Aurora Media Worldwide Appoints Barry Flanigan As Chief Strategy Officer

Award-winning content agency Aurora Media Worldwide has appointed Barry Flanigan to the newly-created role of Chief Strategy Officer.

Barry will lead the business development and strategy function at Aurora, focusing on driving new business as well as working with existing clients, while further enhancing and building out the company’s digital service offering. He starts immediately, reporting to MD and founder Lawrence Duffy.

Barry brings over 20 years of digital media experience to Aurora having worked in senior roles at several leading media companies. He joins Aurora from COPA90 where he was Chief Product Officer overseeing all product, audience, data, and content operations. He helped to build the business into a global football media powerhouse reaching millions of fans, working with top tier sponsors and managing major events, including the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Prior to this he was Vice President, and part of the founding management team, at Brave Bison, scaling it to become the largest video network outside of the US, generating more than 3 billion views per month. He has also held executive roles at Telegraph Media Group, News Corp and AOL.

The appointment further enhances Aurora’s offering to sports federations, rights holders, brands and broadcasters looking to develop engaging multi-platform content for fans. Aurora has a strong track record in the development and production of live, premium global sports and entertainment events, helping clients develop original and compelling programming. Aurora’s client list includes rights owners such as Formula E, Extreme E, Goodwood, Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Six Day Cycling; broadcasters such as ITV, BBC, Fox, Eurosport, CNN, and brands such as Jaguar, Audi, JP Morgan, Nissan, Tag Heuer and Red Bull.

Digital expertise and strategy form an increasingly fundamental part of Aurora’s offering, driven by the changing nature of how fans consume sport and entertainment content, combined with technology disruption.

Lawrence Duffy said: “Barry brings a real wealth of digital expertise to the Aurora team. He has an extensive track record working with some of the biggest and most innovative rights owners, broadcasters and brands in the world to grow engaged fan communities. His skills are an excellent fit with Aurora’s mission to create brilliant content for fans at the intersection between live sport, digital, data and brand. We’re delighted to welcome him to the team”

Flanigan said: “Aurora has an incredibly strong reputation for creating compelling sports and entertainment content experiences and I’m excited to build on these strong foundations to further enhance Aurora’s service offering for partners and clients around the world.”