Aurora hires Red Bull’s Dominique Cutts and creates new senior team structure
Aurora Media Worldwide is the broadcast partner for new all-electric raceboat championship, E1 Series
Production house Aurora Media Worldwide has appointed Red Bull’s former head of unscripted, Dominique Cutts, to the newly-created post of chief content officer.
Cutts will lead on all of Aurora’s content, with a particular focus on building out the company’s non-live slate, across digital and short-form, branded and premium long-form documentaries. She will also work in a strategic capacity across the live sports portfolio, assisting Aurora in delivering a robust and innovative 360° content offering.
She joins as Aurora – which is part of All3Media – creates a new management team structure to position the business for the next phase of growth and development, building on recent new business wins which include the Hexagon Cup and E1, the new electric power boat series with team owners including Rafael Nadal, Tom Brady, Steve Aoki and Didier Drogba.
The new management team structure will see MD Lawrence Duffy becoming CEO, director of operations David O’Carroll taking on the COO role, and Lee Attreed moving from FD to CFO. Barry Flanigan continues as chief strategy officer, leading on business and strategy development.
Dominique Cutts has joined Aurora Media Worldwide in the newly-created post of chief content officer
Cutts joins from Red Bull where she spent five years, firstly working brand-side to build out the long form content portfolio, including executive producing Sports-Emmy nominated The Last Ascent, before moving to Red Bull Studios where as head of unscripted she looked after a slate of premium unbranded documentaries, including commissioning BAFTA-award winning The Real Mo Farah, and executive producing upcoming feature documentary The Reggae Girlz, directed by two-time Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy.
Prior to Red Bull, Cutts worked in senior development roles across the factual broadcast industry, including at the BBC, Fremantle, Betty and Maverick, as well as providing consultancy services for Sport Relief, NEOM and a number of brands and creative agencies.
She will be responsible for expanding Aurora’s content offering to new and existing clients, across rights holders, brands and broadcasters. Aurora has a track record in innovation and sustainability, coupled with experience in remote locations and a wealth of relationships across sport. Cutts will spearhead Aurora’s continued expansion into non-live, building on these strengths to tell powerful stories from sport and sport-adjacent worlds, set in extraordinary landscapes and using technical innovation to add a new dimension to traditional factual storytelling
Cutts will report to Duffy, who said: “We have been hugely impressed by Dominique’s track record delivering high quality, narrative-led content. Her creative programming experience, commercial knowledge and development expertise are a great fit with Aurora’s strength in producing original and innovative, international content. The restructure of our leadership team reflects our focus on growing the business organically and through new opportunities.”
Cutts commented: “In recent years, the collision of sport and entertainment has seen an explosion of storytelling across platforms. I am thrilled to be able to capitalise on this by joining the talented team at Aurora, who not only have a wealth of incredible relationships, but a real desire to push boundaries in both storytelling and creative execution. At such a pivotal moment in the industry I am delighted to have the opportunity to build on Aurora’s strengths to create extraordinary, original and compelling films and to help shape a company that will continue to lead the field well into the future.”