BMABA Updates & News

Hi there,

Sport England, alongside all five UK Sports Councils, has today released the final report of the Safe Sport Project — a sector-wide roadmap for reforming how safeguarding, welfare, and complaint handling are managed across all levels of UK sport.

The report calls for sweeping changes, including the creation of a new independent leadership body, a unified national safeguarding framework, and an independent complaints and resolution service. It challenges sports bodies to shift away from reactive, legalistic systems and toward a more preventative, person-centred, trauma-informed approach.

This marks a major turning point for UK sport — but for BMABA, it’s a direction we’ve already been travelling for years.

Many of the report’s most ambitious proposals are systems and values we already have in place. These include:

• A fully transparent, public-facing Instructor Verification Register
• Club-wide vetting and licensing oversight through our Club Colours programme
• Comprehensive compliance checks across DBS, insurance, safeguarding, and first aid
• The Regulation Ready framework, which maps and verifies DSL, SENCO, and other key safeguarding leadership roles
• Dedicated, qualified internal safeguarding oversight within our organisation
• Independent external audits and professional reviews to ensure our standards remain robust and credible
• Proactive investment in trauma-informed coaching and inclusive safeguarding training

While many organisations are just beginning to prepare for the standards this report outlines, we’re already delivering on them. We welcome the Safe Sport vision and will continue working to ensure our community-led martial arts sector is recognised, respected, and part of this national conversation.

For our instructors and clubs, this means you can continue focusing on delivering safe, inclusive martial arts — knowing your affiliation with BMABA keeps you not only compliant, but ahead of the curve.

Read and comment on the full report in MyBMABA;

Hi there,

We’re pleased to officially launch MyBMABA Club Manager – a purpose-built, all-in-one platform designed by BMABA CIC specifically for martial arts instructors and clubs. Launched in BETA around three weeks ago, we're now locked in on V2.

This new system brings together the tools you need to manage your club effectively, support your students, and meet key compliance obligations — all from one secure dashboard. Developed entirely in-house, it reflects years of insight into the day-to-day challenges faced by grassroots instructors.

Now available to all members, Club Manager is integrated directly into the MyBMABA platform and can be accessed immediately.

Key features include:

• Student management with live licence and insurance syncing
• Attendance and grade tracking
• Certificate design and issuance
• Accounting & Budgeting
• Club Planning & Management
• Incident Reporting and more.

If you’re an instructor or club lead, simply log into MyBMABA and click “Club Manager” to begin using the system.

What’s Next: V2 Launch with Payments Integration

We’re now preparing to roll out Version 2 of Club Manager, introducing a fully integrated payments system powered by Stripe.

This upgrade will allow clubs to:

• Create and manage recurring membership plans or class payments
• Automatically collect and track student payments
• Monitor income, missed payments, and member churn in real-time
• Reduce admin and streamline student onboarding

The payments feature will be entirely optional, but we expect it to be a game-changer for clubs looking to simplify billing and scale efficiently within the BMABA ecosystem.

When Is It Launching?

Version 2 will begin rolling out in July 2025, with phased early access offered directly through the MyBMABA dashboard. Clubs will be invited to connect their Stripe account and start configuring membership plans as soon as access opens.

What Should I Do Now?

• Log in to MyBMABA and explore the new Club Manager features
• Begin managing students and compliance to prepare for V2
• Keep an eye on your dashboard notifications for rollout updates

This platform is part of our ongoing mission to support independent martial arts clubs with powerful, affordable, and secure digital infrastructure — not as a commercial product, but as a member-first service created by a grassroots CIC.

If you have any questions or want help getting started, just message us here on Intercom. We're here to support you.

Hi there,

If you’ve been around BMABA for a while, you’ll probably have seen our slogan cropping up here and there — To High Places by Narrow Roads. It might look poetic or a bit philosophical at first glance, but it’s not just a catchy phrase or branding fluff. It’s something deeply woven into who we are as a community, a CIC, and a team.

This slogan wasn’t chosen in a boardroom, surrounded by consultants. It emerged slowly and organically — like so many of the most meaningful things in our journey — through reflection, adversity, and resolve. It’s a line that represents not just where we’re going, but the kind of people we’re trying to be as we get there.

The Narrow Road: Discipline, Integrity, Sacrifice

The narrow road isn’t glamorous. It’s not fast, it’s not easy, and it certainly doesn’t come with a crowd. It’s the route of personal responsibility. Of doing things the right way, even when nobody’s watching. Of integrity in business when cutting corners could be faster. Of upholding safeguarding, governance, and licensing standards without compromise, even when it makes us unpopular or unprofitable.

You’ll have seen it in your own clubs too — choosing to build something meaningful and safe for your students, even when cheaper, easier shortcuts present themselves. That’s the narrow road. You’ll have walked it already, whether you’ve realised it or not. I would wager a bet it might even be why you were attracted to BMABA in the first place – I’ve always found those with integrity have a radar for it in others, too.

High Places: A Shared Aspiration

But what of the high places?

They’re not just about size or commercial success. They’re about being the best version of what we set out to be. For us, that means building a resilient, ethical, and independent martial arts infrastructure that isn’t just about ticking boxes — but about transforming lives. It’s about creating a home for clubs and instructors who have felt overlooked, underestimated, or just plain fed up with the status quo.

It’s about raising the sector’s standards without selling our soul. About giving students and communities access to martial arts that actually changes lives, not just fills classes.

That’s a high place. And the view from there is worth the climb.

For me personally, it’s about leaving a legacy that extends long after my life ends. Something my children can look at and be proud of. Something that rescues children who grew up like me – in poverty, without hope. As many of you will know, I’ve been reflecting a lot in my private journals lately about discipline, growth, and what it means to live a good life — not just run a good company.

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE

Hi there,

We’re excited to officially welcome you to The BMABA Community – our new dedicated space for connecting instructors, clubs, and martial arts leaders across the country.

This is where you’ll find real-time updates, important announcements, peer support, and exclusive insights from our team—including direct posts from our CEO, Giovanni Soffietto.

Going forward, all future updates, news, and conversations will be shared inside the community. That means no more hunting through emails or scattered notices. Just one central hub for everything that matters to you and your club.

Whether you're looking to collaborate with fellow instructors, share your ideas, or stay in the loop—this is your space to do it.

👉 Access the community now via MyBMABA:
🔗 https://members.mybmaba.org.uk

See you inside!

Hi there,

We’re proud to announce that BMABA CIC — the British Martial Arts & Boxing Association — is now officially listed on the UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) under registration number 10098149.

This milestone reinforces our commitment to developing nationally recognised, high-quality training pathways for instructors, clubs, and safeguarding leads operating within grassroots martial arts. It also positions us to further expand our educational provision, particularly in areas of safeguarding, coaching, and trauma-informed practice.

What Is The UKRLP — And Why Does It Matter?

The UK Register of Learning Providers is the Government's central portal for verified education and training providers. It is used by funding bodies, regulators, government departments, and employers to confirm that a provider is recognised and meets basic eligibility criteria to offer educational services in the UK.

Being listed as a verified learning provider offers a number of tangible benefits:

• It opens the door to developing Ofqual-regulated qualifications in the future.
• It strengthens our standing with bodies such as CIMSPA, Sport England, and the Department for Education.
• It builds trust and credibility when working with local authorities, schools, charities, and grant-giving bodies.

For our members, it confirms that BMABA CIC isn’t just a martial arts organisation — we are a serious, recognised educational provider working to professionalise standards across the sector.

Why This Matters For Grassroots Martial Arts

Independent martial arts clubs and instructors are often underserved when it comes to high-quality, relevant training and development opportunities. Many courses on the market are expensive, outdated, or not tailored to the unique needs of community clubs.

Our listing on the UKRLP is part of a wider mission to:

• Make sector-leading training accessible and affordable to all instructors — regardless of style or affiliation.
• Develop trauma-informed, safeguarding-led content that raises the bar across the industry.
• Enable clubs to demonstrate formal compliance with safeguarding and coaching expectations — especially when working with schools, charities, or commissioning bodies.
• Ultimately, protect more children and young people by ensuring better-trained, better-equipped instructors.

What’s Next?

This recognition comes at a pivotal moment for us.

• We’ve recently been accepted as members of Sported UK and the Association of Child Protection Professionals (AoCPP).
• We are undergoing ISO 9001 accreditation to formalise our internal processes and quality controls.
• Our Trauma-Informed Coaching Qualification is preparing for launch, setting a new national benchmark for emotional literacy and safeguarding awareness in martial arts instruction.
• We are also working through our CIMSPA Training Provider application, further aligning our standards with national frameworks in sport and physical activity.

Together, these steps form a cohesive strategy: to ensure that BMABA not only supports clubs in their day-to-day work, but also helps shape the future of martial arts instruction in the UK — through recognised qualifications, professional training, and sector-wide leadership.

We’re excited by what this listing enables us to build for our members, and for the martial arts community more broadly. But as always, our mission remains focused on the real-world impact: helping instructors deliver safer, more inclusive, and more effective martial arts coaching to those who need it most.

Thank you for your continued support as we continue to grow — not just as a licensing body, but as a national force for positive change in grassroots sport.

Hi there,

We’re blown away.

In just over two weeks, more than 2,714 people have taken part in our 2025 Great Martial Arts Survey – a phenomenal response, and more than enough to form a truly meaningful body of research into the state of martial arts across the UK.

We’ll be spending the coming weeks digesting and analysing the data, and we’ll be publishing the full findings – including specific deep dives – very soon. But already, it’s clear from our initial sample that the responses we’ve received are broadly representative of the UK population, using comparisons with census data. That means we’ve captured a powerful and accurate snapshot of our community.

But for us, the real story isn’t just in the stats – it’s in the emotional truth behind the numbers.

So many of you – instructors, students, parents – took the time to share your personal journeys. You spoke about the mental health battles, the struggles with identity, the trauma, the healing, and the growth. What you’ve told us is raw, real, and incredibly moving.

This survey proves what we’ve always known deep down: Martial arts changes lives.

It builds resilience, confidence, connection, and healing. It saves lives, too.

It’s time this was recognised, properly.
Recognition should mean:

🥋 More funding for grassroots clubs
📚 Better access to quality CPD for instructors
🏫 Greater support getting martial arts into schools and educational settings

As a CIC (Community Interest Company), BMABA will be championing this harder than ever over the coming months. The power of what we all do as a community must be seen, valued, and supported.

We’ll be sharing some of the incredible quotes and stories that have come in – keep an eye out. These voices deserve to be heard.

From all of us at BMABA – thank you. You’ve helped us start a conversation that could reshape the future of martial arts in the UK.

Watch this space for the full findings!

Hi there,

We're really pleased to unveil our BETA community events board.

The idea? Simple. To create a single register of curated, quality events from right across the UK being run by our more than 6,500 registered clubs.

We'll approve each event before it goes into the community to ensure it's appropriate. It's then free for the poster and the attendee - we won't charge at any point for advertising an event, or for successfully bringing new people to it.

We hope it will help clubs connect and sharing opportunities to attend competitions, seminars, squad days and workshops within the community, without needing to await for any committees or executives to approve.

You can view all current events, and share any of your own future events for free, from https://mybmaba.org.uk/events

Hi there,

We’re incredibly proud to confirm that BMABA is now officially a Community Interest Company (CIC) — a powerful new chapter in our journey to support, protect, and uplift the martial arts community across the UK.

This move cements something we’ve always believed in: BMABA doesn’t exist to generate profit — it exists to make a difference.

Every resource, every programme, every advancement we’ve made is now legally protected and permanently aligned to benefit clubs, instructors, and students.

In 2024, BMABA Limited was valued by investors at £1.65 million. We made the conscious decision to turn down commercial investment — not because the value wasn’t real, but because our values mattered more.

Now, that value — and everything we’ve built together — belongs entirely to the community, within the community, for the benefit of the community.

This shift to a CIC means:

• Every surplus is reinvested back into member support and development.
• Our future will never be dictated by commercial shareholders or private owners.
• Our mission — to raise standards, improve access, and safeguard the future of martial arts — will always come first.

Our Founder, Giovanni Soffietto, said:
“This move secures our legacy. We’re building something that puts ethics before earnings — and ensures every member knows their association is here for them, not for profit. It’s in our DNA, and it’s in our logo: ‘To high places by narrow roads.’”

We want to thank every single member who has helped make this possible.

You are the reason we exist — and together, we’re just getting started.

For the community. For the future. For martial arts.

Hi there,

BMABA have always been clear from day 1 that we're keen to work with and support like-minded organisations. As an independent body focused on trying to bring about systemic improvements to the way martial arts is regulated, the standards to which clubs operate, and the safety under which students can access training, working as broadly as possible and having as many clubs as we can adopt our standards is hugely important.

As early as 2021 we've been working in a limited capacity with the likes of Sport England SCiMA (Safeguarding Code) and from there, a number of other NGBs and Pre-NGBs have, over the past twelve months in particular, come through to us looking to work in partnership.

As of March 2025, we have 9 NGBs, Pre-NGBs (those applying for NGB recognition) and NGO organisations using BMABA as an essential part of their licencing, safeguarding and membership provision.

This is huge. It helps BMABA influence the broader martial arts landscape in a profound and style agnostic way. It also helps our independent clubs benefit from an ever-better-recognised and respected brandname.

When an NGB or NGO comes to BMABA for a partnership, they're typically going to be offering a BMABA membership to their own members, as part of their membership provision. In almost all cases, that means the NGB or NGO is effectively outsourcing things like qualifications, training, safeguarding oversight and compliance to BMABA, so they can focus more on the 'on the mats' aspect of what they do (competitions, seminars, gradings and so on).

We think this is a great mutual benefit. BMABA grow bigger, benefit from increased revenue, influence a broader aspect of the martial arts industry and can then re-invest that growth into more qualifications, technology and resources. NGBs can also ensure their instructors are properly vetted and trained, and have access to the latest legislation and guidelines.

The net result is an industry working closer together on the stuff that matters - safeguarding, compliance, training, CPD, and so on - without diluting any aspect of unique or individual organisation identity.

If you're an independent BMABA instructor or club, these partnerships in no way impact or degrade the service or membership you have with us directly. If anything, it just rapidly helps us scale up the release of new courses, technology and tools.

It's a win, win, win for BMABA, NGBs/NGOs, and independent clubs. Best of all, it allows us to show a unified approach to best practice across our now 110,000+ growing membership base to the likes of Sport England and DCMS.

Hi there,

13 years ago when I first setup BMABA, it was done with the promise that we would remain politics free and transparent, no matter how big we got.

Today we sit with more than 100,000 members, significant revenue and numerous accolades to our name, all of which I am extremely grateful for.

The time has come for me to deliver on the promise made back in 2012 in a way which safeguards this for the next 13+ years of exciting growth that lie ahead.

It's for this reason, today we passed a resolution to convert BMABA to a CIC (Community Interest Company). Until now, whilst run as a not for profit (and being registered as a social enterprise) there would have been nothing to prevent myself or anybody else at board level reneging on this promise. With the conversion to CIC now signed, sealed and in the post to our solicitors for action with the Community Interest Regulator immediately thereafter, I'm pleased to confirm that promise is now legally binding into the future.

Our (soon to be) new CIC status doesn't change the day to day operations. I'll be remaining as CEO with my same brilliant team around me, but we'll benefit from the legal transparency that what we do is for the public interest - that being the interest and good of you, our loyal members.

We also hope to use this legal standing to win funding grants which we can inturn redirect to our clubs.

Nothing changes for you as a member; you don't need to take any action and nothing will be lost in terms of what we do, the team or anything else.

We just wanted to share this positive step forward with the community, so you're not surprised to see BMABA CIC pop up over the next few weeks.

Thank you!