If you want to know what’s going to happen to the media business, ask the sports guys: They control some of the most powerful assets in entertainment, and viewers — and dollars — go where they do.
Keep Your Eye on the Ball! FanDuel, Wasserman Media Come to Code/Media.
If you want to figure out the future of media, figure out the future of sports: Nigel Eccles and Casey Wasserman join a powerhouse lineup.
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
That’s one of the reasons we asked Bob Bowman, who runs Major League Baseball’s powerful digital arm, to join us onstage this February 17 and 18 at Code/Media. Now we’re very excited to announce two more speakers with valuable insights to share about sports, technology and what it all means for the media world:
- Casey Wasserman’s grandfather Lew used to run Hollywood. Now Casey is building his own empire, built on a sports and talent agency with deep ties throughout the NBA and beyond; he also uses those same links to bring big brands like American Express into the sports world. And after working for years to try to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles, he’s aiming higher, by leading the city’s efforts to land the 2024 Olympics.
- Nigel Eccles runs FanDuel, one of the two major players in the “daily fantasy” sports industry that seemed to explode out of nowhere this year — and already face serious questions about their future. FanDuel and rival DraftKings became huge TV and Internet advertisers this year, and they count pro sports leagues, franchises and big media companies as investors. So even if you don’t watch sports, you need to pay attention to what happens to them.
These guys join a powerhouse lineup: We’ve got heavy hitters like Sony Entertainment’s Michael Lynton and the Financial Times’ John Ridding coming onstage, as well as fresh new names you may not have heard from before, like Vine’s Jason Mante and DigiTour’s Meridith Valiando Rojas.
All of them have signed on for candid, unrehearsed conversations about the future of the media business, via our signature red chair interviews. But at Code/Media, the dialogue keeps going offstage, where you’ll find an audience of executives, investors and entrepreneurs that are just as interesting as our onstage guests.
Sound good? It is! And if you need additional prodding, we should point out that all of this happens at the stunning Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California, right on the Pacific.
So sign up here to join us on February 17 and 18, and we’ll see you there.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
