2025 Impact Intl. UK/Euro Honoree: Martin Ingham

MARTIN INGHAM
Chief Executive
Motorpoint Arena Nottingham & National Ice Centre

25 YEARS AS AN EAST MIDLANDS ICON AT NOTTINGHAM’S MOTORPOINT ARENA

If there is one building in the UK that can claim it is punching above its weight, it is Motorpoint Arena Nottingham, a city of 330,000 in England’s East Midlands, known best as the home of Robin Hood and his nemesis, the local sheriff.

Going through the list of artists and events that have taken place at the arena since it opened in 2000, it’s hard to believe that its capacity is a relatively small 10,000.

Simply Red was the first band to give a live performance at the venue, on April 29, 2000, with Tom Jones, Green Day, Shirley Bassey and Westlife among the cast to perform there in year one. Ed Sheeran gave his first arena concert on Oct. 31, 2012, at Motorpoint Arena. Over the years, the building hosted international superstars including Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Elton John, One Direction, Rihanna, Metallica, Pink, Coldplay and The Who.

WWE, UFC, boxing, ice hockey, a wide range of family entertainment, as well as comedy, all feel at home inside Motorpoint Arena. In terms of content, 2025 has been the arena’s busiest year yet – an achievement Chief Executive Martin Ingham is “incredibly proud of,” especially given today’s “ever more competitive marketplace.”

“To have built relationships with our agents and promoters to the extent that a regional arena in Nottingham can host the range and scale of shows that we present is a brilliant achievement based on years of selling out shows and building a market in the East Midlands that everyone trusts,” Ingham says. “We love having this compact, atmospheric arena that is constantly reinvesting and developing the artist and customer experience and, frankly, punching well above our weight.”

The celebrations of Motorpoint Arena’s 25th anniversary included a sumptuous gala dinner and awards evening for 540 guests, which welcomed most of the key promoters who’ve helped make the building what it is today. The gala event “was one of the most challenging things we have ever done, but our team absolutely smashed it,” says Ingham.

Other highlights from the anniversary year paid homage to Nottingham’s ice skating legacy, including a Skating Gala in September choreographed by former British competitive figure skater Robin Cousins and the final show of Torvill & Dean’s ice dancing career. The year also saw the revamping of Motorpoint Arena’s backstage area, “including an 80-foot mural celebrating many of our artists from Oasis to Gracie Abrams. The finale to our celebrations is the unveiling in our foyer later this year of a piece of art made from thousands of customers’ selfies, which will hopefully be there for the next 25 years,” he says.

According to Ingham, the whole team strives “to be agile and versatile, so that whatever content opportunities present themselves, we are in a good place to execute to a very high standard.” Examples include the arena’s recent venture into the Netball Super League, as well as its first-ever self-promoted show: Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s “Long Way Chat.” Next year, Motorpoint Arena will host its first immersive art gallery.

“Away from our own arena content, we sell our in-house crowd management, catering and merchandise services to other venues and festivals, most successfully through our National Merchandise team, and these services are going very well with scope to expand further.”

Motorpoint Arena is the first building in the UK’s East Midlands that boasts a bar with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. The bar is “stunning in design,” says Ingham, “and from early signs it may hopefully be just as stunning in performance, so we are now planning what the next phase of the project will consist of in terms of number of units and locations for maximum impact. To be able to eliminate queues so that customers can get a drink whenever they want one at a gig and miss as little of the show as possible is a huge enhancement for the live music experience.”

Ingham oversees an incredibly varied amount of business segments, but he doesn’t mind; on the contrary, he says, “The randomness of the job is an utter joy. One meeting you’re talking marketing strategy to sell tickets, the next a capital investment opportunity and the next day you might be working for our National Merchandise company selling T-shirts in a field! The downside to the job is the hours and the time spent at work that should really have been spent with family.”

“Punching above one’s weight” can quickly become a euphemism to avoid using the term “overworked,” and Ingham is very aware of that. “When the industry came back from COVID, many staff didn’t return because of the working conditions,” he said, “and those that did said they wouldn’t go back to those conditions. Now, we are back exactly where we were because the financial model squeezes the people at the sharp end. Everyone in this industry has to work incredibly hard, but when some are sleeping in cars for a few hours between events, working 30 or 40 days straight, and working/driving when exhausted, while customers are paying some eye-watering gross receipts, something isn’t right and that’s what needs to change.”