SWINDON Robins boss Alun Rossiter admits the loss of old club Coventry Bees from the new season’s SGB Premiership programme is a real blow for the sport.

Late last month, the British Speedway Promoters’ Association put the Bees’ licence ‘on ice’ after they were not satisfied that the club could fulfil a full season. Due to issues with their home at Brandon Stadium, Coventry only had an agreement in place to run a handful of meetings at Leicester Lions’ Beaumont Park track.

In the aftermath of that decision, Bees owner Mick Horton put the club up for sale.

That means that once again only eight clubs will compete in the top flight of British speedway for the 2017 season, which gets under way on April 1.

“The whole thing is sad but I understand the situation the BSPA were put in and I think they had to make a decision,” said Rossiter, who led Coventry to the Elite League title as team manager in 2010.

“On a personal level, I think it’s the right one because they only had certain guarantees of how many meetings they had up at Leicester and no guarantee that they’d get back into Brandon.

“Who knows whether they will be back or not? People find it hard and when clubs shut, they generally don’t reopen. Hopefully this is not the case.

“It’s a huge blow for everybody but they might find somebody to come forward and move it forward next year.

“For us, it just means less fixtures but we have had Somerset up and Rye House come up, so we are fortunate that it hasn’t impacted on us too much.”

There was good news for the rest of the Premiership clubs on Tuesday with the announcement that a new TV agreement had been struck with BT Sport, who will take over live broadcasts from Sky Sports.

BT already provide coverage of the Speedway Grand Prix series and Rossiter is delighted that speedway will remain on screen as the money it provides is crucial for the sport’s survival.

“It’s vitally important to have a TV deal and I have to say I think Sky have done a fantastic job over the last 10 years at least,” said Rossiter.

“Their coverage is second to none, they’ve done very well with the sport and it’s sad to see them go but BT seem to be the company looking to snap everything up at the moment so Sky’s loss is BT’s gain.

“They seem to have some good ideas and there are some good people there. I have done some stuff with them in the past for the Grand Prix series so who knows, there could be some more commentary from me coming up.”

The new deal has promised to deliver 18 meetings, including the play-offs, to viewers over the course of the year and Rossiter says the appetite for the sport remains as large as ever.

“You find there are a lot of TV speedway followers,” said Rossiter.

“I went somewhere the other day and just talking to this guy, he kind of recognised me but had no idea who I was. He hadn’t been to speedway for years but he got Sky so he could watch speedway on TV.

“There are a lot of people that don’t go to meetings but still watch it on TV and are still interested.”