IOC’s Ryan becomes Fiba Media managing director

Fiba Media, the joint venture between sports media company DAZN Group and Fiba, basketball’s international federation, has a new managing director with Andrew Ryan leaving his role at the International Olympic Committee to take up the position.

Paul Stimpson, the current managing director of Fiba Media and previously Fiba’s media rights director, has taken on a new position within the DAZN Group and will “take the lead on rights acquisition across key rights-holders and federations”.

Ryan (pictured) has switched from head of media, legal and business affairs at IOC Television and Marketing Services to assume the Fiba Media managing director post at the federation’s headquarters in Mies on the outskirts of Geneva.

He will report to Stewart Walker, who came on board recently as DAZN Group’s executive vice-president of global rights partnerships, joining from international pay-TV broadcaster beIN Media Group.

DAZN Group said today (Wednesday) that Ryan will be responsible for driving the growth strategy of the basketball joint venture, creating “opportunities to develop and promote basketball worldwide, further enhance the quality of broadcast coverage and work with broadcasters across the globe to promote basketball locally”.

The joint venture was created in 2016 to oversee the management of Fiba’s media rights, along with live broadcast production, broadcast services, data and editorial distribution of the international federation’s events around the world. The deal with DAZN Group (then known as Perform) is worth €500m ($542.5m) over 17 years, with rights fees making up the majority of that sum.

Before making the move to the IOC in the middle of 2016, Ryan was group head of legal across the commercial division at Perform. Last year, Perform Group split into two entities: rights-holding OTT business DAZN, and betting rights, data, news and video company Perform Content (which subsequently merged with data and technology company Stats to become Stats Perform).

Ryan’s background in basketball includes a stint as independent director at England Basketball and founding Bball U.K. Basketball League Project, an organisation that developed the sport in the UK at professional and grassroots level.

Commenting on his appointment, Ryan said: “been a tremendous year for basketball and I’m thrilled to be joining Fiba Media at such a pinnacle point in its journey. I look forward to continuing the momentum off the back of a hugely successful Fiba Basketball World Cup in China and delivering new growth opportunities for a sport I’m incredibly passionate about.”

Jacopo Tonoli, chief commercial officer, added: “Fiba Media has been a great success story since 2016, more than doubling revenues and delivering the various Fiba events to new levels. Andrew will build on the great work that Paul Stimpson and the wider Fiba Media team have already achieved over the past years. With his background and expertise, I’m confident he will continue to drive our partnership to the next level.”