fox sports

As a high school student, Lindsay Amstutz formed a basketball league in Southern California for 9- to 12-year-old girls. She oversaw every facet — producing fliers, setting up an all-star game and publishing a weekly newsletter. “Fast forward a few decades later, and I’m doing the exact same thing,” she laughed. “It’s just on a much bigger scale.”

Amstutz’s scale grew in October when Fox Sports promoted her to oversee three of its Southern California regional sports networks: FS West, Prime Ticket and FS San Diego. With the move, Amstutz became one of only two women who currently run an RSN.

“Lindsay was the right person for the right job at the right time,” said Karen Brodkin, a former colleague of Amstutz and now an executive vice president at Endeavor. “She is now running one of Jeff Krolik’s biggest RSNs in an important market with a lot of team partners and big, high-profile teams.”

The scope of her job may be bigger, but Amstutz leans on the same skills she developed when she organized those basketball games in high school.

“You have a passion for getting people to engage in sports and to watch our broadcast,” she said. “It all traces back to when I was 16 and started a little girls park basketball league.”

Amstutz views her main responsibility as getting the channels to work more cohesively — no easy task when one of the RSNs covers San Diego and two are in Los Angeles. “Trying to make them one family has been a fun challenge,” she said. “We are trying to look for efficiencies and look for how we can all work together.”

Amstutz has been the lead executive on the Fox Sports University marketing initiative and headed up a youth baseball fan development initiative for Fox’s RSNs called “Young Fans Week.” She also co-founded a Women of Fox Sports internal group that operates as a mentor program for Fox Sports’ female employees.

— John Ourand