Job: director of sport, Setanta
Age: 55
Industry: broadcasting
Staff: 200
2005 ranking: new entry
Trevor East was once an integral part of the team that built up Sky Sports' dominance of live top-flight football. Now he is its biggest threat.
The former deputy head of Sky Sports, East left the satellite broadcaster last year to become director of sport at Irish pay-TV group Setanta, then little known outside its home market.
A year later - and aided by Brussels' determination to end Sky's live Premier League monopoly - Setanta broke Sky's stranglehold by snatching up the rights to 46 games a season for £392m a year.
It was quite a coup for Irish entrepreneurs Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan, who established Setanta in 1990 to beam Irish football games to ex-pats living in London.
"Most people in the UK have not heard of us," said East. "But we are on the map as from today. Over the next 12 months every sports viewer in the UK will have heard of us."
Named after a mythical Celtic warrior, Setanta now runs seven satellite channels in Britain, Ireland, the US and Europe. Backed by venture capitalists Benchmark Capital, it arrived on the UK scene two years ago, buying the rights to the Scottish Premier League from under the noses of the BBC for £35m.
But it was by sigining East that Setanta showed it really meant business. "It is extraordinary what they have achieved and how quickly they have done it," said one member of our panel.
East was at Sky for 10 years and played a key role in its sports rights negotiations, along with Sky Sports managing director Vic Wakeling. East was joined at Setanta by another former Sky executive, Richard Brooke.
"I was privileged to be part of a great team that built up one of the world's best sports broadcasting businesses," East said at the time of his departure. "I believe Setanta has the same sort of potential."
The three-year Premier League deal runs from the start of the 2007/08 season, with Setanta planning to broadcast matches on Freeview and broadband internet, as well as cable and satellite.
East said he was "very pleased and very proud". He will lead the search for presenters and a production team, as he takes on his old employers head-to-head for the first time. It is unlikely to be the last.
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