Howard Mittman replaces Bleacher Report founder as CEO

There is indeed life after Condé Nast, as Howard Mittman learned when he was boosted to CEO of Bleacher Report, replacing co-founder and CEO Dave Finocchio.

Bleacher Report has had its ups and downs since Finocchio sold it to Turner Sports for $175 million in 2012 and left, but then returned in 2016.

“They were the BuzzFeed of sports,” said Jim Heckman, who has run and sold two other sports sites in his day and now is running The Maven. “They built a huge following with traffic from Facebook,” he said. “Finocchio had a moment, but he returned in 2016 just as Facebook was turning off the tap.”

Bleacher Report is now part of Warner Media, which is in the process of blending into new parent company AT&T.

Mittman said he sees Bleacher Report today as “somewhere between a premium publisher and a platform. Only about 8 or 9 percent of traffic comes from Facebook, and 50 percent of our traffic and revenue is generated by our app.”

“We’re able to get true organic distribution, which insulates us from some of the problems that hit others,” he said. And he said @bleacherreport is the third-most engaging handle on Twitter, behind only President Trump and Ariana Grande.

Mittman, a former publisher of Wired and GQ, was head of the men’s group when he left Condé in early 2017 for Bleacher Report to become chief marketing officer and chief revenue officer. The company, which has about 550 employees, is expected to have revenue of close to $200 million in 2019. He said he can’t disclose figures but said revenue was “up about 40 percent in 2018.”

To further broaden its base, he said the company is pushing e-commerce and licensing deals and recently inked a three-year deal for a content studio now under construction in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.

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