BSM slip quietly out of bike training?

In response to a question about which is the biggest bike school in the UK, I just checked BSM’s website to see if there were any details about where they offered bike training from their franchised sites.

Zip. Nada. Nothing.

There are links to car training and instructor training but the bike option isn’t there.

It seems that quietly and with no fuss, BSM have pulled the plug on their involvement in motorcycle training, barely 18 months after they launched a high-profile tie up with Ducati and Silverstone circuit. That threeway partnership was announced with a fanfare of press releases back in August 2008, allowing trainees to ride Ducati Monsters and train at the track.

This wasn’t the first BSM tie-up with a manufacturer. In 2006, Triumph Motorcycles and BSM announced a scheme for riders to learn to ride on a Triumph Bonneville, in Triumph protective gear, at BSM’s Birmingham site, with the carrot of a ride to the Triumph factory in Hinckley as part of the training.

These publicity stunts aside, it never seemed to me that BSM’s entry into the market was a particularly well-calculated one, mostly relying as it did on existing schools buying into the franchise at considerable cost, to access central booking and publicity.

I could never see how a school that was already operating successfully would want to spend money associating with BSM. Their only likely candidates would have been the schools with marginal profitability looking to pull in more trainees or new start-ups trying to gain a reputation without having to work for it.