Sportsbeat win SJA Content Agency of the Year
Sportsbeat was named ‘Content Agency of the Year’ at the SJA British Sports Journalism Awards 2025.
Sportsbeat, part of Beat Media Group, which is also home to News Associates, won gold in 2025, after taking home bronze in 2024.
The awards recognise the best across the sports media industry and the judges commended Sportsbeat’s ‘wide-ranging and impactful’ coverage.
From journalism to social media strategy and content, video creation to graphics and animation, Sportsbeat deliver a vast range of full-service editorial provision, working for the UK’s top news brands and leading sports teams, events and organisations to generate reach, engagement and audience on every platform.
Sportsbeat’s highlights for 2024 include comprehensive Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games coverage, helping to activate a strategy around the recruitment of Ilona Maher to the Premiership Women’s Rugby, never-before-achieved coverage for new client Pickleball England and amplifying marginalised voices and untold stories within sport continued via a partnership with Women in Football.
New clients included UEFA, LIV Golf, World Rugby and the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, Marylebone Cricket Club.
Sportsbeat’s social and strategy team manages blue-chip sporting accounts with more than six million followers for clients ranging from Premiership Rugby to Team GB and British Athletics to Horse Racing Ireland and the Football Association. In 2024 Sportsbeat delivered 817m impressions and added more than 950k followers, their best-ever year on every key social metric from growth to engagement.
Sportsbeat managing editor James Toney said: “Agencies are a vital part of the media ecosystem but we often operate in the background, not always getting the wider credit for our words, graphics, videos and strategy. To be recognised by the SJA in the Oscars of our industry means everything to our team.
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“This is the work of our journalists, editors, social media producers, strategists, videographers, graphic designers and animators whose storytelling has driven record audiences for our clients in the last 12 months. To be nominated alongside agencies we admire greatly was a great thrill, to win means the world.
“It was also great to see the success of so many who have come through News Associates training – Daniel Schofield, who was on our very first NCTJ cohort 20 years ago, winning rugby journalist of the year, and Alice Jackson, who has just graduated from the program, winning the SJA Academy Award.
“In addition there were so many Team NA graduates across the shortlists and lots on our team too.”
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Meanwhile, Stats Perform won silver and Hayters took home bronze. You can see the full list of SJA British Sports Journalism Awards 2025 winners here.
Alongside Sportsbeat, multimedia sports journalism course graduate Alice Jackson won the SJA Academy Award, which is awarded to journalists with less than one year of full-time work in professional journalism.
Alice (Routeler) said: “I think this shows that stories are everywhere (not just football!), and staying curious, open-minded, and being willing to do some research is the most important thing.
“Big shout out to the tutors at News Associates for all their support, and especially to Phil Wilkinson for telling me not to give up!”
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And News Associates alumni Daniel Schofield (The Telegraph) was named rugby journalist of the year.
Our News Associates multimedia sports journalism course and The School of Journalism’s sports journalism module are run in conjunction with Sportsbeat.
@10_callum.journo Some night at the SJA awards 😍#sja #journalist #sport #palladium ♬ Dreams – yourmusic4ever💯
The SJA Awards 2025 were held at the London Palladium on Monday, April 27, 2026.