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.

Jason is Chief Executive Officer of 23 Capital, leading the business strategy and playing a fundamental role in structuring transactions and setting 23’s culture and values.

23 is a capital and solutions company focused exclusively on the sports, music and entertainment sectors. Since inception in 2014, 23 has deployed and advised on over $2.7bn of transactions. As a specialty finance platform, 23 Capital participates in transactions across the capital structure and employs multiple financing strategies ranging from passive IP lending and project finance transactions, to highly structured corporate facilities. 23 has committed and partnership capital of over $2bn to invest across the SM&E sectors and has recently played a pivotal role in the creation and evolution of OTRO via its funding partnerships.

Prior to founding 23 with Stephen Duval, Jason previously worked within the structured credit team at Investec Bank for over 13 years, during which time he built and headed up the successful sports, media, entertainment offering at the bank. He has structured $1bn of transactions in this space.

Jonathan has 25 years-experience in blue chip and private equity organisations across banking, mobile, retail and sports. Holding senior positions at Telefonica O2 where he ran the consumer mobile P&L and also led the strategy and transformation of the business to Dixons Carphone Warehouse where he was Commercial Marketing Director, the largest mobile and electrical retailer in the UK. He is now Customer Director at Sportradar – a private equity backed company obsessed with understanding fan engagement and creating products & propositions based on customer insight.

Jonathan Levene is Managing Director, Business Development at Intel Sports Europe. Jonathan leads Intel’s mission to pioneer the digitization of sports in the EU by driving the next wave of powerful technologies that will allow fans to experience the game in a more personal and immersive way. His group is responsible for forming new key partnerships with international leagues and federations; including teams, properties, media-rights holders, broadcasters and networks.  Jonathan is leading the successful collaboration with the Spanish soccer league “La Liga” incorporating FC Barcelona, Real and Atletico Madrid clubs amongst others. Jonathan joined Intel in 2016 as part of the acquisition of Replay Technologies where he served as Vice President of strategy and business development responsible for driving the company’s strategic vision and the global partnerships of Replay’s Emmy-Award winning, volumetric video format.

Kimberly Cook, CRO of Hookit.com, has lead teams resulting in two successful start up exits and left an executive post at Google to join Hookit.com due to the revolutionary technology and deep learning algorithms that blend her two passions, technology and sports.

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…

Bio coming soon…

I’ve been working in sport for over 11 years across brands, rights holders, athletes and events from a commercial point of view. From darts to esports, with F1, football and weightlifting in between, it’s been quite a ride! I’ve represented athletes in rugby, football, Olympic and Paralympic sports as well as advised UK sports governing bodies on how to become more commercially self-sufficient ahead of Olympic funding rounds. I now manage all global partnerships for one of the biggest and longest standing esports organisations in the world.