Who’s joined us in the past

Manabu Yamada is Executive Vice President of DAZN Japan, leading all business in the Japan market. Manabu has extensive experience in sports and digital business throughout his career, in which his earlier major achievements include the launch of the first official MLB website in Japan, and involvement in the digital strategy for many sports such as the NFL and the J.League. His more recent career highlights include the broadcasting of major sports at media such as J SPORTS, and led Sports Navi, the biggest digital sporting media in Japan, through business developments and partnerships with various sports leagues and entities. Manabu was appointed to the role of President and Representative Director for Sports Navi K.K. in 2018 where he exhibited excellent leadership, and joined DAZN in September 2021 as EVP, as the first Japanese business leader for DAZN Japan.

Katie Sadleir is the new Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) Chief Executive Officer, taking up the position in November 2021. She joined the CGF from World Rugby, where she was General Manager of Women’s Rugby and responsible for spearheading the global development of the women’s game.

A Commonwealth Games medallist and an Olympian, Katie has a wealth of experience as both an athlete and sports administrator. Born in Scotland and raised in Canada, Katie made New Zealand her home and represented her adopted country at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games in synchronised swimming, before competing at the Edinburgh 1986 Commonwealth Games two years later where she won the bronze medal in the women’s solo. She served as the Assistant Chef de Mission New Zealand at the Victoria 1994 Commonwealth Games and has attended six editions of the multi-sport competition in various capacities. Katie led the establishment of the New Zealand Academy of Sport network in the late 1990s before becoming General Manager of Sport and Recreation New Zealand (now Sport New Zealand) from 2000-2006. She has held directorships with both Sport New Zealand and High-Performance Sport New Zealand while she has been a director with the International Association of Elite Sport Training Centres, a board member of the New Zealand Swimming Federation and a member of the New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) Athletes’ Commission.

SailGP, the purpose-driven, global racing league appointed Erica Kerner as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer in 2021. Kerner will lead the marketing and communications functions across the global business. A key focus will be growing SailGP’s already enviable global audience and continue to build on its strong relationships with global distribution and broadcast partners as the league moves from Season 2 to 3, starting May 2022.

Les Wigan is the Chief Technology and Operations Officer, Foxtel Group with responsibilities for Production Innovation, Technology, and Operations across Foxtel, FOX SPORTS and Streamotion – Kayo Sports and Binge. Les was the founding COO of Streamotion, home to Kayo Sports, the leading multi-sports streaming service, and BINGE, Australia’s fastest-growing entertainment streaming service. With accountability for driving both strategic and day-to-day management of the business across Product, Programming and Content, Key Commercial Partnerships Technology, and Subscriber Management and Data, Les was instrumental in the development, build and implementation of Kayo Sports and BINGE, ensuring successful launches of both streaming services. Previously, as Fox Sports’ Director of Digital, Technology, and Broadcast Operations, Les championed a future-focused corporate and digital strategy, including the introduction of a transformative world-first broadcasting operating model. His role spanned across broadcast and digital operations, technology, sports statistics business, and digital accountability. Prior to this Les held the role of Director of Commercial Development at News Ltd, along with a number of corporate and commercial finance roles at British Pay TV operator BSkyB.

As APAC Head of Business Development, Media and Entertainment at AWS, Shweta works closely with media organisations on their strategy to leverage cloud for their most critical workloads. Having worked in media industry for two decades in leadership roles across technology and new business initiatives, Shweta has a deep understanding of the challenges as well as the innovation which the industry thrives on.

Yoichiro (Yo) Basso is SVP Subscription Growth, Japan at DAZN Group. He is responsible for all subscription and revenue growth in Japan, one of DAZN’s original launch markets, and leads all consumer marketing and distribution teams. Prior to joining DAZN, Yo was Tokyo Managing Director at AKQA, a leading digital design and innovation firm and was responsible for setting the vision and strategy for the Tokyo studio, as well as leading day-to-day operations with full P&L ownership. He has held executive marketing and agency roles across the US at Uber, GE Capital, and DDB Worldwide.

Craig is recognized as one of Australia’s most innovative and forward thinking chief executives. His charismatic and passionate nature, together with his business acumen, has leveraged him to the forefront of sports administration and the leader behind Australia’s largest and most successful international sporting event.

Craig has been Tournament Director of the Australian Open since 2006 and was appointed CEO of Tennis Australia in 2013. He also serves as the Chair of the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports (COMPPS). His relationship with the playing group and relentless focus on improvement has transformed the Australian Open into one of the players’ and Australia’s favorite events.

The Australian Open has continually broken attendance records since 2006 and attracted more than 814,000 people from around Melbourne, Victoria and across the globe in 2020 alone. The event delivers more than $377 million in economic benefit to the state each year and reaches a global audience of more than 900 million households.

Craig has led the introduction of successful initiatives to shift the trending decline in participation with products such as Hot Shots, adult social play, the rollout of digital platforms to increase court accessibility and affiliation reform. Also, under his leadership, Australia’s different coaching groups were unified into a single organisation and an additional $300 million leveraged for local facilities.

Prior to joining Tennis Australia, Craig was Director of Tennis at the University of Illinois, where he led the fastest tennis program turnaround in US collegiate history, breaking a 100 year-old record for most consecutive wins.

He twice earned the US National Coach of the Year award, coached several top ten professional players and captained the South African Davis Cup team. His achievements have further been recognized by being elected to the College Tennis Hall of Fame (2010) and Illinois Athletic Hall of Fame (2017).

Before becoming IPC President in September 2017, Andrew served the IPC in multiple roles, including Vice President (2013-2017), Governing Member (2009-2013), as well as Chairperson of the IPC Paralympic Games Committee from 2009-2013. Additionally, he was the President of the Americas Paralympic Committee from 2005-2009 after serving as its Secretary General from 2002-2005.

Sunita Kaur is the Senior Vice President of APAC at Twitch. The first in the role, Sunita oversees all operations for content creators, media partners, agencies, advertisers, publishers, and developers in the region. Sunita comes to Twitch from Spotify where she was Managing Director of Southeast Asia and then VP Revenue in APAC over a six year period, expanding the service across Asia and leading launches in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Previously, Sunita held executive roles across Asia at Facebook, Microsoft, and Forbes.

In 2019 Arsenal FC graduate Nico Yennaris officially changed his nationality from British to Chinese, his name to Li Ke and his Club to Beijing Guoan FC. This move made him the first naturalised player to ever play and score in the Chinese Super League and the first player to represent China. Off the pitch he was 2019 China GQ New Athlete of the Year, Forbes 30under30 & Weibo Newcomer of the Year.

Anurag Dahiya is Chief Commercial Officer at Cricket’s global governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC). In his role, Anurag leads ICC’s commercial strategy, and delivery of all commercial elements around global cricket. His team based in Dubai delivers a large number of global and regional cricket events throughout the world, besides managing commercial and media rights partnerships and broadcast production activities around all ICC events. Anurag has deep multi-national experience in media, in the areas of video content strategy and content operations with various organisations. Prior to ICC, he has worked at Singtel, Asia’s leading communications group, and was with Fox International (previously ESPN STAR Sports) for 15 years. His content experience spans launching sports news and cricket channels to Mandarin general entertainment. Anurag earned BE in Computer Science & Engineering from PEC and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.

Kevin Sim was appointed Head of Asia Pacific for Bundesliga International earlier this year, having previously been Director of Global Media Rights at ONE Championship since 2016. Before he worked as Marketing Director for the international sports rights agency MP & Silva and lastly for five years at Multi Channels Asia in a number of different roles. His last post at Multi Channel Asia was that of Commercial Director. His previous positions have focused, among other things, on the development of existing and new media channels.

Tammy has been involved in esports since the 90s in wide-ranging capacities, locally and internationally. From working part-time at a LAN Shop to becoming an esports competitor and influencer, she has since worked at Razer, Twitch and LGD.

Specialising in event and tournament management and marketing, she has worked the Tokyo Game show, TwitchCon, Gamescom, and tournament brands World Cyber Games and Nanyang Championships.

A strong advocate of diversity in esports and growing the grassroots, Tammy has built a strong female gaming network in SEA over the years, and leads Team Asterisk*, an organisation which supports and enables competitive female gamers.

As co-founder and CEO, Matt leads EASL’s overall strategy and executive team; while playing the central role in structuring and managing the organization’s relationships with FIBA and participating leagues and teams.

Prior to establishing EASL, as the only foreigner ever to take and pass the Chinese Sports Agent Certification Exam, Matt founded and grew ALTIUS to become the CBA league’s largest player agency.

Fluent in Chinese, Matt began his sports business career with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks as the personal interpreter for Yi Jianlian. He had previously worked in several management roles within public relations and government affairs firms in Beijing.

As Managing Director, Tony Qi is responsible for growing MLB’s brand and baseball development in China, overseeing media cooperation, fans participation, strategic investment, content production, government relation, etc.

Tony has worked in global media sector for more than 16 years, with expertise on content production and distribution, investment, strategy formulation and business development.

A highlight of his tenure with Fox Networks Group was facilitating and leading the cooperation of content projects and distribution strategy with dozens of partners, including CCTV, Tencent, China Intercontinental Communication Center, SMG and Alibaba.

With two decades of experience in the sports and media industry, Yannick Colaco co-founded FanCode in March 2019. FanCode, India’s first multi-sport aggregator platform, focuses on long-tail sports content and contextual commerce for every sports fan.

With all his years of experience in the industry, and being an avid sports fan himself, Yannick was determined to help improve the consumption experience of sports fans, an experience which is fragmented and underserviced when it comes to accessibility to content, commerce and building fan communities. Addressing this, along with another industry veteran – Prasana Krishnan, Yannick co-founded FanCode as a brand under Dream Sports.

Prior to FanCode, Yannick was part of the International Leadership Team of the NBA and Managing Director of its India business, and also served as the Chief Operating Officer of Nimbus Sport in the past.

Ed Miles is a senior executive in the global media, entertainment, and sports industry.

Ed spent 15 years as a VP at IMG | WWE with a remit across commercial sponsorship, endorsement rights, brand consultancy and broadcast sales working with some of the world’s largest sports and media entities.

Ed joined Google in Sydney in 2014 and after three years managing one of Google’s largest sales functions joined YouTube. In his current role, Ed is Head of TV, Film and Sports Content Partnerships for Asia Pacific and Head of Creator and Content Partnerships for AuNZ.

Born in 1983 in Barcelona, Jordi Camps is a graduate in Sports Management and International Business from the UPF, speaks four languages fluently and has experience of more than 30 countries. Camps has worked for several renowned companies, including ODECO (IMAGO Group), Penalty, Atlas Sports Consulting and sports marketing agency UP2YOU, where he was in charge of activating sponsorship deals with Gatorade, Bwin, Mail Boxes and Damm, among others.

He returned to FC Barcelona as Head of Business Development APAC in 2017 after previously spending two years at the Club as a Sponsorship Manager. Ready to take on a new challenge and having garnered a solid background in managing sales, commercial and marketing issues, Jordi Camps entered 2020 as the Managing Director of the APAC office and later this year also became the Global Business Director.

Being a giant nerd, Maurizio has always been interested in tech, sports, and media (movies and moviemaking are one of his passions).

After a successful career as a basketball coach, he started working in the digital field in 1999, joining MP Web, the digital media arm of the Mediapartners Group, the most important sports agency in Italy. MPWeb became a leader in the production and distribution of media content for the then called new media. MP Web was then renamed Infront Advanced Media Solutions, when the whole Mediapartners Group was acquired by Infront Sports and Media. He was also promoted to Managing Director of the new company.

Maurizio worked both in Europe and in Asia, before turning into an entrepreneur, founding and raising capital for two startups. He returned to Asia in 2013, taking the post of Head of Sports for Samsung Asia – where he was involved in creating and launching one of the most successful services of the Korean company in the region at the time, Samsung SportsFlow.

After a brief stint with another startup; Maurizio joined Twitter with the goal of growing communities, driving conversations around sport, as well as creating new revenue opportunities for Twitter’s partners by creating a lineup of programmes that will satisfy the ever-hungry-for-content audience in South East Asia.

Isaura Morales manages Sports Relationships across Southeast Asia for Facebook. Isaura has spent two and a half years with Facebook, previously based in Mexico, and now in the APAC HQ in Singapore.

Isaura is responsible for overseeing Facebook Relationships across Sports entities in SE Asia. Focusing on Sports Broadcasters, Leagues, Teams and Athletes with one focus, helping them achieve their business objectives through Facebook business solutions. Isaura graduated from Intercontinental University with a Bachelor of Business Administration. Before joining Facebook she used to work for the NBA, Google & Turner.

Julian Ogrin, CEO Kayo Sports and BINGE, has 25 years’ experience working in Mobile Network Operators both domestically and internationally, with senior roles in companies such as Europe’s Tele2 Group and Meteor Mobile. Julian held the position of Managing Director and CEO at telecommunications company amaysim between 2015-2018, overseeing the rapid rise of the company, which launched in November 2010, to become the leading challenger brand in the Australian mobile sector.

In the role, Julian was responsible for creating the largest Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) in Australia, with over 1.1 million subscribers. A network which was voted MVNO of the year in 2017 & 2018 by Comms Day Edison Awards, and Roy Morgan Telco of the year on three occasions.

He pioneered the launch of an online subscription-based pricing model in Australia, with Unlimited Voice & Text and Included data, now the hero product with all competitors.
Under Julian’s leadership amaysim was transformed into a diversified digitally led Household Service Provider, with the company now offering Mobile, NBN, Electricity and Gas products to over 800k households.

Julian’s rich understanding of consumer behaviours is a vital asset as he leads the Kayo and BINGE streaming business. Mr Ogrin has accountability for all streaming services; Kayo Sports, BINGE, Watch AFL and Watch NRL.

As EVP & Managing Director of NBA Asia, Scott Levy oversees development and expansion of the NBA’s branding and basketball initiatives in Asia excluding Greater China. Levy also directs all of NBA Asia’s business groups including media distribution, marketing partnerships, merchandising, events, marketing, digital media, and e-gaming. Levy reports to NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum.

Since Levy’s arrival in 2009, the league has dramatically expanded its local partnerships resulting in more than 500 retail locations and e-commerce sites, many new media and marketing partnerships, the launch of the Jr. NBA across Southeast Asia, and amassing more than 20 million followers from Asia across the league’s social media platforms.

From 2006 to 2009, Levy ran his own consulting company, MJ Global Sports and Media Inc. Levy previously worked for the NBA for 10 years and left as Senior Vice President, International Television and Marketing Partnerships. During Levy’s tenure, he helped grow broadcast distribution for NBA programming to more than 200 countries and 40 languages. Under this leadership, the NBA launched many new content offerings internationally, including NBA TV, the league’s 24-hour network.

Prior to beginning his first NBA stint in 1996, Levy traveled independently and extensively throughout China, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Levy is on the board of the Global Health Society, a nonprofit organization that conducts camps and develops programs for children with bleeding disorders. He has competed in multi-sport and adventure races, including the New York Marathon, Oxfam Japan Trailwalker and many triathlons raising funds for Fred’s Team and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Levy is based in Hong Kong with his wife Ilene and sons Matthew and Joshua.

Chatri Sityodtong is an entrepreneur and a martial artist from Thailand, best known as the Founder, Chairman and CEO of ONE Championship. Chatri Sityodtong was named Asia’s 2nd Most Powerful Person in Sports by FOX Sports.He is also set to star on the upcoming Asian edition of The Apprentice reality TV series.

Prabhu was appointed Director of Technology in August 2019. He was previously Head of Service in the Broadcast and Infrastructure team, and has been at Sky since December 2010. Prabhu has broad technology, telco, broadcast and online experience and prior to joining Sky, he held service delivery and management roles at Vodafone and TelstraClear.

Prabhu leads Sky’s technology team alongside Justin Tomlinson. Justin heads Sky Digital, an exciting new team with a focus on building Sky’s digital future. Prabhu and his team are responsible for all other aspects of Sky’s technology, including our strong commitment to continuing to deliver excellent services to Sky Direct-to-Home customers.

Melissa Soobratty is the Senior Media Director at World Table Tennis (WTT) and oversees all areas related to content to drive forward and further professionalise the organisation’s vastly expanding media operations. This includes overseeing commercial broadcast deals, live production and social and digital media. She has accrued a wealth of experience in the fields of sports media, OTT, business development, strategy, and production over the years both in Europe and Asia. Her previous roles include Vice President, Media at Football Marketing Asia (FMA), Business Development Director, APAC at Endeavor Streaming plus commercial roles at StarHub, Setanta Africa, Fox Sports, and BBC Worldwide.

Kim joined the Foxtel Group in 2019 after spending two seasons at Cricket Australia as Head of Big Bash Leagues (BBL), which included delivering the first-ever standalone Women’s BBL final with a sold-out crowd. Prior to this, she spent 15 years with PepsiCo, most recently as Head of Sports Marketing based at their global HQ in New York, leading initiatives such as the Pepsi Superbowl Halftime Show. Kim was appointed Marketing Director of Kayo Sports in October 2020, leading brand management and go to market strategy for Australia’s leading sports streaming business.

Ajit Mohan, Vice President & Managing Director, Facebook India

As the Vice President and Managing Director, India at Facebook, Ajit Mohan spearheads the company’s India charter. Ajit and his leadership team are focused on the company’s efforts to enable Indians to connect with people, communities, and the things they care the most about.

Prior to Facebook, Ajit was the Chief Executive Officer at Hotstar. He launched and built Hotstar into India’s leading premium video streaming platform. Ajit spent five years at McKinsey & Company, first in New York in its media practice, where he worked with media companies in North America, Europe, and Latin America, and two years as a Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute, where he co-authored India’s Urban Awakening, a 2010 report that outlined a new policy approach to India’s rapid urbanization.

Ajit has worked extensively in the social sector including initiatives in child nutrition in Bihar, anti-sex selection programs in New Delhi, public school reforms in Cincinnati in the United States, and in improving access to government welfare in New York for a program run by the Robin Hood Foundation.

He is a graduate of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a BASc in Computer Engineering from NTU in Singapore.

Sanjog Gupta leads the Sports business for Star and Disney India which includes a portfolio of 17 channels. In this role, he is responsible for the business, product (programming & production), marketing, and strategy for the Sports network.