How a sports media executive search run without conflicts or off-limits identified the leader to shape DAZN’s original content ambitions.
Overview
DAZN is an international sports entertainment platform delivering direct-to-consumer streaming to fans around the world.
As the business expanded internationally, its ambitions grew beyond live sports coverage towards original programming that could bring audiences closer to athletes, competitions and the stories around them.
Executives in Sport Group led the sports media executive search that brought Grant Best to DAZN as Senior Vice President, Original Programming and Content Development.
Challenge
DAZN was building a broader sports entertainment proposition. Live rights remained central to the platform, but original programming offered the chance to deepen audience engagement, tell stories beyond live competition and differentiate DAZN across international markets.
Finding the right content leader meant looking beyond conventional commissioning executives. DAZN needed someone who understood the demands of premium live sport and had the creative judgement, production credentials and industry relationships to build compelling original programming, plus the international perspective to know how sporting stories translate across audiences and markets.
That combination narrowed the market dramatically and demanded a highly targeted sports media recruitment process.
Solution
We made DAZN a deliberate commitment: while we worked together, we would not work with any other sports broadcaster or content house. That decision mattered. It meant we could search the entire market without conflicts or significant off-limits, something few firms in the sector could offer the fastest-growing sports media property in the world.
With the whole market open, we built a deep market map across a small number of the highest-quality sports media and broadcast companies, engaging directly with senior individuals whose experience, creative capability and leadership potential matched DAZN’s original content ambitions.
Alongside the map, we went deep into the sports broadcasting awards space, researching who had been recognised, recommended and endorsed by their industry peers over a sustained period. Grant’s name kept surfacing.
His career combined senior experience across Sky Sports, ESPN and BT Sport with extensive international sports production credentials. He had won a Sports Emmy for his work on FIFA World Cup coverage and a BAFTA as part of the team behind Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum and Dad. He understood the scale, pace and immediacy of major live sport, and how longer-form storytelling builds deeper connections between audiences, athletes and sporting properties.
The search considered more than experience against the immediate role. It identified the creative breadth, international perspective and leadership potential to support DAZN as its original content proposition developed, and it formed part of a broader relationship supporting DAZN as the organisation strengthened its sports media and content leadership internationally.
Result
Grant joined DAZN as Senior Vice President, Original Programming and Content Development, combining international sports broadcasting experience with award-winning long-form storytelling credentials.
The appointment brought together the two things central to DAZN’s ambitions: delivering sport at the highest level, and understanding how original programming extends the relationship with audiences beyond live competition.
Legacy
Grant’s remit kept growing. He progressed to Executive Vice President, Global Commissioning and Original Content, taking responsibility for DAZN’s global commissioning and original programming as the organisation increased its investment in documentaries, films and series, and fronted the launch of DAZN Studios in 2022, created to produce original content for global distribution.
What began as a search for a senior original programming leader became an appointment with a global remit. The expansion of Grant’s responsibilities is the clearest evidence of the long-term fit of the original appointment.