Ryan Spoon
Ryan Spoon is sports, media, and web3 executive and investor: COO Sorare, COO BetMGM, SVP Digital & Social ESPN.
Sorare is redefining sports fandom, fantasy sports and collectibles through its NFT game and marketplace. Through NFTs and its global fantasy football, the company is on a mission to become ‘the game within the game’.
Prior to joining Sorare, Ryan was COO at BetMGM, the sports betting joint venture between MGM Resorts International and Entain. In this role, Spoon oversaw product, technology, customer support, risk and payments, and other operational areas of the BetMGM business and platform.
Ryan Spoon served as Senior Vice President of Digital and Social at ESPN. Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President of Digital Product and Design. In those capacities, Spoon helped build, operate and grow many of the leading digital properties in sports including ESPN.com; the ESPN App; ESPN Fantasy, including ESPN Fantasy Football; and ESPN Social. ESPN'S digital properties are the world's leading and most successful online sports service, boasting the number one sports website and app, as well as number one sports media publisher in social engagement across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Spoon is a two-time Sports Business Journal Forty Under 40 winner.
Prior to ESPN, Spoon was a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners and specialized in early-stage consumer internet, social media and e-commerce investments. Spoon was a director or observer at companies like WordPress, Recurly, ShoeDazzle, LOLapps (acquired by 6waves), ReadyForZero (acquired by Affirm), Wantful, Formspring, Offline Labs (acquired by Sosh), and Movity (acquired by Trulia). Additionally, Spoon was responsible for leading Dogpatch Labs, an early-stage incubator that was home to dozens of companies including Instagram, Remind, TaskRabbit, TurnTable.fm, LOLapps, Formspring, Localytics, Rapportive, AdRise, etc.
Previously, Spoon served as Vice President, Marketing & Business Development for Widgetbox (now Flite). Prior to that, Spoon spent 2003-2007 at eBay Inc focused on internet marketing, user acquisition, and social products – most recently, he launched and managed eBay’s US Classifieds business.
As a collegiate swimmer for Duke University, Spoon founded beRecruited, an online recruiting platform for high school student-athletes and colleges coaches and universities. beRecruited was acquired in 2012 by The Raine Group.
