Peter Hutton is the Head of Live Sports at Facebook after a hire that was seen as a symbol of the change of sports from television to online distribution. He was previously CEO of pan European broadcaster Eurosport, having rejoined the company in 2015 following the acquisition of Eurosport by Discovery Communications.
20th century
He had originally worked for Eurosport as a commentator in 1990 during his time as a sports reporter and TV presenter with Sky Sports, BSB, Anglia TV and BBC Leeds. His media career had begun as a 16-year-old schoolboy working for BBC Radio Leeds under then sports editor Harry Gration. At 21, on graduation from Cambridge University, he became sports editor of Radio Aire in Leeds before joining BBC TV a year later, where he reported from the Hillsborough Football Disaster in a year as a Leeds-based journalist. He moved to London to join the start-up 'the Sports Channel' which became Sky Sports In 1993 Hutton left Sky Sports to start a new world football television programme 'Futbol Mundial', reporting on football stories from around the world on a programme distributed worldwide. In 1994, he moved to India as the first employee of the International Management Group in the country, setting up its television arm TWI, which produced cricket, football and Bollywood music events as it became the biggest independent production company in the country. Hutton went on to become head of Production for IMG Asia as well as the co-managing director of IMG South Asia.
21st century
In 2002, he became one of the launch team of Ten Sports, a sports channel aimed at the Indian sub-continent but based in Dubai, UAE. He was CEO when the company was eventually sold to Zee Television in 2010. In 2011 he joined Fox International Channels, running international sports activities and was involved in the acquisition of Setanta Sports Africa and ESPN/Star Sports in Asia. He was the managing director of the Asian channel when it was rebranded as Fox Sports in Asia and Star Sports in India in 2013. In 2014 Hutton became CEO of the Mp and Silva sports agency in London before joining Eurosport in 2015. In 2015, he was named sports executive of the year, won deal of the year for the acquisition of European territory Olympic rights and Eurosport was named sports channel of the year at the TV Sports Awards. They held onto the award for 2016, when they also won deal of the year for the acquisition of Bundesliga football rights in Germany. In 2017, he was named in the Cablefax 100 as one of the top 100 executives worldwide in the TV industry. In 2017, he was again nominated for sports executive of the year, with Eurosport nominated for four separate awards at the TV Sports Awards, the most nominations for any firm worldwide, winning two out of four including deal of the year for the third consecutive year. He was also named in Sports Business's list of sports executives of the year He was profiled in the industry magazine Sportcal as having uniquely succeeded everywhere in sports media "Europe and Asia; agencies and broadcasters; buying and selling; producing and directing; reporting and presenting" He lives in Paris, London and Palo Alto.
