Sports Illustrated CEO, Ross Levinsohn, has been announced as a new addition to the Golden State Warriors ownership group. Joe Lacob and Peter Guber are currently on the team.
Three others will join Levinsohn on the board: Dan Benton, Simon Franks, and Todd Boehly. Boehly is another former Yahoo executive who has invested in many start-ups, including the billion-dollar valuation of Snap, Inc. The new board is being formed to deal with issues surrounding the team’s current home at Oracle Arena and the team’s future.
Levinsohn joins the NBA ownership group after working at Fox Sports 1 with commissioner Adam Silver. A-Sports Media Holdings purchased the network in 2011, and Levinsohn was hired as the chief revenue officer under founder Randy Freer. He left Yahoo later that year to start his sports consulting firm, Ross Tactics. In 2012, Levinsohn was named Sports Illustrated CEO, a position he held until his hiring as an NBA general manager and senior adviser this summer.
Levinsohn was previously known for his work at Yahoo, where he helped the company complete its acquisition by Verizon. While partners were not happy with Yahoo executives agreeing to sell the company to Verizon in 2013, Levinsohn was reportedly paid $60 million as part of the deal.
Levinsohn made plenty of money working with Anna Wintour.
Levinsohn left Yahoo and started a sports consultancy firm after serving as chief revenue officer under founder Randy Freer. He left Yahoo to do consulting work for Anna Wintour, who founded Conde Nast, an invitation-only magazine company, in 1993 and became artistic director of Vogue magazine in 1999.
Levinsohn is a partner at the New York-based agency Levinsohn Sports Media, which he co-founded in 2011. In 2016, he was named CEO of Sports Illustrated.
Levinsohn has been active in sports and entertainment for years. He worked as a consultant at Fox Sports from 2010 to 2012 before joining Anna Wintour, who hired him as a chief revenue officer for the Conde Nast parent company, Artstor, owned by Wintour. Seven months later, Yahoo acquired Artstor, and Yahoo hired Levinsohn. Levinsohn also worked for the Obama Administration as Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Digital Strategy from 2009 to 2011.