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ESPN’s digital applications have been the toast of the sports media business for years. But even as ESPN blazed a trail in the digital arena, Ryan Spoon felt some unease. Too frequently, Spoon said, ESPN would take a broadcast-centric approach to digital on its social feeds, rather than starting conversations with its fans.
Senior Vice President, Digital and Social Content, ESPN
Age: 38
Born: Chicago
Education: Duke University, B.A., English, economics and religion minors
Family: Wife, Anette; children, Dillon (9), Jaden (7) and Taryn (4)
Advice to my 20-year-old self: When it comes to your career: don’t race — take a long-term perspective. You can, and should, have lofty aspirations, but optimize for long-term growth, experience and optionality.
Could not go a day without: I drink so much coffee (and love it) that it is essentially a basic necessity at this point!
Causes supported: My wife and I are very, very active in many different ways with our children’s school and community. We are also supporters of USA Swimming Foundation and International Essential Tremor Foundation, which is particularly meaningful to our wider family.
Person I’d most like to meet: Tom Brady. I’m a huge fan. But am also an admirer of his longevity, his work ethic, and his business/media savvy.
Sports industry needs to do a better job of … : Taking the consumer and the fan’s perspective.
Sports business leaders should be more mindful of … : Seeking and welcoming different voices and perspectives around their leadership teams. Again, not just specific to sports.
“We speak one-to-many a lot of times,” Spoon said. “We would put a message or a post out, and we hadn’t been doing a great job of building conversation and community around it.”
That’s one of the reasons that ESPN hired Omar Raja from House of Highlights early this year to take over the “SportsCenter” Twitter account.
The results have been overwhelmingly positive. ESPN increased its number of followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by 100 million in a year. It logged a stunning 675 million views across those platforms in September 2019, for example.
“Under Ryan’s leadership, ESPN Digital had its best year on record in 2019,” ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro said. “Much of our success in the digital and social spaces is due to his innate understanding of how to create content that authentically engages with fans, whether that’s on ESPN.com, the ESPN app or on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.”
Spoon’s role is to figure out different ways to treat stories on different platforms.
“Some of my job is just to make sure we’re following the right tone and making sure that our stuff has the right placements and is as widely available as possible.” Spoon said. “There’s one tone that we treat on Snap and another in Google. It’s a lot of moving parts.”
