Pan-European sports broadcaster Eurosport is gearing up for its first Olympic Games by appointing Bernard Ross to the newly created position of COO & GM of the Olympic Games. In his new position, Ross will be in charge of all production, logistics and organizational aspects of the planning for the Games.
The former head of production at UEFA will join Eurosport’s Paris HQ in January and report directly to Eurosport CEO Petter Hutton. Starting with the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, Eurosport, a subsidiary of U.S. media company Discovery Communications, will show the next four Olympic Games after acquiring the broadcast rights across 50 European markets in a €1.3B deal with the IOC. Germany, Norway and Sweden will play a particular role in Ross’ Olympic plans. “In those markets, all of the Olympic Games coverage will be exclusively on Discovery-owned platforms,” a Eurosport spokesperson told SBD Global. “Elsewhere we have announced sublicense agreements to share free-to-air TV rights with national broadcast partners.” Eurosport has agreed to several sublicense deals since securing the Olympic rights in June ’15. They include agreements with public broadcasters such as the BBC, ORF (Austria) and SRG SSR (Switzerland). Prior to his 11 years at UEFA, Ross spent 12 years working at IMG Media.
