Sports Streamer DAZN Hires Ex-Twitch Ad Boss Walker Jacobs as First Chief Revenue Officer

Publish date: 2024-07-07

 DAZN, a top sports streaming provider, has tapped Walker Jacobs as its first global chief revenue officer and president of DAZN U.S.

Jacobs most recently served as Twitch’s chief revenue officer and managing director of sports for the Amazon Ads division, before exiting in December 2023 after five years with the company. At Twitch, Jacobs oversaw the livestreaming platform’s global sales and marketing teams and launched its brand partnership studio, along with several dozen new ad products and formats. In addition, he oversaw sales and marketing for Amazon Prime Video’s sports, including the launch of the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.”

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Prior to Twitch and Amazon, Jacobs was COO of Fandom, the entertainment superfan platform started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and served as EVP and head of Turner Digital at Turner Broadcasting (now part of Warner Brothers Discovery). During his six-year tenure at Turner, he oversaw sales for the entire portfolio including the NBA Digital joint venture with the NBA, NCAA (including March Madness Live) in partnership with CBS Sports, as well as CNN.com, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, PGA.com, PGA Tour, Golf.com, NASCAR.com, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network, Team Coco, Funny Or Die, Adult Swim and others.

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At DAZN, Jacobs will be tasked with expanding the company’s relationships with sponsors, brands and advertisers as well as explore new commercial opportunities and monetization models for its recently launched free tier. In addition, Jacobs will lead Team Whistle, DAZN’s U.S.-based social media content creation and distribution company that was acquired by the business in 2023.

“Walker’s impeccable track record of using data and technology to deliver results for brand partners will enable DAZN to maximize the value of our audience within our premium live sports content environment,” DAZN Group CEO Shay Segev said in announcing his hire. “With Walker’s experience, we can anticipate a healthy appetite for innovation, commercial integrations and new advertising products and, ultimately, strong revenue growth in this area.”

Jacobs commented: “DAZN has built an impressive roster of rights around the world, and we have an enormous opportunity to enhance how we partner with brands and advertisers to further drive growth. I am excited to partner with Shay and the team to unlock our full potential, especially as we lean into our free tier of sports programming. I am also incredibly excited to help DAZN grow its presence in the USA and strengthen our offering to U.S. viewers by building strong partnerships with leagues and competitions.”

Jacobs currently sits on the board of directors of the American Advertising Federation and Mobile Marketing Association and has previously served on several other boards including the Ad Council and IAB.

DAZN (pronounced “da-ZONE”) offers live sports streaming services in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Japan and Taiwan.  Its content includes soccer matches from Bundesliga, English Premier League, J.League, LaLiga, Serie A and the UEFA Champions League, in addition to events from Formula 1, NFL, NBA, MotoGP and the UFC. In addition, DAZN is the only place outside North America that offers every NFL match.

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