Ross Levinsohn
Ross Levinsohn is a Sports Illustrated CEO; he became chief executive in September 2018 amid company turmoil. The company had gambled heavily on acquiring and combining assets with ESPN but has been beset by layoffs and falling subscriber numbers. In an interview with the Financial Times in October 2018, Mr. Levinsohn said he wanted to return the company to being a “sports media space” player rather than a broad entertainment group that competes with Netflix.
He was a digital media executive at News Corp before joining Yahoo as the president of its Americas region in 2008. Mr. Levinsohn is credited with helping Yahoo forge its turnaround strategy in the early 2010s. The technology company was put up for sale in 2013, but Mr. Levinsohn overruled the advice of his board and returned to Yahoo as CEO. Yahoo’s shares plummeted after he left and are now virtually worthless, hamstrung by years of mismanagement and underperformance.
Mr. Levinsohn, 35, will replace Mr. Greenberg when he leaves at the end of 2018. Mr. Greenberg, the former chief executive of CAA sports, has been under pressure from investors to sell the company’s significant stake in Snap, the owner of Snapchat. In February 2018, Mr. Levinsohn was named interim president and chief executive of Guggenheim Digital Media. Yahoo’s shares also gained after news of his appointment broke but remain far below their precrisis high point of $115 in 2007.
The firm has invested heavily in technology and streaming services such as its Yahoo Screen OTT offering and its $40m investment in the US eSports business Tournament Gaming Network (TGN), formerly Good Game Media. Mr. Levinsohn will have to decide whether to keep the firm’s more than $4m stake in Twitch, the popular streaming video platform.
Mr. Levinsohn will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, who led a period of rapid growth for Yahoo, making it a leading display ad player and adding entertainment properties such as the Daily Mail, Yahoo Sports, and Yahoo Finance.
Mr. Levinsohn, who holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an economics degree from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, will be paid an annual salary of $1.3m. As a Sports Illustrated CEO, he made $380,000 in 2017.
Mr. Levinsohn’s appointment comes almost a month after Yahoo hired a senior executive from rival company AT&T to be its general counsel and senior vice president of corporate development. Manuel Medina is reportedly set to take over Mr. Greenberg’s responsibilities as chief executive following his months-long retirement plans. Yahoo declined to comment on the change at the time of publication.
The Financial Times he was told that Mr. Levinsohn, who will keep his Yahoo investment and board seat, will be paid around $5m a year in total compensation by the company when he starts work at the end of this month.