VP Digital Editorial

At ESPN, we are shaping the future of sports storytelling and how fans discover, experience, and engage with sports across digital platforms.

The Vice President, Digital Editorial will be a senior leader responsible for defining and advancing ESPN’s digital editorial strategy, ensuring our storytelling remains distinctive, relevant, innovative, and deeply connected to fans. This leader will set the vision for how ESPN creates, packages, distributes, and evolves digital content while balancing editorial excellence, audience growth, innovation, and business performance.

Leading a multi-layered organization of editors, reporters, and digital content leaders, the VP will bring exceptional editorial judgment, strong business acumen, and a deep understanding of evolving consumer behaviors, technology, and the sports media landscape.

What You’ll Do

Set the Digital Editorial Vision & Strategy

• Define and drive a forward-looking digital editorial strategy that strengthens ESPN’s leadership in sports storytelling and aligns with broader audience and business priorities.
• Anticipate shifts in consumer behavior, technology, platforms, and the competitive landscape to evolve how ESPN creates, packages, distributes, and delivers digital content.

Drive Audience Growth, Engagement & Innovation

• Drive audience growth and engagement through distinctive storytelling, editorial franchises, and innovative content experiences across platforms.
• Leverage audience insights, performance data, and market trends to inform editorial priorities, investment decisions, and new opportunities for growth.
• Champion innovation in how fans discover, consume, and engage with ESPN content while maintaining the highest standards of editorial quality, accuracy, and credibility.

Lead the Business & Organization

• Lead and develop a multi-layered digital editorial organization, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, accountability, inclusion, and high performance.
• Own the financial and operating priorities of the function, ensuring resources and investments are aligned to ESPN’s highest-impact audience and business opportunities.
• Partner across Programming, Product, Technology, Marketing, Research, Sales, Finance, and The Walt Disney Company to connect digital editorial strategy with broader fan experience and business objectives.

Required Qualifications

• A minimum of 12 years of progressive experience in digital editorial, journalism, media, content, or a related field, including significant senior leadership responsibility.
• A minimum of 7 years of experience leading managers, senior leaders, and multi-layered organizations.
• Demonstrated success defining and executing digital editorial or content strategies within a complex media, sports, entertainment, or consumer-facing organization.
• Exceptional editorial judgment and storytelling expertise, with experience overseeing high-profile, complex, and multi-platform content.
• Deep understanding of digital audience behavior, content distribution, emerging platforms, and the evolving ways consumers discover and engage with content.
• Demonstrated ability to leverage audience insights, data, and market trends to inform editorial strategy, prioritize opportunities, and drive measurable outcomes.
• Strong business and financial acumen, including experience managing budgets, evaluating investments, allocating resources, and connecting editorial strategies to business performance.
• Proven ability to anticipate industry and consumer shifts and translate them into innovative editorial strategies, capabilities, and experiences.
• Exceptional leadership capabilities with a track record of building, developing, and inspiring high-performing teams and senior leaders.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and align senior executives and cross-functional partners within a complex, highly matrixed organization.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to articulate a compelling vision, simplify complexity, and establish credibility across an organization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Senior leadership experience within sports media, digital publishing, streaming, subscription, or another scaled consumer media business.
• Deep familiarity with the sports ecosystem, fan behavior, audience development, and the evolving media and technology landscape.
• Proven success developing distinctive editorial franchises and multi-platform content initiatives that have driven meaningful audience growth and engagement.
• Experience leading organizational transformation or modernizing editorial operations, capabilities, workflows, and talent.
• Familiarity with emerging technologies and their implications for content creation, discovery, personalization, distribution, and audience engagement.

Required Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, Communications, Media, Business, or a related field.

The hiring range for this position in Bristol, CT is $ 236,000.00 to $316,500.00per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.