Yahoo Sports has hired Jarrod Schwarz as its new general manager, the company announced Wednesday.
Schwarz, who most recently served as chief operating officer at BetMGM, will start this summer and take responsibility for the full Yahoo Sports business — product, design, technology, revenue, partnerships, and content — reporting to Ryan Spoon, president of Yahoo’s media group.
The role has been vacant since last spring, when Spoon moved up to oversee Yahoo’s broader media operation. It’s also a reunion, as previously noted by Puck’s John Ournad. The two go back to ESPN, where Spoon ran digital and social, and Schwarz worked alongside him in product and design. After ESPN, both landed at BetMGM, where Spoon became COO before eventually leaving for Yahoo. Schwarz stepped into that same COO role and has now followed the same path to the same company.
“I’ve spent my career at the intersection of sports, media, and technology, and Yahoo Sports is one of the few places that brings all three together at real scale,” Schwarz said in a prepared statement. “From fantasy to editorial to community, it fuels fandom at every moment that matters. I’m looking forward to working with this talented team to deliver experiences that make us an indispensable part of every fan’s daily routine.”
Schwarz arrives with a background that spans sports, media, and technology over more than two decades. He was a vice president of product and design at ESPN, where he was involved in the development and launch of ESPN+, before moving to BetMGM, where he rose to chief operating officer. Earlier in his career, he held product leadership roles at eBay and at a startup called Bloomspot, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase.
The Yahoo Sports general manager chair has a history of launching careers. Brian Grey held the role before Jimmy Pitaro took it over in 2006, running the sports vertical for three years before leaving for Disney. Grey went on to become CEO of Bleacher Report and led its sale to Time Warner in 2012. Pitaro spent nearly a decade working his way up through Disney’s corporate structure before being named ESPN’s chairman in 2018. Dave Morgan came through Yahoo Sports as well, later becoming senior vice president of content and editor-in-chief at USA Today’s Sports Media Group. Mark Pesavento served as Yahoo’s managing editor before moving to Fox Sports Digital as senior vice president of content and eventually landing at the NFL as vice president of digital content.
Schwarz is, in other words, exactly the kind of executive Yahoo Sports has historically put in this chair.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.