TV streaming provider FuboTV announced Henry Ahn, a longtime television executive most recently at TelevisaUnivision, has been hired to the newly created position of chief business officer.
Ahn will start in early April at the company’s New York City headquarters and report directly to David Gandler, co-founder and CEO. In conjunction with this appointment, Ahn will give up his current role on FuboTV’s board of directors after joining the board in July 2020.
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Also Friday, FuboTV announced that Julie Haddon, an owner of the National Women’s Soccer League’s Chicago Red Stars and a former NFL and DreamWorks Animation exec, has been named to its board of directors. Haddon also will join the board’s audit committee.
As chief business officer, Ahn will oversee FuboTV’s content strategy and licensing as well as business development. Reporting directly to Ahn will be Ben Grad, SVP content strategy and acquisition, and Len Landi, SVP business development.
Previously, Ahn served as president of content distribution and partnerships for TelevisUnivision (previously Univision Communications Inc.) He joined Univision in 2018 to lead content distribution sales, operations, finance and strategy, specializing in media contract negotiations, business strategy, content licensing, new media strategy and authenticated streaming/video on-demand. Ahn also was responsible for distribution deal execution and relationships with new and existing distributors including multichannel video programming and online video distributors, mobile carriers and electronic sell-through providers.
Prior to joining Univision, Ahn served as a distribution executive for Scripps Networks Interactive — now part of Discovery — where he led sales, negotiations, strategic planning and marketing efforts for SNI’s content distribution. Previously, he served as executive vice president of TV networks distribution at NBCUniversal, where he worked for 17 years.
“Henry has served as a trusted advisor to FuboTV since joining our board of directors in 2020,” Gandler said in announcing the hire. “He is a well-respected media executive whose expertise has straddled both traditional distribution and streaming television, positively impacting key growth areas for the businesses in which he’s worked.”
Ahn commented, “Ever since my involvement with FuboTV, which goes back even before I joined the board in 2020, I was impressed by David and his team, who have consistently out-delivered results in the fast growing streaming business. I look forward to working constructively with media companies, other content providers and distribution companies to continue to bring great sports and entertainment programming in an affordable manner to our fFuboTV customers.”
First launched in 2015 as a soccer-centric livestreaming service, FuboTV operates in the U.S., Canada, France and Spain. In the U.S., it competes with other virtual pay-TV services including YouTube TV, Hulu and Dish’s Sling TV.
The company reported 2021 annual revenue of $638 million, more than double year over year, and a net loss of $383 million versus a net loss of $599.3 million in 2020.
FuboTV ended 2021 with 1.13 million total paid subscribers, up 106% from the prior year, after netting 185,000 new subscribers in the fourth quarter.
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