'Come and back us' is the urgent plea from Sheffield Speedway promoters

Sheffield Tigers Speedway have been among the most successful clubs in a cluttered Steel City sporting landscape for years.

They won trophies in British Speedway’s top flight every year from 2022 to 2024 and only missed out on continuing that run last season due to one or two near misses in key heats.

But with Wednesday, United, Steelers, Sharks and Eagles, plus an upwardly mobile rugby union side, attracting new fans is proving difficult.

Over the winter, there was grave uncertainty about the promotion’s future when co-owner Damien Bates announced in September that his family would be pulling out and searching for new investors.

They did a u-turn on that decision in January and decided to return to the Tigers as sole promoters, much to the delight of long-time team boss Simon Stead who admitted how worried he had been for the future of an operation that for decades has run out of Owlerton Stadium.

But now, despite Sheffield being firmly in the hunt for honours again in 2026 - and the promoters giving away free tickets to kids - Bates has had to issue a plea to the city of Sheffield to come out and support the Tigers.

Bates said: “Firstly, I want to say thank you to everyone who has backed us here at Sheffield Speedway so far in 2026.

“By only fully committing to everything on our own in January, me and my family weren’t sure how this would all pan out.

“Whilst not as much as we would usually bring in, we’ve been very fortunate to be backed by some generous sponsors this season.

“With the packages we created, we’ve been very lucky to have so many people come on board and join us this season.

“As I’ve always said since we took over the club over a decade ago, at Sheffield we are also very, very lucky to have a loyal band of supporters.

“We appreciate the lengths you go to to support the team and support the club and it was clear ‘spreading the word’, as we had asked you to, did the trick in those first few meetings.

“The crowd for the opener against Belle Vue was excellent, and the following cup meeting against Leicester was a similar figure as well.

“However, since our home league meetings got up and running, the numbers have been well below the required figure and each meeting has been run at a significant loss.

“We’ve sat scratching our heads; is it the price of fuel that is now putting people off coming on top of everything else? Last time against Leicester, was it the heat that kept people away?

“We’ve offered to give up to 10,000 free kids tickets away this season to try and encourage the next generation of supporters to come through the turnstiles and get hooked – we’ve reached out to places and asked people to apply and as of tonight, we have only given around 300 out.

“Now, don’t get me wrong, our busy lives away from speedway means we are unable to be as active as some clubs are and yes we hope to get several thousand of these distributed in different ways in the coming weeks.

“But when you’ve received good publicity that you’re giving out free tickets and people still don’t come forward, it does make you wonder.”

Sheffield are away at Ipswich on Thursday, a team they host the following Thursday (July 23) in their next home meeting.

Bates added: “At the end of the day, whilst year after year we keep funding this club to keep speedway in Sheffield on track, it’s quite simple: we need more people through the turnstiles on a regular basis.”

Mascot Packages and Tyre Sponsorships are available for this fixture - for more information, please e-mail: [email protected]