Andreas Heyden has been CEO of a company that may not immediately stand out to you. Called DFL Digital Sport GmbH, it’s better known as the digital arm of the German Football League, the Bundesliga.

Now 2 years into his first role in sport, he’s been an integral part of the drive to develop an engaged community of fans of the league, and obviously its 36 teams who are all stakeholders in the business.  They’ve succeeded in bringing more production in-house as they look to control their destiny in an ever changing media landscape.

He’s passionate about taking down the silo’s we see in production, where you have separate TV, digital, partner and social teams. Stating that, “The more you break the structure up the more you can re-use and re-utilise content to create interesting, compelling and highly engaging content either for B2B or for B2C”.

Before he ended up in football, Andreas built up almost 20 years of experience with internet businesses. Starting out with I-D Media and Microsoft before spending 6 years at German broadcaster RTL. Rising up to become a leader of people at a young age.

Olympic Gold Medalist and member of the Hockey Hall of Fame with leadership positions at the highest levels of sport, including the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee, Angela guides the strategies of major sports organizations in her role as CEO and co-founder of the Sports Innovation Lab.

Bruna has over eight years of experience across media, advertising and most recently sport. Prior to joining Twitter in 2015, Bruna worked at Ogilvy London & São Paulo, and Publicis Brazil. She now leads content partnerships efforts at Twitter UK with a range of different sports partners including football clubs & leagues, broadcasters and key motorsports leagues. Her goal is helping sports partners to get closer to their followers in the one social platform conversations happen in real-time – through Live content, video, Twitter emojis or other innovation formats.

Danna Rabin is a global business and technology executive, who most recently served as Chief Operating Officer at HEED (joint venture between AGT International and WME/IMG), AGT International (a pioneer in proprietary IoT, IoT Analytics, Deep Web Analysis, Machine Learning, Social Data Management, Big Data integration and advanced analytics), and the media-technology venture, Vocativ (www.vocativ.com – which utilizes proprietary technology to explore the deep web for original news, stories and video production).

George started his career at DDB Worldwide, New York where he gained valuable marketing and advertising experience.

During his fourteen years at the ATP, George has played a vital role in strategic planning for ATP’s Brave New World (the biggest strategic change process in the organisation’s history), the introduction of the new ATP branding in 2009, creation of the new categories of tournaments (Masters 1000, 500 and 250) and the relocation of the Nitto ATP Finals to London.

George is currently responsible for driving ATP’s business development and marketing, production of the weekly ATP World Tour Uncovered TV show, editorial management of ATP digital & social channels as well as marketing and show production at the Nitto ATP Finals, the world’s biggest indoor tennis tournament. Most recently George co-led the launch of inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan last November, a pioneering new event that trialled numerous innovations in the game as well as serving as a global platform to promote the future stars of the sport.

Michael was appointed CTO for the PGA European Tour in Nov2017, with responsibility for Digital, Scoring, Infrastructure and Data Management including Official World Golf Rankings. Formerly, Michael was the London 2012 Marketing and Communications Director for BT Global Services, and responsible for activating BT Global Services’ highly successful London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games marketing campaign worldwide, as well as being responsible for operational and crisis communications across BT’s highly acclaimed London 2012 Delivery programme. Michael then went on to form TrueGold Communications, a sports marketing agency specialising in technology-based global sport sponsorship.

Bio coming soon…

Clare is a former England cricket captain. At the age of 30, she was awarded the OBE after leading England to a first Ashes win in 42 years. Clare retired from playing for England in 2006 with over 100 international caps and having led the team for 6 years. Clare is now Director of England Women’s Cricket at the England & Wales Cricket Board driving a hugely successful period for the women’s game. This included a spell of four years from 2009-2013 where the England women’s team retained their number one world ranking and back-to-back Ashes wins in 2013 and 2014. In 2014, the ECB announced professional contracts for England’s top 18 female players, a ground-breaking step for women’s cricket.

Damani Leech began working at the League office in 2015.  In his current role he develops strategic plans for new or existing football operations platforms to position the game of football for long-term growth in the U.S. and abroad. Additionally, he serves as an interdepartmental liaison on behalf of football operations to other League office business units to better integrate football operations opportunities and key considerations into league-wide business planning and partnerships.

Prior to the NFL, Damani Leech worked at the NCAA national office for over 17 years, where he provided strategic oversight and direction for multiple NCAA championships – including Division I football, women’s volleyball, men’s ice hockey and baseball – in addition to managing the Association’s playing rules & officiating department.

A native of Tacoma, Washington, he received his bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and International Affairs from Princeton University in 1998, where he was an All-Ivy League football student-athlete.

Joanna became RFU Director of Digital, Marketing and Communications in May 2016 and is responsible for the England Rugby digital, marketing and communications strategy, integration, planning and delivery. Her remit covers: England Rugby content and channels, including digital strategy and delivery, team and corporate communications, media relations and media operations, CRM, the England Rugby brand as well as setting and delivering the fan’s stadium spectator experience and match-day sports presentation. She was Communications and Marketing Director for three years at England Rugby 2015, organisers of Rugby World Cup 2015.

As CEO and Founder of Whistle Sports, John West is responsible for executing the company’s mission. West has more than two decades’ worth of experience of launching and growing businesses, including Enstrat, an environmental engineering firm, and Silver Oak Solutions, a financial services firm. In addition, West was a partner at management consultancy firm Mitchell Madison Group. In 2008, West formed Whistle Sports to provide millennial sports fans with engaging content, direct on social media platforms. West holds a BSc in engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He and his wife have three children.

John is one of the founders of Perform and is currently Chief Commercial Operator of DAZN and a member of the board for Perform Group. Over the past 11 years, John has overseen all Commercial Partnerships and Rights Relationships and its international expansion across the globe. John has over 23 years’ experience within the Sports, Entertainment and Music business, having previously spent time at Sky Sports, EMI Records, Hutchinson Whampoa and Sony Pictures.

Julie Bogaert is part of the Media Partnerships team at Facebook where she manages relationships with emerging talent and public figures across EMEA. She has worked at Facebook for over two years ago, where she joined from Sony Music. At Sony Julie managed brand partnerships for artists signed to the Sony Music roster.

Mai is Sky’s Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer. Mai leads the strategy function across the group. She is also responsible for the distribution of Sky’s channels to other platforms including cable and IPTV.  Her team acquires third party channels and VOD services to include in Sky’s packages.  Her remit also covers business development which spans partnerships with large corporations such as Vodafone and Apple to working with early stage companies such as Roku.  She joined Sky in 1999, and prior to that spent nine years working as an economic advisor to blue-chip companies in a number of different industries, both in the UK and the USA.  She has a BA in Economics from Cambridge University and a Masters in Economics from Tufts University, USA.  Mai is a Non-Executive Director of Nationwide.

After graduating in French & German from Bath University in 2001, I joined the Millward Brown graduate programme,. After building up a solid understanding of media research at Millward Brown, I joined the research team GWR radio where I stayed for 2 years. I then spent 4 years in the national newspaper market, taking on senior research roles at both The Sun and Daily Mirror. I joined Eurosport as Head of Research in September 2008, before moving to ESPN UK in July 2010 where I headed up the EMEA Research team. There, my team focused on devising a quantitative/qualitative research strategy with the ultimate objective of growing subscribers and audience across all ESPN TV & Digital brands. After the sale of ESPN in 2013, I joined BT Sport to set up the insight function for the brand new sports channel before joining Sky to head up their sports insight division. In 2017, I joined Formula One as Global Research Director.