Zach Leonsis has tapped Dan Shanoff to oversee Monumental Network’s content strategy. Shanoff, who had been working with Facebook’s sports group, will oversee Monumental Network’s programming acquisitions and development, and will report to Leonsis, Monumental Network’s vice president and general manager. Shanoff starts the first week in March.
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Dan Shanoff, who had been working for Facebook’s sports group, will oversee Monumental Network’s content strategy as it builds its over-the-top platform.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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The hire comes as Monumental Network shifts its programming strategy. Zach’s father, Ted Leonsis, often spoke about using the broadband site as a place to produce games for the three teams he owns: the Washington Capitals, Mystics and Wizards. But in November, news leaked out that Leonsis had agreed to a handshake deal to keep the Capitals and Wizards games on Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic through the 2031-32 seasons. That deal still has yet to be signed officially.
Monumental Network already streams Mystics games and Leonsis is close to bringing an Arena Football League team to the market, which could see its games streamed on the network.
“We view ourselves as a media company,” Zach Leonsis said. “Our goal is to build Monumental Network into a real OTT platform.”
The move represents something of a full circle for Shanoff, who is a native of the Washington, D.C., area. In 1995, Shanoff started his sports media career as the first full-time employee of the Real Fans Sports Network, a sports news startup that initially was funded by Ted Leonsis’ AOL Studios “Greenhouse” seed-investment initiative. The site later was acquired by AOL.
