I was motivated to write this article by recent events that have impacted the sports that I love to watch, both on tv and in person.
This has been exacerbated by the events of the last couple of days which have seen my home town rugby league team, Halifax Panthers, get wound up in court after an ongoing dispute with HMRC. Whether they are able to continue in some capacity is open to conjecture at this point in time.
A lot of the sports I am interested in are probably classed as minority sports in modern times having seen their glory days in the 1970s and 1980s. The ones I am thinking of are the aforementioned rugby league, stock car racing and speedway. Crowds used to flock to watch these sports but not such much nowadays.
In my opinion, many of the issues they are facing are self-inflicted. A lack of willingness to move with the times or a lack of foresight by the governing bodies seem to be at the heart of the issues they are currently facing.
The thing is though; it’s not just these sports that are facing problems. Football and cricket have their own issues to deal with. I’m a big fan of both these sports too. When it comes to cricket, I’m probably what you would class a purist. By that I mean I prefer to watch the more traditional forms of the game such as test cricket and fifty-over one day matches. The ECB (England Wales Cricket Board) have recognised though that younger people, their future audience, have less interest in those formats and by introducing twenty over cricket and their new Hundred competition hope to entice them to engage with them by attending these newer events. As the world, and technology, has evolved there are many more activities out there competing with these more conventional sports for peoples’ time.
When it comes to football and rugby league I see one unfortunate similarity, something I was discussing with a friend only a couple of days ago. The people who run the sport at the top level only seem to care about the sports at the top level. Ultimately there is not enough money filtering down to the lower levels and this is likely to see more situations arising like the one Halifax Panthers now find themselves in. In fact, Halifax are the third team to experience extreme financial difficulties in the rugby league world within the last three months or so with Salford also going through compulsory liquidation and Featherstone Rovers going to the wall completely. There are rumours that Oldham may be the next team who end up in the same boat. It’s a very sad situation.
Speedway in the UK is at a tipping point. The 2026 season is due to start during March. As I write this article, we still haven’t had confirmation of the number of teams who will be competing in the top division. This is a complete shambles but the writing has been on the wall for some time I would say. The crowds are not sufficient to sustain the wages demanded by the best riders. As the sport is run by the people promoting the various tracks around the country, self-interest seems to be the main issue. Radical change is needed at the end of this season or else, I’m afraid, it could be curtains on a professional level in the UK in the imminent future.
Stock car racing is similar in that it is very insular. The sport is run by the promoter’s association (BriSCA) in conjunction with the driver’s association (BSCDA). Again, it seems that they aren’t able to look at things from the perspective of what is good for the sport as a whole and we are constantly losing venues able to stage the sport for one reason or another.
Much of this is very depressing for someone like myself who is so passionate about sport as a whole. Let’s just hope things can improve in the future.
