Kyle Bank, Phenix Real Time Solutions, COO

Kyle Bank has been intimately involved in the operations, sales, and business development efforts at Phenix Real Time Solutions since joining the company in 2016. He has played a key role in evangelizing real-time streaming in sync and at scale, growing the Phenix customer base, and developing brand name recognition in the streaming industry.

Bank began his career at real estate industry leader Jones Lang LaSalle in Chicago, where he focused on nationwide acquisitions, dispositions, and subleases for a large national client. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis with a BSBA in finance and international business. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and has extensive academic experience in Asia at Fudan University and Chinese University of Hong Kong, bringing a global mindset and cultural understanding to building strong business relationships.

Eric Black, NBCUniversal, SVP, Technology, Fandango, Sports & Entertainment

Eric Black is SVP of sports and entertainment technology at NBCUniversal. In this role, he oversees end-to-end technical development and delivery for NBCUniversal Entertainment and the multi-application deployment for all NBC Entertainment brands; and NBC Sports and Olympics for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Super Bowl LVI, and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Prior to his current role, Black served as SVP of U.S. operations and video for Peacock, NBCUniversal’s direct-to-consumer streaming service from 2019-2021. He was responsible for the end-to-end operations for Peacock, overseeing video, operations, application development, and delivery, during a pivotal time leading up to the launch of Peacock in April 2020.

Previously, Black served as SVP and chief technology officer of NBC Sports Group Digital from 2015 – 2019. He managed all IP-delivered platforms for NBC Sports Digital, including its numerous websites, applications, and connected devices. He also oversaw NBC Sports’ Playmaker Media, a separate business which provides end-to-end video support service for companies in need of best-in-class live streaming and VOD solutions.

Under Black’s leadership, NBC Sports Digital and Playmaker Media have streamed some of the most prestigious properties in sports, including six Olympic Games, three Super Bowls, Sunday Night Football – primetime television’s No. 1 show — the National Hockey League, Premier League, National Basketball Association, NASCAR, the Triple Crown, Notre Dame Football, MLB, and the Open Championship, among many others. The systems built by Black have focused on both high concurrent traffic and scale, and now operate on more than 20,000 events per year, resulting in billions of consumed minutes.

In addition to the tens of thousands of events that air each year across NBC, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Telemundo, NBCUniversal, and NBC Sports Regional networks, Playmaker Media provided streaming video solutions for the Presidential debates and 2016 election coverage for NBC News. The service currently provides end-to-end services for the Olympic Channel, the International Olympic Committee’s global digital platform. In 2017, Black pioneered a partnership between Playmaker and iStreamPlanet, owned by Turner. Together, the two companies delivered digital services for many of sports’ biggest events: Telemundo Deportes’ coverage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia; CBS and Turner Sports’ March Madness coverage; Super Bowl LII; and the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, Korea.

NBC Sports Digital’s streaming coverage of Super Bowl LII peaked at 3.1 million concurrent viewers, making it the largest domestic streaming sports event in history. The 2018 PyeongChang Olympics also set Winter Games records, streaming 1.85 billion live minutes and 2.17 billion total minutes. Telemundo’s World Cup coverage shattered all Spanish language records in the United States, garnering the most live streamed match in Spanish-language history (Mexico v Sweden, 6.9 million live minutes).

A 20+ year veteran of the digital video/live streaming industry, Black and his team were instrumental in NBC Sports Digital’s success during the Rio Olympic Games, which set streaming records with 3.3 billion total minutes, 2.71 billion live minutes, and 100 million unique users. It remains the largest digital event in history.

Black joined NBCUniversal as a webmaster for NBC New York’s website, wnbc.com, in June 2000. In 2010, as director of digital operations for NBC Sports, he managed the first-ever live stream of Super Bowl XLVI. He was named vice president of technology at NBC Sports and NBC Olympics in 2012.

Black has been recognized with seven Sports Emmy awards, the Olympic Golden Rings for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad on NBC, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for 9/11 coverage in 2004. In addition, he was honored with the 2013 – 2014 technology and engineering Emmy Award for Pioneering Delivery of Pay TV Linear Video to Consumer Owned and Managed Devices Over an IP Connection.

Eric Bolten, Zixi, VP, Business Development

Eric Bolten is a leading expert in the digital video space, advising the world’s largest, most complex, and most demanding customers, from media and sports entities to Fortune 1000 corporations. His career spans executive, sales, marketing, and business development roles in markets around the globe including Australia, Asia, South America Europe, and the United States. Prior to Zixi, Bolten worked for Com Tech, PictureTel, Vela Research, Venaca, and Signiant.

Paul Briscoe, TAG V.S., Chief Architect

Chief architect at TAG Video Systems, Paul Briscoe’s career includes 14 years of building production systems at CBC and 20 years as R&D manager at Leitch Technology (Imagine today). Brisco’s unique abilities cross the intersection of product and R&D to help TAG develop the most forward-looking and effective solutions available.

Brandon Costa, SVG, Director of Digital

Brandon Costa covers the sports video production industry with a focus on live streaming, over-the-top (OTT), social media, and other digital distribution technologies and platforms. He also directs SVG’s internal digital strategies launching the company’s video outfit, ‘SVG On Demand,’ designing and overseeing its mobile application, ‘SVG Mobile,’ and serving as executive producer and host of The SVG Podcast. Costa serves as program director of networking events serving the SVG College and SVG Digital communities. Prior to his time at SVG, Costa spent five years producing digital content for MLB Advanced Media.

Jason Dachman, SVG, Chief Editor

Jason Dachman oversees all aspects of SVG’s North American editorial operations, including the thrice-weekly SVG Insider newsletter and SVG’s annual print publications. A member of the SVG team since 2009, Dachman also serves as program director for SVG’s RSN Summit, Sports Content Management Forum, Sports Graphics Forum, and TranSPORT event. Prior to joining SVG, he spent three years covering local sports for The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MA, and two years on the production staff of SiriusXM Satellite Radio’s The Ron & Fez Show. Dachman began his career in the Sports Information Department at Northeastern University in Boston, where he also earned a B.A. in media communications and cinema studies.

Matt Duarte, YES Network, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development

Matt Duarte, who joined the YES Network in December of 2019, is responsible for identifying and recommending new business opportunities and partnering with YES’ senior leadership to drive overall company strategy. Among his achievements at YES was the development and launch of the YES App, which became the #1 free sports app in the Apple App Store upon its March 2021 launch. Duarte implemented the strategic roadmap for the app and has leveraged 10 third-party vendors, with the app quickly outpacing all viewership and revenue projections.

The YES App features first-of-its-kind live stats and watch party offerings in conjunction with its streamed Yankees and Nets telecasts, as well as personalized content, notifications, alternate feeds, and a video-on-demand library. It also boasts original content exclusive to the app.

Duarte works closely with a variety of different departments at the company. He collaborates with Finance regarding budgets and short- and long-term growth plans, with Affiliate Sales on traditional and alternative distribution strategy, and with Marketing, Programming, and Production on a variety of initiatives.

Prior to YES, Duarte was the first enterprise manager in Madison Square Garden’s MBA Rotational program in 2018 – 2019, where he rotated among Marketing Partnerships, MSG Sports and Business Strategy & Venue Operations. In this role, he identified and recommended revenue opportunities and operations enhancements to senior executives.

Earlier, he was assistant vice president of US corporate banking at Wells Fargo.

Duarte earned a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College in 2012, with a double major in economics and Spanish. He received a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School in 2018.

Pamela Duckworth, fuboTV, Head of Fubo Sports Network and Original Programming

Pamela Duckworth, an award-winning executive producer with extensive experience across all production disciplines and brand marketing, is head of Fubo Sports Network, the live, free-to-consumer TV network featuring sports stories on and off the field.

Todd Erdley, Videon, President and Founder

Todd Erdley is the founder and continued vision behind Videon’s groundbreaking advances in video technologies. Erdley’s leadership has propelled the company to the forefront of video encoding and streaming products that enable prosumers and professionals to create transformative solutions that are rapidly driving and simplifying the movement of media from any source to any screen.

Paul Finster, Amagi, VP of Business Development

Ken Kerschbaumer, SVG, Co-Executive Director, Editorial

Ken Kerschbaumer is co-executive director of editorial services for the Sports Video Group and SVG Europe. He was a co-founder of SVG along with Paul Gallo and Marty Porter in 2005 and has been writing about how sports networks and leagues use video and audio technology to deliver a quality TV experience since 1991. Kerschbaumer began his career in 1991 at Television Broadcast magazine before joining Cahners where he was founding editor of Digital Broadcasting magazine. In 2000, he joined Broadcasting & Cable magazine as senior editor of technology where he covered all aspects of broadcasting, cable, and internet content creation and distribution.

John Lasker, ESPN, VP of Digital Media Programming

John Lasker, vice president of digital media programming for ESPN, is responsible for leading efforts to maximize ESPN’s rights, audience reach, and revenue opportunities on existing digital content offerings and platforms including ESPN+, the ESPN app, ESPN On Demand, and DMVPD touch points. He works closely with the Ad Sales, Affiliate Sales & Marketing, Consumer Marketing, Digital & Print Media, and Technology teams in identifying new content, audience, and product opportunities to support ESPN’s global distribution and strategy efforts.

Lasker joined ESPN in 1999 as a supervisor of sales planning.  He advanced to account sales executive in 2002 and manager of program planning just one year later, before assuming programming and acquisitions responsibility for digital media in 2006.

Prior to ESPN, Lasker worked at Zenith Media in New York as a media buyer.

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Lasker graduated from Marist College in 1997 with a degree in psychology.

Erik Ramberg, MediaKind, VP, Head of Global Business Development and Strategic Partners

Erik Ramberg is the VP, head of global business development and strategic partnerships for MediaKind. Ramberg has a long history of building entertainment products and working closely with operators, studios, broadcasters, sports leagues/federations, and consumer electronics partners. Creating better ways to discover, share, and enjoy entertainment experiences across every screen – big and small – is his passion.

Prior to MediaKind, Ramberg worked in a variety of entertainment and wireless communications oriented start-ups and established businesses, initially designing signal processing algorithms for wireless systems and then moving into the delivery of entertainment experiences enjoyed by tens of millions of consumers.

Damien Sterkers, Broadpeak, Video Solutions Marketing Director

Damien Sterkers is a solutions marketing director at Broadpeak. He is responsible for ensuring that the company’s video solutions benefit from the latest innovations, and that they follow and continuously meet the demands of the fast-changing video market as it evolves.

Prior to his current role, Sterkers was a product manager at Broadpeak, overseeing the company’s nanoCDN multicast ABR solution.

Before joining Broadpeak, Sterkers held various positions in marketing and system engineering departments at companies like Harmonic, Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia), and Canal+, and has been based across the world in Europe, LATAM, and the U.S. His deep technical experience in video delivery spans 20 years and gives him an extended and pragmatic view on how innovations can be translated into actual benefits for video operators.

Sterkers holds a master’s degree in engineering from Centrale Supélec in France.

Steven Thorpe, Fox Corporation, SVP, Video Platforms

Steven Thorpe is senior vice president of video platforms at Fox Corporation where he is responsible for audience-facing video solutions and operations across the company’s portfolio of sports, news, entertainment, and local apps/websites.

Since joining Fox, Thorpe has led an overhaul of the video supply chain and content delivery ecosystem focusing on quality of service and delivering a “better than TV” customer experience. Additionally, he led the launch team in the creation of FOX NOW Live, offering a simulcast of the network’s programming across web, mobile, and living room devices, in what was and remains the only broadcast network to offer pay TV customers in all 210 television markets nationwide a live stream of its primetime entertainment and sports programming.

Prior to his current role, Thorpe worked at NBCUniversal in a variety of positions – including on the NBC.com team responsible for the award-winning iPad app and full episode player.

Thorpe began his career as part of the College Football production team at Fox Sports while attending the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University.

John Ward, Friend MTS, EVP, Americas

John Ward leads sales and operations in the Americas region for Friend MTS. With a deep background in broadcast media, Ward previously served as CTO of iNDEMAND, a U.S. cable consortium owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox, and held senior positions with Deluxe Creative Services, AT&T Mobility & Entertainment, and DIRECTV.

Scott Young, Transmit, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer

Scott Young is the co-founder and chief product officer of Transmit. He has been active in video technology for over a decade with a proven track record of product innovation and early stage startup growth. Prior to founding Transmit.Live, Young built revenue and product operations for SET media, which was acquired by Conversant/ Epsilon in 2014. Prior to that, he led video solutions at Alloy, and video ad platform YuMe prior to a 2013 IPO, and was a key growth driver for CBS Interactive as they launched streaming on demand.

Grant Zizzo, The Switch, Director, OTT Services

Grant Zizzo is an experienced broadcast engineer and multi-camera director who works on the frontline of live video production and delivery. He’s an avid enthusiast of visual technology, with over a decade experience in broadcast engineering. Zizzo leads the growth and management of The Switch’s over the-top (OTT) IP video transmission and streaming services – keeping his finger on the pulse of new and emerging technologies within media and entertainment to help The Switch’s clients deliver the best possible live experiences to their customers. In his role, he connects the dots between new technology developments and their real-world use cases for live events organizers and media companies. Zizzo works on everything from large-scale esports tournaments and niche sports events to awards shows and international conferences and has previously worked as a freelance director within the film and TV industry.