20 June 2017

BT Sport have won the 2017 UKTV Ladle. The hotly-contested 5-a-side competition concluded on Thursday, June 15 in White City, West London after a second evening of full-on football action.

Teams from All3Media, Warner Brothers, Sky, YouView, Red Arrow International, The 7 Stars, TakTalk, A+E Networks and UKTV's FC Dave all competed for glory and their chance to get their hands on the prestigious ladle.

Tournament organiser, UKTV's Jim Tanner, again had his pen and paper ready to record all the scores and scorers. Tanner said,

I'd like to thank all the teams for taking part. We have raised money for charity and football has managed to bring the notoriously competitive TV industry together. It's a beautiful thing.

BT Sport's victory was their third successive UKTV Ladle win. The golden boot honour this year went to TalkTalk's Ali Soussi who hit 13 goals, edging out Aron Gordon from All3Media and Steven McFadyen from Red Arrow. Pre-tournament favourites, A+E Networks finished behind runners-up TalkTalk, as well as Red Arrow, All3Media and Warner Bros.

Jack Hobbs, Editorial Executive at TalkTalk, was disappointed to see his side beaten, but through the emotion took time to thank Tanner for putting the tournament on and said, "it was fun".

The tournament also raised £850, which will be donated to The Alzheimer's Society and a local Food Bank in Hammersmith, close to UKTV's head office. The prestigious UKTV Ladle is organised by UKTV Senior Scheduler, Jim Tanner, with the unique trophy on offer to the tournament winners, The Ladle, hand built by UKTV's Chief Engineer, Dave Maynard, who was also the mastermind and craftsman behind Dave's Red Bull Soapbox Race entry in 2015.

For more information please contact:

Dave Barnsby, UKTV Senior Manager, Digital Press Office

or Lara Feinstein, UKTV Network Communications Executive

About UKTV

UKTV is a commercial broadcaster reaching over 41m viewers every month.

The award-winning independent has eleven imaginative brands - UKTV Play, Dave, W, Gold, Alibi, Yesterday, Drama, Really, Home, Eden and Good Food. These include the two most popular non-PSB channels in the UK and account for nearly 10% of the British commercial TV market. The company's most recent financial results showed record-breaking year-end revenue of £344.8m and EBITDA of £91.3m. It invested £151.2m in programming and related launches last year, and is a significant investor in British creativity.   The network embraces technology to deliver inspired channels to audiences through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk, YouView, Freesat, Amazon Fire and UKTV Play, and distributes its highly valued original programmes to 200 territories.   Now celebrating over 20 years at the forefront of digital television, UKTV - an independent commercial joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. (SNI) - is proud to be the first British television broadcaster in The Sunday Times top 100 companies list.
corporate.uktv.co.uk / press.uktv.co.uk / @uktv_press