Sponsors

This table shows all the sponsors that have advertised during the show. The data is drawn from The Countdown Page.

Sponsor	Start Date	End Date	Notes
The Times	22/08/1994	30/09/1994	First sponsor.
Seven Seas	11/01/1999	28/04/2000	Before the break an anagram was displayed. The answer was displayed after the break, with the caption 'Did you get it?'
Lyons Corner House Cakes	18/05/2000	14/08/2000	Each day of the week was taken up by a different product of their range; Mondays − French Sandwich, Tuesday − Cup Cakes, Wednesday − Swiss Roll, Thursday − Viennese Whirls and Friday − Battenberg.
Flora ProActiv	31/10/2000	27/04/2001
Kellogg's All-Bran	22/10/2001	18/10/2002	Last sponsor in the Richard Whiteley era.
Specsavers Opticians	06/02/2006	07/02/2007	The only sponsor of the Des Lynam era.
Digital UK	05/03/2007	04/03/2008	Not technically a sponsor. Last sponsor of the Des O'Connor era.
Ibuleve Gel	01/05/2009	12/05/2010	First sponsor of the Jeff Stelling era.
Vitabiotics	17/05/2010	20/12/2013	Consists of a range of Vitabiotics products; Wellman, Wellwoman, Jointace, Pregnacare, Osteocare, Visionace, Cardioace, Wellkid, Menopace, Immunace and Neurozan.
Vale Bridgecraft	06/01/2014	04/04/2014	Notably came up with QUILATY before every show.
Betterlife from Lloyds Pharmacy	19/05/2014	23/12/2015
HSL: Your Chair Specialists	04/01/2016	23/12/2016
Ibuleve Gel	03/01/2017	22/12/2017	Adverts included people engaged in various physical activities accompanied by nine-letter anagrams with topical answers (e.g. FOSTEREDS → DEFORESTS being unscrambled over a photo of a lumberjack chopping wood). Notably, two of these anagrams had the answers ballgames ☓ and elbowroom ☓, which were not valid in any Oxford Dictionary Online edition used in 2017. For reasons unknown, Episode 6601 did not carry Ibuleve sponsorship.
Gala Bingo	02/01/2018	present	Unlike its predecessor, Gala Bingo does not sponsor the early morning next-day repeats.