Online sports publication Bleacher Report* has named co-founder Dave Finocchio as its new CEO. The move comes one year after Finocchio stepped away from day-to-day activities at the company to serve as an adviser to Bleacher Report and its parent company, Turner Broadcasting.
Bleacher Report Names Co-Founder Dave Finocchio CEO Amid Management Shuffle
Bleacher Report is mixing up its upper management -- again.
Rich Schultz / Getty Images
Rory Brown, Bleacher Report’s chief content officer, was promoted to president as part of Wednesday’s shuffle and will continue to oversee the company’s editorial efforts, according to a Turner spokesperson. Finocchio will report to Matt Hong, executive vice president and general manager of Turner Sports.
Bleacher Report General Manager Dorth Raphaely, a longtime employee who took the top job at the site in late 2014, is out as part of the move. He wasn’t mentioned in Turner’s press release outlining the changes.
There’s been a lot of shuffling at the top for Bleacher Report since it was acquired by Turner in late 2012. At the time, Bleacher Report was run by then-CEO Brian Grey, who left a little more than a year later in late 2013. Finocchio, who had been there since Bleacher Report’s founding in 2007, then took over. Another year later, Raphaely was promoted to the general manager role in late 2014, the same time that Finocchio stepped away from day-to-day duties.
Now Finocchio is back, Raphaely is out, and Hong is still the general overseer from his seat inside Turner.
That’s a lot of movement for one publication. Turner originally purchased Bleacher Report for less than $200 million in 2012 as a way to claim online real estate in the competitive sports media landscape. Adding Bleacher Report also complemented Turner’s televised sports coverage — the company had just inked a multi-billion dollar deal with the NCAA for college basketball rights, and Bleacher Report was another way to generate more content and sell more ads.
Turner had previously managed ad sales for Time Inc., which owns Sports Illustrated. But as Time Warner prepared to sell off Time Inc. and thus eliminate Sports Illustrated from the picture, it acquired Bleacher Report as a replacement. It seems to be working out despite all the leadership changes. Bleacher report has grown from 10 million monthly visitors in late 2012 to more than 45 million per month now, according to its advertising page.
* Bleacher Report competes with SBNation, a similar sports publication owned by Vox Media, the same parent company that owns Re/code.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
