Ad buying agency Horizon Media said it is launching Horizon Sports & Experiences, a new company that will be led by former Turner President David Levy and Chris Weil, former CEO of Momentum Worldwide.
The new unit was created to provide marketers with a comprehensive approach to engaging in sports sponsorships and experiential marketing.
Horizon Sports & Experience will focus on intellectual property creation and monetization and offer expertise in strategic advisory and consulting, media rights, sponsorship and sales and activation. Horizon Media’s recently launched metaverse consultancy, Chapter & Verse, will be merged into the expanded offerings of HS&E.
Levy and Weil will serve as co-CEOs and will be equity partners in the new company. Horizon’s Scout sports and event marketing team will be folded into Horizon Sports & Experiences. Michael Neuman, head of Scout, will become executive of HS&E, reporting to Levy and Weil.
“As marketers seek more integration and more connections with the consumer, we are always seeking ways to evolve ahead of the landscape to meet those needs, and Horizon Sports & Experiences will do just that,” said Horizon Media founder and CEO Bill Koenigsberg.
"What we have created here will bring a unique – and complementary - combination of sports, experiential, and media capabilities and expertise under one tent that will be a marketer’s dream. Further, I am thrilled about the game-changing work that we will do with two industry powerhouses like David Levy and Chris Weil, who join me as partners in HS&E and enter the Horizon family with an incredible list of accomplishments behind them and nothing but open opportunity to lead, create, and grow ahead of them," Koenigsberg said.
As president of Turner and before that president of Turner’s advertising and sports units, Levy engineered Turner's partnership with CBS to televise college basketball’s March Madness and grew Turner’s relationship with the NBA. He left Turner and parent Time Warner after they were acquired by AT&T.
“Throughout my career, I have had tremendous opportunities to build and grow some of the world’s most esteemed brands by creating and identifying the partnerships, content and value propositions that deliver consistent value to their audiences through sports and entertainment platforms and experiences,” said Levy, who after leaving Turner was briefly CEO of the Brooklyn Nets and founder of Back Nine Ventures.
“Still, I know that in today’s ever-changing media landscape, there are even more opportunities to develop strong new IP destination events and help existing and emerging sports leagues navigate new distribution platforms, as well as sponsorship and sales,” Levy said. “To that end, we’ll also be looking at opportunities to deploy available capital for strategic acquisitions to extend these capabilities and accelerate HS&E’s impact for our clients. I’m excited that all our clients, including those coming with me from Back Nine to HS&E – Top Rank Inc., Learfield and others, will have more services and opportunities across this fused buy-sell-brand lens that is further amplified by Horizon’s deep consumer insights and analytics offerings.”
Since 2003, Weil had been CEO of Momentum Worldwide, which managed mover $5 billion in sponsorship assets.
“Given fundamental shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviors that are continuing to drive the evolution of brand experience – both physical and digital – I believe that Web3 is going to be the ‘experience Web,’” said Weil. “So, we’re creating a company that will be at the forefront of monetizing Web3 in this blended physical-digital world. What the industry needs most going forward is an agency model that can seamlessly and comprehensively support this approach and serve all of a marketer’s sports and brand experience needs in one place – media rights, sponsorship consulting, sales, the monetization of properties and IP, and more. That is precisely what we’ve developed with Horizon Sports & Experiences, and we’ll be aggressively identifying and exploring acquisitions across IP, experiential and other services that align with our vision.” ■
