hmm the cynic in me says they want money being spent all week rather than a long weekend.

The current format suits me perfect, a week at the tt and a long weekend at the classic doesn't eat too many days holiday days from my year.

If they merge I'd be looking at picking one or the other but not both.

This could actually see numbers drop.... I think the organisers need to tread carefully on this one. Greed has an habit of back firing.

H2p I think you've misread this one. Callister is a bit of a clown, albeit a well intended one. He dived into IOM politics and still believes he can keep everyone happy.

He's been getting lots of stick from MGP stalwarts about the Classic TT and how the MGP has become a second class citizen now all the big money men have joined in the classic racing. What he's trying to do is shuffle the deck a little to reduce that criticism.

Hopefully his officers are telling him that while its a laudable idea, it will have just the effect you're predicting and if he's measured by his visitor numbers etc, then they may fall.

If you look at the lists of previous MGP winners you can clearly see progression to TT so the MGP races themselves are far from trivial (in fact any race around this course is far from trivial). The racing itself is therefore marketable (stars of tomorrow on the bikes of today -  kind of spin). If however the target market is the fly by night bucket lister who will only turn up to watch the current stars, then perhaps it isn't.