You definitely don’t want to miss an exclusive interview with Kevin A. Mayer in the December 2021 Issue of VideoAge.
In March of 2021, Mayer was appointed chairman of DAZN on a non-executive basis. The London-based OTT sports subscription video streaming service, which launched — first in Europe, and then in Japan in 2016 — is owned by the 64-year-old Ukraine-born Sir Leonard V. Blavatnik, who is now the U.K.’s richest man.
Mayer previously served a short stint — just three months — as the CEO of China’s Social Media site TikTok, which he joined after he wasn’t named Disney’s CEO after Bob Iger stepped down. He left TikTok after then-U.S. president Donald Trump began to wage war against it. Before that he served as the chairman of the Direct-to-Consumer and International division of The Walt Disney Company. In 2020 he launched Disney Plus. During his tenure he also launched ESPN Plus and ran Hulu.
VideoAge‘s interview with the 59-year-old Mayer was originally set for September 10, 2021, but the eventual 15-minute Zoom call didn’t happen until November 9 due to several postponements caused by Mayer’s frequent travels from his Los Angeles base to DAZN’s headquarters in London (pictured above). During that time he was also appointed as a consultant for Discovery amid its Warner Media merger. Another reason for pushing the interview off was due to developments happening with Forest Road Acquisition II, a company he formed in 2021 with Disney alum Tom Staggs. Recently, Forest Road acquired Moonbug Entertainment for $3 billion, and previously acquired Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine for $900 million. For DAZN he had to approve a 2.5 billion euro (U.S. $2.88 billion) deal for 10 weekly football matches of Italy’s Serie A, of which seven are exclusive and three are to be shared with Comcast’s Sky.
Today, DAZN is available in some 200 markets, boasting an estimated 11 million subscribers.
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