IMG has tapped a former Turner sales executive, Greg D’Alba, to become the company’s first head of global sales.
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D'Alba
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D’Alba, the former president of CNN and Turner digital ad sales, has been hired as IMG’s president of global sales and marketing, a new role that will be tasked with selling sponsorships across the company’s events, which range from golf tournaments to fashion shows to concert tours. IMG announced the news internally last week.
D’Alba is the first major hire IMG has made since it was acquired by WME in a $2.4 billion deal last year. WME co-CEOs Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell believe a global sales executive can help increase revenue at the company by finding new sponsors and opportunities for existing clients to do more with other IMG events.
He will be based in New York and report to Emanuel and Whitesell.
D’Alba joined CNN in 1986 and eventually became the president of digital ad sales. He left the company this year during a restructuring. He was praised by Turner President David Levy for his leadership and client relationships. He spent the bulk of his career working on the news side of the business with CNN.
The last time IMG hired a senior sales executive to sell across its assets was in 2006, when it tapped former NBC executive Peter Lazarus to develop a centralized sales strategy. It abandoned those efforts less than a year later. D’Alba’s role will be different in that he won’t lead a centralized sales team.
