Melwani is based in London. He will report to Paul Rehrig, General Manager of Eurosport Digital.
Eurosport has expanded its digital leadership team with the appointment of Disney executive Amar Melwani in the newly created role of VP, Distribution Partnerships and Rights Strategy where he will link up to Discovery’s global direct-to-consumer operation.
The addition of Melwani’s experience in leading digital teams, as well as his sports rights expertise, highlights the acceleration of the roll-out of Eurosport’s direct-to-consumer strategy.
Under the new role, Melwani will work towards developing Eurosport’s future digital sports rights strategy, ensuring customers are provided with the widest multi-sport offering of world-class programming, however, they choose to access it, to drive the continued growth and expansion of Eurosport’s direct-to-consumer business.
He will also establish and manage third-party distribution partnerships for Eurosport’s digital subscription offerings, working with device manufacturers, operating system platforms and other strategic distributors to make it even easier for customers to access Eurosport’s digital content on any screen.
Melwani joins from The Walt Disney Company where he managed partnerships, product marketing and analytics for the new global OTT platform, Disney Plus. He previously led rights acquisitions, content distribution and the direct-to-consumer business for Disney-owned ESPN across EMEA, and prior to this, managed the distribution of Sky’s international direct-to-consumer service.
Commenting on the new appointment, Melwani said: “The scale and depth of Eurosport’s sports portfolio, combined with a unique level of country-by-country localisation across Europe, is unrivalled anywhere and provides an outstanding foundation for delivering best-in-class direct-to-consumer offerings to customers and partners. I look forward to working closely with the Eurosport leadership team on a digital-first approach that drives further growth throughout our business.”
