What does UKU do?

The size of the GB programme varies a little from year to year, but in 2019, we coordinated 19 GB teams competing at European or World Championships in multiple age-groups on grass and beach. WFDF & EUF events planned for 2021 suggest we could be managing a similar number next year.

In 2018 UKU appointed Ali Tincknell to the board as our first Performance Director, and updated the structure of the GB Committee. All of the teams are managed and coached by volunteers and financed by the players, but there is still a great deal to do across so many squads. Several members of staff are closely involved; most notably Ruth Flight, part-time Programme Manager for the four youth squads (U20 & U17), and Chris Bamford, UKU Administrator, who spends over 20% of his time on work for GB squads.

Playing for GB is expensive. We would love to fix that problem, but with a total annual turnover of over £300k in a year like 2019, we have a long way to go.

Results remain strong. In 2019, five of the teams won their division, with another four winning silver or bronze, and three of the teams winning Spirit. Overall, GB is 3rd in WFDF’s World Ultimate Rankings.

In 2015-16 UKU established itself as a reliable partner for WFDF delivering successful World Championships in both years. In perhaps the highlight of the entire 3-year project, WUGC Finals Day saw approx. 7000 people at Allianz Park, London to see the finals in all three divisions. Did you see the highlights video from finals day? There's plenty more footage from the week-long event online.

International events always create a buzz. In addition to the potential to raise extra funds to invest in the future, the events create a focal point for the community, hooking a new generation of volunteers and organisers and provide an opportunity to showcase Ultimate to people and organisations that don't know about the sport. Running 2009-xEUCF enabled UKU to employ it's first full-time member of staff; 2015-WU23 gave us the confidence to employ a full-time event coordinator, and 2016 WUGC provided the funds for a 2-year School Development role.

In early 2020 we submitted a bid to host WFDF 2022 World Ultimate Club Championships in partnership with the University of Nottingham. A great deal has changed since we submitted the bid of course, and for the time being our discussions with WFDF have paused, but we're really looking forward to the opportunity to bring the very best players in the world back to the UK if we can secure the event.

The process of gaining legitimacy is pretty slow, but there's no doubt we have made great progress in the last few years. The image here is a great example of this process at work, with a women's ultimate game featured on the front cover of an important annual survey about university sport. Twenty years ago, Ultimate was still something of a curiosity for university sport. Now it is a well-established sport within the university sector, with healthy numbers and a growing women's division in particular. Much of that progress has been driven by tireless university club committees recruiting and teaching players every year; but it has undoubtedly been helped by continuous support from full-time staff and our long-term work and partnership with BUCS.

Meanwhile, at a school level, the Youth Sport Trust has wholeheartedly absorbed ideas of self-refereeing and spirit of the game feedback, encouraging their network to experiment with variations of our spirit scoring approach across other sports. The work to develop a relationship with The Youth Sport Trust, building confidence in our organisation and an understanding for the potential benefits of Ultimate has understandably taken time, but it will pay off in the long term.

In 2016, UK Ultimate was formally recognised as the National Governing Body for the UK and home nations. To date, the benefits remain mostly indirect; for example, Sport England certainly supported our application to the School Games. Either way, this is an important step in gradual integration of our sport into the wider community because it legitimises both the sport and UKU in the eyes of other organisations, e.g. as part of a city's assessment of their long-term needs for sports field provision, as happened earlier this year.

We play our part in the World Flying Disc Federation and the European Ultimate Federation, supporting work on events, rules, spirit of the game, governance and more.

As a UK business we obviously have important governance commitments to fulfil, and this includes responding to changes in legislation such as pension auto-enrolment and GDPR. In 2020 we were randomly selected for an HMRC Compliance check, which we have now completed successfully.