DAZN announces senior reshuffle as it continues realignment

James Rushton, acting CEO, DAZN

Following July’s promotion of James Rushton to acting CEO, sports streamer DAZN has announced a leadership reshuffle to align with a new focus on non-live, user experience and growing subscribers.

The most senior appointment is John Gleasure as executive vice chairman. Gleasure, who was one of the original founders of DAZN, will work alongside Rushton and executive chairman John Skipper on the company’s transformation agenda.

One of the leaders in setting this agenda will be Ed McCarthy, DAZN’s new chief operating officer. McCarthy moved over from DAZN’s parent company Perform Group in June with former DAZN CEO Simon Denyer going the other way. The exec will take operational responsibility for DAZN’s ventures and will be responsible for leading its live and non-live content strategy.

Another senior promotion is Veronica Diquattro, who is elevated to the new role of chief customer and innovation officer. She is responsible for all aspects of DAZN’s user experience including product development, brand, programming and editorial curation of content. Diquattro will continue to oversee DAZN’s business in Italy and Spain as she did with her previous title of EVP, southern Europe.

Filling in the gap of the now acting CEO Rushton, Paul Morton has been promoted to chief revenue officer from EVP, Finance.

The final executive shift is the promotion of former Apple services business manager Ben King to a newly created role of chief subscription officer. King is responsible for growing DAZN’s D2C service though marketing strategy and distribution partnerships.

Explaining the reshuffle, along with the current status of the company, acting CEO Rushton said: “With DAZN’s paying subscriber base on track to be fully recovered to pre-Covid-19 levels by Q4 this year, DAZN is gearing up for an exciting and new phase of growth. We will continue to invest in our initial core launch markets – as evidenced by the recent announcements regarding the major UEFA Champions League and Bundesliga packages in DACH, whilst increasing our commitment to becoming a global sports destination platform through increased focus on DAZN’s forthcoming global service.

“In particular, the development of non-live content will play a major role in our expansion plans. As one of the key learnings from the pandemic, the relationship between non-live content engagement and customer retention has never been stronger.” Rushton said. “We have a deep understanding of our customers and we will look to develop a broader and more meaningful value proposition by providing a data-driven, personally curated mix of quality live and non-live content that will attract people to the platform and keep them coming back on a regular basis.”