There is no need to convince anyone that football interests Polish sports fans the most. Suffice it to see how much emotion aroused by the recent selection of the new coach of the Polish national team. Before it became clear that it would be Czeslav Micniewicz, fans were watching Cesare Colisa’s actions and wondering who would lead Robert Lewandowski and the company.
But let’s return to the highway, which in the eyes of many prides itself on the first sports disciplines in Poland. At this point, fans of volleyball, snowboarding and basketball nodded in disbelief, but the power of malice appears on many levels. It is mainly about the interest of the fans themselves and the money that is in the sport.
PGE Ekstraliga recently signed a new record-breaking television contract worth 242 million PLN. That’s huge money generated by the league’s high viewership in front of television sets. Even more than 200,000 people can follow the best league matches live, which is often a hard-to-achieve result even for PKO BP Ekstraklasa football team. In pre-pandemic times, an average of more than 10,000 fans sat in the highway stadiums. These numbers surpass many other sports in Poland.
However, regardless of the popularity debate, it is hard not to get the impression that while slag thrives in Poland, it has serious problems globally. We regularly hear voices that at just one moment in our country the popular “left-hand drive” will be at a high level. Once very strong leagues in Sweden or Great Britain, today it is just a testing ground for the best players and good training before games in the Polish League, where millions are won.
It is not better in other countries. In Denmark, there are no potential successors to champion Nicki Pedersen, and in Russia (where current world champion Artiom Łaguta comes from – editor’s note) they cannot consume a really strong generation of motorcyclists. Single eruptions can be seen in countries such as Germany or France, but they are still the ocean of large slags.
Moreover, the status of this system on continents other than Europe may be worrisome. American Greg Hancock has finished his career and in an instant it may turn out that the highway in this country will be forgotten. In Australia, on the other hand, new talents are being born, but it is also futile to look for successors to great stars such as Jason Crump, Lee Adams, Ryan Sullivan, or more recently Darcy Ward.
All this raises serious questions about the status of slag as a global system. In a moment it may turn out that in our country only they are seriously racing, and this is a road that leads nowhere.
