It will come as no surprise to members that Donington Park have lost the contract for the British Formula 1 GP next year. The question is where do Donington go from here. We certainly don't know, but can suggest  that they reduce their rents drastically to try and get exhibitors to return to whatever events they have left for their 2010 schedule.

Hot on the heels of announcing their sponsorship of the Alley Pally Show in 2010, the Ace Cafe have announced the launch of the London Streetfighter show and Stunt Festival which will be held at Wembley on the 25th July. Click read more for the rest of this story

Motorsport fans remained at the heart of Donington Park’s plans today as the landowner, Wheatcroft and Son Limited, and circuit leaseholder, Donington Ventures Leisure Limited (DVLL), confirmed that they have reached an agreement which they hope will move a step closer to securing the future of East Midlands’ parkland circuit Donington Park.

The settlement was reached after court proceedings were issued by Browne Jacobson LLP, acting on behalf of Wheatcroft & Son Limited, seeking £2.47m in rent arrears and forfeiture of the circuit lease.

Many traders have been predicting that it was only a matter of time before the high rents being charged by many shows would result in a lack of support from traders and shows being cancelled. It would now appear that we have reached this point, with bike & other shows being canceled due to the lack of support from traders.
 
We have seen rents continue to rise over the past few years, while taking's have continued to drop. It was only a matter of time before some shows became uneconomic for traders to attend, and we would now seem to have reached that point.

We will no doubt see more shows struggle to get the necessary numbers of traders to make a show viable over the next year, and there is now an increasing number of traders who are turning their backs on the larger shows, in favour of small events with a realistic rent.

Why pay £400 + rent for two days when you can attend a smaller event for around £40, many of which offer FREE entry, so the visitors have some money to spend.

This is the other problem that many traders are concerned about, entry prices. With these continuing to rise a family visitor with wife and children has nothing left to spend after paying for entry, add to this the usual high cost of food & drink and you can see why we are suffering.

Why are food stalls charged higher rents which result in these sky high prices, it's not rocket science, reduce the rent to the food stalls, and insist that the prices are lowered, as this is without doubt top of most visitors complaints at shows.

It is now down to venue owners to rethink what they are charging for venue hire, and organisers to push for lower rents, after all if we are all feeling the pinch, surely with shows now being cancelled they must be getting the message at last.

As trader's know organizers from other show's will often visit a show and canvas traders during the show and stop for a chat, it is normal procedure. So you can imagine the astonishment when someone associated with another show was asked to leave the Excel show, and escorted from  Excel.

Fortunately the person concerned was able to get a refund of the £18.00 ticket which had been purchased to obtain entry, but was none the less shocked at such strange behavior.