Ex-SNA CTO moves to Discovery

Discovery Communications has named Dominic Baillie, Chief Technology Officer, Olympics & Sports leading up to the 2018 Olympic Games. The network has won exclusive multimedia rights for 50 countries and territories in Europe for the 2018 through the 2024 Olympic Games.

Baillie was previously CTO at Sky News Arabia. In this newly created role, he will be responsible for developing the Olympic Games and sports technology strategy – including the successful delivery of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Games across all screens.

Baillie will also play a leading role in the planned migration to IP, cloud for content management and distribution of the whole portfolio. With over 15 years’ experience, Baillie has held a number of senior roles in the industry including CTO at Sky News Arabia where he was responsible for engineering, development and technical operations. Prior to this he was CTO at Ten Sports.

In another key announcement, Discovery named Simon Farnsworth, Senior Vice President, Olympic Technical Distribution. Farnsworth will be responsible for strategic oversight of content aggregation and signal distribution, managing the transport of content from the Olympic Games venue sites to Discovery.

Baillie and Farnsworth will report to Discovery Chief Technology Officer John Honeycutt based in London. Farnsworth who started in March will be joined by Baillie in April, working across Discovery’s international portfolio of channels and digital products including both Eurosport and Eurosport Player.

“Dominic is a real industry innovator; a seasoned professional with a wealth of technical expertise. Simon brings an unmatched balance of commercial and technical experience, with an impressive background in content delivery,” said Honeycutt in a statement.

“Both men are global players who will push the boundaries of innovation as we continue to develop our technical operations,” he added.