a success? Total Sport Swindon’s Ryan Walker gives his analysis.

Tonight presents the Swindon Robins with the chance to get one hand on the Premiership Supporters Cup as they take on Mark Lemon’s Belle Vue Aces at the National Speedway Stadium in the first leg of the competitions grand final. 

The birth of Speedway Great Britain’s newest cup tournament saw Premiership teams split into a north and south group with the winners - Swindon and Belle Vue - progressing to the final which will take place over two legs.

But at a time in which speedway club closures are starting to become more commonplace within the sport, much has been made of the SGB’s latest attempt to get a new, more youthful audience interested in speedway. 

Any idea that is attempting to do this must be commended. The boom in social media activity over the last decade has seen sports have to adapt their approaches to fan engagement, and you only have to take one look at Twitter and the prevalence of football clubs on there to see how valuable a strong social media following is to a sports organisation. 

Unfortunately, speedway was late to the game and now finds itself playing catchup, with clubs left thinking of new ways to get more fans involved across various social media platforms. 

The unique selling point of the Premiership Supporters Cup is the ability to let fans decide what riders take to the track in heat fourteen via a poll on the respective club's official Twitter accounts. This encourages fan engagement by letting supporters have an impact on the outcome of the meeting.

The only negative, however, is that there is nothing stopping opposition fans corrupting the poll by voting for opposing riders who haven’t had the best of evenings to therefore boost their team's chances of taking the victory. 

The Premiership Supporters Cup is trying something new and you never know if something will be a good idea until you give it a try. In this case, the Supporters Cup has had a respectable debut year but unfortunately, this one addition of a nominated heat vote isn’t enough to get floods of footfall through the turnstiles. 

There is also the problem of some fans not using social media so therefore you are already missing out on engaging with a large percentage of those in attendance at meetings. 

There is no blueprint to success in terms of guaranteeing an increase in attendances at British speedway stadiums, but surely more can be done by the SGB to help this. Just take a look at the fantastic efforts of the Swindon Robins social media team and the work Lee Kilby is putting in to attract a new audience to the sport and you will realise that the SGB isn't doing enough. 

The Premiership Supporters Cup is an opportunity for both Swindon and Belle Vue to lift silverware this season, but the overall success of the competition was based on promoting fan engagement and unfortunately, this cup just hasn’t done enough and more must be done.