Another year!  And another £100k perhaps?

This is just my personal opinion, but if you're going to employ people in a management capacity in respect of the racing should they not have the expertise to advise government without an expensive consultation exercise?

I can't see how a World series is going to be financially beneficial to anyone.  This may seem like a strange thing for a long time TT/MGP supporter like me to say, but I don't think the 'brand' is strong enough.

Where this was discussed on the old site people hadn't really grasped the point of this series and were eulogising about the UGP regaining World status and so on.  From memory when this was announced (2 years ago?) the plan was to have a core of approx 20 'seeded' riders and the rest of the grid made up from local wildcards.  Circuits would be more Billown sized than TT course sized.  As the likely participants will all be otherwise engaged in the course of the usual race season then it would have to be a Southern hemisphere based championship and as the politicians wish to use it for commercial gain, it would have to be somewhere that perhaps isn't that aware of the IOM and would see it as a potential business partner.

Going back to the strength of the brand: The plan is that a host country will pay the DED (being the commercial rights holder) a fee to licence the TT name and to be a part of this theoretical series.  As commercial rights holders typically derive income from things like TV broadcasts the host circuit will need to derive it's own income somehow.  When Silverstone host F1 their only income stream is from gate receipts.  F1 gets away with it because there are enough places that want the kudos associated with hosting it.

So, how will the host countries benefit?  How much could the DED realistically expect to get paid per event?  Who will pay for the competitors to travel to the other side of the world?

Lots to discuss, so let's discuss it!