Consulting firm Rebel Ventures named Robert Rodriguez VP of partnerships & content. He will lead its global strategic partnership efforts and oversee its recently-launched content studio division based in L.A. Rodriguez ran global football partnerships for Facebook for the past two-and-a-half years and was previously director of digital media for Fox Deportes. Rodriguez said of Rebel Ventures' balance of U.S. and int'l clients, "The domestic partners, the NBA, the teams, whether that's NFL or NBA teams themselves, all want to expand their audience. Everybody's chasing global growth, and the football clubs are as well. The real estate and the territory that they make up in this day and age are just limited by their own ambition and the amount of time they have to nail down a specific area that they're focused on in terms of growth."
GROWING THE AUDIENCE: Rebel Ventures recently worked with Real Madrid to launch the club's "Hala Madrid" series on Facebook Watch. Rodriguez said of that series, "The 'Hala' series allowed them to reach and touch and engage a much wider fanbase that now is able to see their content. Facebook having 2 billion monthly active users definitely gives them a lot of distribution. The storytelling and the community aspect are all things that are core to both Facebook's and Real Madrid's mission. They both care deeply about their fanbases and the community that celebrates them. Both sides would say they're inherently social, and they're very much focused in on the community element."
