June 03 2026
It’s parade season! The end of the football season is traditionally marked by fans cheering victorious teams on open top buses. Bus operators – including many CPT members – play a crucial role in making the magic happen.
Arsenal, Manchester City, Crystal Palace, Coventry City, Bromley and York City were among the teams parading silverware this year. But what goes on behind the scenes in organising a bus parade?
The use of buses to show off sports trophies goes back nearly a century – Arsenal and Preston North End used buses to show off their FA Cup wins as far back as 1930 and 1938 respectively.
Local bus operators are often willing to provide an open top vehicle free of charge, as a gesture of goodwill to the local community – and for some positive publicity in press and social media.
“They’re a moment of celebration – a community outburst of joy,” says Luke Marion, Managing Director of the Oxford Bus Company, which has twice provided buses to Oxford United for victory parades – most recently for the team’s promotion to the Championship in 2024. “We’re not going to charge for something like that."
Clubs usually like to celebrate within days of their final match. That means a lot of preparation is needed before victory is certain. Marion adds: “You don’t get a lot of run-in to it. The health and safety and risk assessment work needs to be done in advance. And of course it goes right through the centre of town – it’s going to disrupt the usual network.”
Ideally, teams want a bus with a full open top, which are scarcer than vehicles with the top deck partially covered as used on many sightseeing routes.
While in the past, draping flags over the side of the bus has been considered sufficient, bigger teams – Arsenal or Manchester City – now want full vinyl wraps, branding buses entirely in their team colours which need to be ordered in advance of victory. Hearts, which narrowly missed out on the Scottish Premiership title, had a fully wrapped bus prepared just in case.
The final piece of the jigsaw is who drives the bus. It’s not as simple as it sounds to keep a bus moving at a very slow speed, often with a police escort, through boisterous crowds. More often than not, bus operators deploy their most experienced driver, or even a driver examiner, to do the most crucial job of all.
While sports teams across the world hold parades to celebrate big wins, those outside the UK are more likely to be on floats, flatbed trucks or even fire engines. The use of double deckers is a very British tradition – thanks, in no small part, to the bus and coach industry.