In a first-of-its-kind partnership, CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, and Boardroom, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s premier media brand covering the business of sports, music and entertainment, are teaming up to produce Game Plan, an all-new, high-powered event taking place on July 25 in Los Angeles.
From what drives the modern-day sports fan to emerging opportunities in teams and leagues, this invite-only event will host the most influential leaders from across the sports landscape including athletes, owners, investors and innovators to devise a GAME PLAN for a rapidly evolving world.
Kevin Durant is a 14-year NBA veteran and forward for the Phoenix Suns. He is a 2x NBA Champion and Finals MVP, having also won an NBA MVP Award, four NBA scoring titles, two Olympic gold medals, two NBA All-Star Game MVP Awards, 13x NBA All-Star, and an NBA Rookie of the Year Award. He is also included in the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.
Off the court, Durant is co-founder of Thirty Five Ventures (35V) alongside his business partner Rich Kleiman. Founded in 2016, 35V incorporates the duo’s business entities across sports, tech, media, philanthropy, and more.
35V’s portfolio includes Boardroom, a media network covering the business of sports, entertainment, and culture; ownership stakes in emerging and undervalued teams sports properties, including Athletes Unlimited, Gotham FC, Philadelphia Union, Premier Lacrosse League, and Major League Pickleball; film and TV projects including the Academy Award-winning Two Distant Strangers (Netflix), the critically acclaimed scripted series SWAGGER (Apple TV+) and documentary NYC Point Gods (Showtime.) The company’s investment portfolio also includes 100+ early stage investments.
The Durant Family Foundation’s signature programs include Build It and They Will Ball, a global basketball court renovation project with 28 courts completed to date, and The Durant Center, a 10-year, 10-million dollar program in partnership with College Track that helps low-income and underserved students enroll and graduate from college. Durant received the season-long NBA Cares Community Assist and ESPN Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian awards in 2018.
Pete Bevacqua is Chairman, NBC Sports Group. He was promoted in September 2020, becoming the third Chairman in the history of NBC Sports. In this role, he oversees NBC Sports’ unprecedented collection of assets and platforms, which includes NBC Sports, NBC Olympics, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, NBC Sports Digital, and two transactional sports businesses, GolfNow and SportsEngine.
Together with his team, Bevacqua completed numerous key rights agreements. Most recently, in March 2021, NBCUniversal and the NFL agreed to an 11-year extension and expansion for NBC Sports to continue as the home of Sunday Night Football, primetime television’s No. 1 show for an unprecedented 10 consecutive years. The deal also includes live coverage of every game by Peacock and Telemundo Deportes for the first time. In addition, NBCUniversal re-acquired the complete U.S. media rights for all United States Golf Association championships, including the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open, through 2026; agreed to a nine-year extension of the company’s PGA TOUR rights; secured a new Sunday night NFL Wild Card playoff game, which was presented live across NBC, Telemundo, and Peacock in January 2021; and established NBCUniversal’s multi-year partnership with PointsBet, making PointsBet the official sports betting partner of NBC Sports.
Bevacqua joined NBCUniversal in September 2018 as President, NBC Sports Group, overseeing programming, marketing, digital, the NBC Sports Regional Networks, and all Golf businesses. In February 2019, Bevacqua assumed oversight of the entire sports division.
Previously, Bevacqua served as CEO of the PGA of America from 2012-2018. In this role, Bevacqua guided the business and overall strategy of one of the world’s largest sports organizations, serving the Association’s nearly 29,000 PGA Professionals.
Prior to the PGA of America, Bevacqua served as Global Head of Golf at Creative Artists Agency (CAA Sports). He was also Chief Business Officer for the USGA and served as the first Managing Director of the U.S. Open Championship. Bevacqua began his career as a legal associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York City.
Additional roles Bevacqua has had include: World Golf Foundation Board of Directors’ Chairperson; a PGA World Alliance leadership team member; Chairperson of the International Golf Federation, a group that was instrumental in golf’s return to the Olympics; special advisor to the Captains Club for The Memorial Tournament; and a board member for RISE, an alliance of sports organizations that promote racial equality. A former SportsBusiness Journal “Forty Under 40” honoree, Bevacqua also received the 2016 March of Dimes Sports Leadership Award.
Bevacqua graduated from the University of Notre Dame magna cum laude (1993), with a B.A. in English. He earned a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center, where he graduated cum laude (1997). Bevacqua serves on the board of directors for Georgetown Law and Brunswick School (Greenwich, CT). He and his wife, Tiffany, have three children.
James "Jimmy" Pitaro was named Chairman, ESPN in February 2023, responsible for full operational control and financial responsibility for ESPN, one of the three core business segments of The Walt Disney Company. This includes the management and supervision of the company’s full portfolio of sports content, products and experiences across all of Disney’s platforms worldwide, including its international sports channels, creative development, marketing, sales, distribution and technology.
This includes eight linear domestic networks, including ESPN and ESPN2; sports content across all Disney domestic and, going forward, international platforms; ESPN+; ESPN Audio; ESPN Digital; ESPN Social; ESPN Fantasy and a variety of owned sports events, among other responsibilities.
Previously, he was Chairman, ESPN and Sports Content, since October 2020. He was named ESPN president and co-chair, Disney Media Networks, on March 5, 2018, after serving eight years as a top Disney executive. In making the announcement, Bob Iger, then The Walt Disney Company chairman and chief executive officer, said, “Jimmy’s appointment was the result of more than 20 years spent at the intersection of technology, sports and media.”
Pitaro’s record of success leading businesses focused on consumer products, digital initiatives and sports made him the quintessential selection for ESPN at a pivotal point in its then 38-year history: a time of unprecedented technological advancements and rapidly changing consumer habits.
A visionary leader, Pitaro has identified and consistently communicated internally and externally five business priorities — Direct to Consumer, Innovation, Storytelling and Programming, Audience Expansion as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging within ESPN’s ranks — to keep ESPN poised for future success.
Since Pitaro was named ESPN’s leader, his collaborative leadership style has led to impressive employee engagement and results, clearly evident in ESPN’s performance during the pandemic and social justice movement in 2020 and continuing today.
Under Pitaro, ESPN has reached creative new rights agreements with the NFL, UFC, SEC, NHL, MLB, PGA Tour, XFL, La Liga, Wimbledon and more, encompassing Disney-wide assets; achieved linear ratings successes in 2022 in total day (+8%) and primetime (+22%); remained cable’s leader in the key male and adult demos; achieved several ratings successes with a variety of shows and series, including ESPN’s signature show, SportsCenter, Get Up and First Take; and fueled consistent growth in ESPN+’s distribution and offerings since the April 2018 launch of Disney’s multi-sport, direct-to-consumer video service.
Also, ESPN continues to further strengthen its hold as the sports leader on digital and social platforms, standing as No. 1 among U.S. digital sports properties; the ESPN App is the clear No. 1 U.S. sports app; and ESPN Social remains the No. 1 sports media publisher. In 2022, ESPN set all-time records across its digital platforms, including an average of more than 108 million unique users in the U.S. each month and 7.5 billion engagements on social media.
Pitaro’s focus on innovation has led to two developments that have changed how fans watch sports: Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli, and putting microphones on Major League Baseball players on ESPN’s popular Sunday Night Baseball series.
During the pandemic, the innovative and hard-working culture of ESPN led to: moving up “The Last Dance,” which shattered ESPN records for documentary viewership and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series; a ground-breaking collaboration with the NFL for a totally virtual NFL Draft telecast; critical contributions to the NBA bubble at Walt Disney World in Orlando; the successful presentation of Major League Baseball’s “Fall Frenzy;” and many other accomplishments in event and news programming.
From February 2016 through March 2018, Pitaro had served as chairman of Disney’s consumer products and interactive media division, the world’s largest licenser of consumer products. Among his many responsibilities, he oversaw the creation of branded digital and physical products, including a robust digital game slate. He and his team brought to life the characters and stories of four iconic brands – Disney, Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel – across toys, apparel, home goods, the world’s largest children’s publisher, hundreds of Disney store locations worldwide, the e-commerce destination ShopDisney, and the Disney Digital Network of social and digital channels that reach one out of every three U.S. social media accounts.
Pitaro originally joined The Walt Disney Company in 2010 as co-president, Disney Interactive, where he successfully led the turnaround of the digital media and gaming division.
Pitaro came to Disney from Yahoo, where he rose to head of media. He was in charge of, and set, strategy and executed growth-driving initiatives for, Yahoo’s media properties, including Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Music. In 2009, he was named to Sports Business Journal’s “Forty Under 40” annual list of top achievers in sports for his dynamic leadership and “breathless flurry of market-moving pacts” with major sports rightsholders and media companies.
Since joining ESPN, Pitaro was honored as 2018’s Multichannel News Sports Executive of the Year. Sports Business Journal named him Sports Executive of the Year for 2019-20, citing that the biggest company in sports media continued to grow, highlighting the expansion of its linear footprint with ACC Network, growth from ESPN+, moving further into the sports betting space and continued aggressive moves in the digital and social arenas, which saw significant growth.
He serves on a variety of industry and charitable boards, including the NCTA, the Paley Center for Media, The V Foundation, The National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame, Pacer and CoachArt. Pitaro also serves as Co-Committee Chair of the March of Dimes, and is a Board Observer at Draft Kings. In October 2022, he will serve as Honorary Chair of NAMIC’s 36th Annual Conference. He is a member of the Cornell Athletic Alumni Advisory Committee.
Pitaro earned a bachelor of science degree in economics in 1991 from Cornell University. He earned his Juris Doctor from St. John’s Law School in 1994. After practicing law in New York for five years, he was named head of business affairs for Launch.com in 1999 before joining Yahoo.
A native of Westchester County, N.Y., Pitaro, 53, is ESPN’s eighth leader.
Inaugural event on July 25 focused on the intersection of sports and business
The most influential leaders from across the sports business landscape, including top-tier athletes, league owners, multi-media moguls, cultural innovators and cutting-edge investors
Hear from the biggest names who are innovating the business of sport