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Daniel O'Toole has been appointed to the newly created role of Head of Sport at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide, the commercial arm of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.

This new position brings together two previously separate parts of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide's sports business, Sports Sales & Distribution and Motion Gallery Sport, in order to create a single, focused department.

O'Toole will be responsible for delivering a long term strategy for sports across ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide, working in partnership with the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, federations and rights holders.

Paul Maidment, Director of Motion Gallery at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide, commented on the appointment: "I'm delighted that Danny, who has a wealth of sports sales experience at a senior level, will be leading this exciting new phase for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide Sport.

"Combining all our sports expertise in one place will enable Danny and his team to maximise growth opportunities across live events, finished programming distribution, clips sales, rights acquisitions and, through Motion Gallery's business partner Thought Equity Motion, offer customers a one-stop-shop for content ingest, delivery and commercialisation."

O'Toole added: "I'm thrilled to be taking on this new role, and hope to continue ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide's development as a major player in sports. We’re hungry to add content to what is already an extensive catalogue, and build on our recent successes."

O'Toole has been the Acting Sports Sales Manager at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide Sales & Distribution since April 2010 and brings with him over five years of sports sales experience. He will take up his new role on Friday 1st April 2011.

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide has the exclusive international distribution rights to live events such as horse racing from RMG and Ascot, including the Grand National, The Derby, Royal Ascot and British Champions' Day. Its catalogue also includes the Virgin London Marathon, the Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race, Barbarians rugby and the Lakeside World Professional Darts Championships. In addition, it also has over 20,000 hours of UK and international sports archive footage from ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport, ECB Cricket, the FA, the Six Nations Championship and Commonwealth Games and a long history of distributing the very best sports documentary programming with titles such as The Fight (4 x 50’), Grand Prix – The Killer Years (1 x 50’) and High Altitude (8 x 30’).

NOTES TO EDITORS
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Motion Gallery
, a business within ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide, offers media professionals access to the world's most comprehensive collection of high-quality motion imagery for licensing worldwide. With more than one million hours of footage, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Motion Gallery encompasses a wealth of content covering natural history, sport, news, locations, art, music, celebrities, historic events and more. ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Motion Gallery is also the exclusive global representative of the CBS News Archive, and has global distribution deals with NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and CCTV, China’s national television station. In March 2010, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Motion Gallery launched a strategic partnership with Thought Equity Motion to cross-represent content and technology internationally.

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide Sales & Distribution
Sales & Distribution is responsible for licensing British programmes to customers around the world on behalf of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and independent production companies. As the largest exporter of television programmes outside of the US studios, this business manages a catalogue of around 50,000 hours spanning all genres. It also runs , the world's biggest programme trade fair organised by a single distributor. In 2009/10, Sales & Distribution generated gross profits of £64.2 million on gross sales of £240.8 million.

Ben Nolan