WHAT THE PAPERS SAY

Cynics of this world would have us believe there are just two truisms appertaining to newspapers. The first is "Never believe what you read in the newspapers," and the other "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!"

Naturally, I could not possibly subscribe to either and therefore I offer you from the Mail on Sunday, that purveyor of unchallengeable truths, an interesting little piece throwing doubt on claimed attendances at race meetings, in this case Silverstone, for both cars and bikes.

Under the headline "Mystery as 100,000 fans go missing at Silverstone" by a sleuth called Nick Harris (not the Nick Harris, surely? - DM) who writes a column called Inside Sport, it is suggested that there is a mismatch between attendance figures claimed in press releases and those produced by the bean counters.

Inside Sport suggests that the three-day attendance figure of 157,000 claimed for the British MotoGP at Silverstone last year was somewhat larger than the actual - by about 100,000! This comes from "an accounting source" who apparently had access to "secret internal accounting information" which suggests that 60,000 tickets were 'sold' including several thousand complimentary.

Well, we've all known for a long time that the figures produced by race promoters might, more than likely, differ to the ones they submitted to the VAT man. Remember those claims of 120,000 at Brands Hatch to watch Carl Fogarty in World Supers!

Silverstone boss Richard Phillips appeared unfazed when quizzed by the Mailman:" Our published figures are based on the numbers of heads on site at an event rather than our ticket sales .....and will include hospitality guests, team members, championship personnel, sponsor guests, staff and contractors." A lot of people isn't it!

Does it matter? I suppose it depends whether you are a bean counter or a promoter!

AND NOW TO THE PINK 'UN... AND DUCATI

If there is one column in a newspaper which is trusted an it's opinion valued by it's readers it is the Lex column in the Financial Times. This is what it had to say about VW buying Ducati:

"Volkswagen's agreed acquisition of Ducati last week was universally described as a trophy purchase by a chief executive obsessed with beautiful brands and engineering... VW paid a high price for a mere distraction - Ducati would have added 0.3 per cent to VWs sales last year - with no industrial logic."

But wait:

"That may all be true. But the deal is far from nuts. For a rounding error, VW suddenly has the attention of a massive worldwide biking community for whom brand matters a lot. What car are they more likely to buy now? The same logic applied to Fiat's four-year sponsorship of a Yamaha MotoGP racing team. That association was further boosted by megastar rider Valentino Rossi. He now throws his leg across a Ducati."

Wise words. However, what the venerable financial scribe hasn't caught up with (clearly not a reader of bikesportnews.com) is that the Ducati/Rossi love affair is coming apart at the seams and my Italian source tells me that the Ducatisti are starting to turn on Rossi for the failure of their beloved red machines in MotoGP.

Now, with talk of Rossi forming his own team - not on Ducati - it might not be such a good deal for VW after all.

PS - Rossi turning up in World Superbikes may not look so far-fetched now. Revenge of the Flamminis.

SPECTATORS STILL COUNT

Counting spectators is still important for most European circuits when it comes to big events because it remains their major source of revenue. Circuits which host MotoGP or WSB not only pay a sanction fee of something like £2m for the former and circa £500k to £1m the latter but they hand over a slice of other income including television fees - if there are any.

That is why, without external funding, it is difficult either to bring a circuit up to the standard required for world events or develop it into a business not wholly dependent on racing - and almost impossible to do both.

Brands Hatch has a model which apparently can do without world events, Silverstone has the biggest of events but, now Qatar seems to have gone away, are still looking to sign a buyer or very rich partner to complete their ambitious plans to become the dominant player in motor sport. Good luck to them.