Endurance gets a new promoter: who’s organizing it and what’s new

It wasn’t a bolt from the blue, but the timing caught many by surprise. After 10 years, Warner Bros Discovery Sports Europe is handing over the FIM EWC Endurance World Championship to a new promoter. New in the literal sense, as a company has been created ad hoc, but one that is founded by the organizers of 3 out of the 4 events on the world championship calendar.

Let’s start with the first fact. WBD Sports Events Limited, formerly Discovery/Eurosport Sports Events, due to an internal reorganization driven by the absorption of Discovery into Warner Bros Discovery (with further ownership changes rumored recently), has decided to gradually step away from directly organizing sporting and motorsport events and/or championships. Hence the exit from the FIM EWC Endurance World Championship, and not only that: also from SpeedwayGP.

The announcement came on the eve of the Bol d’Or, which closed the 2025 season, simultaneously revealing who will take over the promoter role on behalf of the FIM. In the SpeedwayGP World Championship it will be Richard Coleman’s Mayfield Sports Events, known in motorcycling for the recent acquisition of the Tech 3 MotoGP team, while in the FIM EWC the baton passes to Claude Michy’s Philibert et Associes (PHA). The WBD group will remain the holder of the Endurance TV rights, therefore until 2029 (at least) it will continue to air on Eurosport.

As for the new promoter, it is not strictly just Claude Michy’s PHA, the mastermind behind the public success of the MotoGP French Grand Prix at Le Mans. In fact, it is an association, still led by Michy, of the organizers of 3 of the 4 calendar events: PHA itself (8 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps), ACO (24 Heures Motos Le Mans) and Editions Larivière (Bol d’Or). For this purpose, EMP, the acronym for Endurance Moto Promoter, has been established as a company expressly dedicated to this role.

EMP will retain some personnel already actively involved in the Endurance Working Group and in WBD Sports Europe in recent years, although several changes will be finalized in the coming months. Looking to 2026, the focus is on continuity, with a calendar (the usual 4 rounds: the 3 directly organized plus the Suzuka 8 Hours on July 5) and regulations defined well in advance. Being directly involved in organizing the scheduled rounds, the long-term goal is to enhance the discipline for the benefit of both trackside fans and the teams themselves. Not that WBD hasn’t done so until now: over 10 years it made Endurance more appealing on television as well, without betraying its essence. Proposals such as 3-hour “sprint races” or the ability to change engines during the race were rejected at the outset.

EMP’s work can truly be assessed with the first steps taken in view of 2027, in what sounds like a return to the past for motorcycle endurance racing. In contrast with the then-promoter FG Sport, the organizers of the three great 24-hour classics (Le Mans, Bol d’Or, and Spa) came together to establish the rival Master of Endurance. Now, if you will, that risk no longer exists, since the FIM-branded Endurance World Championship is under their stewardship.