Run Licensed & Insured Martial Arts Events, For Free

A wide range: interclub competitions, tournaments and championships, fight nights and full contact competitions, demonstrations and exhibitions, open mats, randori and sparring events, and grading events that include competitive elements. Events must complete the Event Ready safety and compliance checklist before licensing is approved; once licensed, public liability cover activates under the BMABA insurance programme.

Yes. Full contact events require additional oversight to ensure appropriate safety standards are in place, including medical provision, officiating standards and risk management controls. These requirements are verified through the Event Ready compliance framework before cover is activated.

Event public liability insurance protects the organiser against claims arising from injury or property damage connected to the event. Participants are expected to hold appropriate martial arts insurance for their own training and competition; BMABA licensed students are already insured through their student membership, and non-BMABA participants can be declared for temporary cover.

All licensed events complete the Event Ready checklist: appropriate safeguarding arrangements, qualified officials and referees, suitable medical provision for the level of contact, venue suitability and risk management, participant registration and declarations, and compliance with relevant safety standards, all guided step by step in the platform.

Usually as soon as the Event Ready checklist is complete and your event is submitted. Event licences activate automatically and immediately online, 24/7, though the compliance items themselves may take time to put in place.

Yes. Events must be registered through the Event Ready platform before they take place, ensuring safety standards are met and the event is properly licensed. Registering early allows time to review arrangements.

An Event Ready licence confirmation, proof of public liability cover for the event, a digital Event Ready certification badge for promotion, and event records stored within the platform.

All insurance policies include an excess, payable before the insurer contributes in a claim. The applicable excess is determined by the policy in place at the time of the event; refer to the policy documentation or contact us for clarification.

Far more than insurance: the Event Ready platform includes planning checklists, risk and compliance guidance, event management tools, best practice resources, marketing and promotion guidance, and event viability calculators.

Most commercial insurers simply provide a policy. Alongside event public liability, BMABA members receive a complete event management and safety framework built specifically for martial arts: licensing, compliance guidance, planning tools and organiser support. The result isn’t just insured events, but better organised and safer ones.

You must use the Event Ready system to complete the compliance checklist and activate cover, but the other tools, task management, rulebooks and so on, are entirely optional. Plan your event however you wish.

Cover is interchangeable across the association: any BMABA-licensed student, from your club or anyone else’s, is already insured and attends at no charge. For genuinely non-BMABA participants, declare them through the event platform and temporary public liability cover is arranged at £2.50 per head, or register them as student members beforehand. With student licensing as low as £0.49 per student at volume, many clubs simply run a licensed student base year-round, so events never cost a penny.

No, and no event public liability policy anywhere does. Participant-to-participant claims within contact situations, one competitor injuring another during a bout, are excluded as standard across combat sports. Member-to-member incidents outside contact situations remain covered, and an injured competitor can still claim against the organiser where organiser negligence, rather than the contact itself, caused the injury. Competitor injury protection is what Personal Accident cover is for, available as an affordable add-on to student and instructor memberships.

In-house BMABA events, where every participant is a current BMABA member, are covered as part of membership with the compliance checklist completed. Affiliated club events including non-members need BMABA sanctioning, adherence to BMABA rules, and the Event Ready form completed in full, with non-members made temporary members at the applicable per-head rate, subject to a £25 plus Insurance Premium Tax minimum premium.

Yes, of course. There’s no obligation to activate our event cover; you can still use the event management platform to plan and manage your event even if you don’t intend to license and insure through us.