Bla­ka Dan has won the first Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on com­pe­ti­tion, se­cur­ing first place with a to­tal score of 387 points and earn­ing the grand prize of $1 mil­lion. The com­pe­ti­tion, which had a to­tal bud­get of $8 mil­lion—in­clud­ing $4 mil­lion in fund­ing from the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts—award­ed $300,000 to sec­ond-place win­ner Yung Bred­da and $150,000 to third-place fin­ish­er Preedy.

In ad­di­tion to the main com­pe­ti­tion, Yung Bred­da was named the Bmo­bile Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­on, an award de­ter­mined by a text vote con­duct­ed through the Bmo­bile net­work. He re­ceived a $10,000 cash prize, a mo­bile phone, and one year of free mo­bile ser­vice.

Con­tes­tants who placed fourth through eleventh each re­ceived $50,000.

The event took place on Feb­ru­ary 20 at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and the record­ed fi­nale was broad­cast last night. Un­like So­ca Monarch be­fore it, the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on fol­lowed a re­al­i­ty-show-style for­mat. Pro­duc­er Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la said he con­sult­ed with Si­mon Cow­ell be­fore de­vel­op­ing the struc­ture, which in­clud­ed mul­ti­ple pre-record­ed episodes lead­ing up to the fi­nale. The fi­nal show was record­ed in ad­vance, edit­ed, and then broad­cast on CNC3.

The event was sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts, led by Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, along with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion and its CEO, Kei­ba Ja­cob Mot­t­ley. Spon­sors con­tributed to the suc­cess of the com­pe­ti­tion, which high­light­ed so­ca mu­sic’s cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Win­ners and fi­nal­ists will be con­tact­ed for de­tails re­gard­ing the of­fi­cial prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny.