While much of the attention in the sports media landscape gets focused on the on-camera personalities, the moves made by key executives behind the scenes can be as relevant or more for viewers.
There’s a short list of notable executives across companies who have huge impacts on how those companies approach rights deals, programming decisions, carriage contracts, and much more. One figure certainly on that list at ESPN parent company Disney is Justin Connolly, that company’s president of platform distribution, and that makes the news of his sudden resignation Friday stand out.
Here’s more from that Puck piece (which is in Dylan Byers’ “The Room” newsletter):
According to my partner John Ourand, Justin Connolly resigned today as Disney’s president of platform distribution, a role in which he reported to Dana Walden, Alan Bergman, and Jimmy Pitaro. Connolly, who spent the past 25 years with Disney and ESPN, did not tell staffers where he was headed, but speculation immediately centered on YouTube TV, the virtual M.V.P.D. that lost Lori Conkling to Netflix back in January. (Of note: Disney’s affiliate deal with YouTube TV is up at some point this fall.)
However, a Disney insider told Ourand that they were surprised by Connolly’s abrupt decision to exit since he re-upped a multiyear, fixed-term contract earlier this year, and Disney has not agreed to release him—to YouTube TV or anywhere else. Connolly was a finalist to replace John Skipper as the head of ESPN in 2018—a job that eventually went to Jimmy Pitaro. He was also in the mix to run the NBC Sports Group a couple of years ago, before Disney lured him back with an attractive deal.
Connolly is a well-respected and well-liked executive who cut his teeth in ESPN’s affiliate sales and distribution department before moving over to Disney, where he was involved across the company. Earlier this week, he was front and center at an ESPN presser announcing the name and pricing plans for the company’s forthcoming D.T.C. service (née Flagship, now known simply as… ESPN).
Indeed, Connolly has been a crucial Disney figure for years. After achieving an undergraduate degree and a MBA from Harvard, he started at Disney as a financial analyst in 1998, moved to ESPN as a senior director in 2003, and held a variety of roles there (finishing as senior vice president, programming) before going back to the Disney side in 2015 as executive vice president, affiliate sales and marketing. He was named to Sports Business Journal‘s 40 under 40 Hall of Fame that year.
In late 2017, Connolly and Connor Schell were reported as the top two contenders to replace Skipper at ESPN. That job eventually went to Pitaro, but Connolly stayed on in his Disney role (at that point, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing), added “ESPN strategy” to his responsibilities in 2018, and became president of Disney Media Distribution in 2019. On that front, he’s been particularly important in the company’s streaming strategy (a long-time focus of his). He’s also played a role (and been a frequently-quoted figure) in carriage negotiations, where Disney has made it through some testy battles recently, including with Charter in 2023 and with DirecTV last year.
The timing of Connolly’s exit is perhaps particularly interesting. Having a figure at that level exit immediately after upfronts is perhaps better than right before, which can force reworked presentations, but it’s strange to see Connolly prominently featured in presentations on this long-awaited full-linear ESPN direct-to-consumer service (again, a long-time focus of his, as well as something crucial to the company’s future) immediately before leaving. It’s also unusual that he signed a multi-year contract extension this year only to leave, and to reportedly leave without negotiating a release.
If Connolly does indeed wind up with YouTube TV, that could be interesting given the timing of their carriage deal for Disney networks coming up. Connolly would certainly have plenty of knowledge and background from the other side that could be useful for the MVPD in those talks. The Disney-YouTube TV talks were already going to be worth watching, especially as they’re coming around the full-linear ESPN DTC launch (which, following the scrapping of Venu, is the first way for consumers to acquire linear ESPN networks outside of a bundle), and coming around Disney’s expansion of their own multichannel video programming distributor efforts with their plans (still under Department of Justice investigation) to acquire Fubo and run it alongside Hulu+Live TV. They might be more fascinating yet if a veteran Disney distribution exec is on the YouTube TV side of the table.