Horizon hires Momentum CEO and former Turner president to lead new sports and experience unit

Horizon Media is launching a new sports marketing and brand experience agency to be co-led by former Turner Broadcasting President David Levy and Momentum Worldwide's Chairman-CEO Chris Weil.

The new shop—Horizon Sports & Experience—will merge with Horizon’s existing Scout Sports and Entertainment division. Michael Neuman, head of Scout, will become executive VP, reporting to the new co-CEOs. Horizon Media’s recently launched metaverse consultancy, Chapter & Verse, also will be merged into HS&E.

Horizon is the largest U.S. media agency, according to the Ad Age Data Center, but it’s defending its biggest account—Geico—in a review. Geico spent more than $430 million of its overall TV outlay of $746 million over the past year on sports programming, according to iSpot.tv.

“As marketers seek more integration and more connections with the consumer, we are always seeking ways to evolve ahead of the landscape to meet those needs, and Horizon Sports & Experiences will do just that,” said Bill Koenigsberg, CEO and founder of Horizon Media in a statement. “What we have created here will bring a unique—and complementary—combination of sports, experiential and media capabilities and expertise under one tent that will be a marketer’s dream. Further, I am thrilled about the game-changing work that we will do with two industry powerhouses like David Levy and Chris Weil, who join me as partners in HS&E and enter the Horizon family with an incredible list of accomplishments behind them.”

Weil is a 20-year veteran of Momentum, part of Interpublic Group of Cos.' McCann Worldgroup, and has been chairman-CEO of the experiential agency since 2003. Prior to that, he was president of Momentum, New York. He’s a former chairman of the 4A’s, the youngest executive to be elected to that post when he started his two-year term in 2012.

Levy is founder of Back Nine Ventures, a sports consulting and investing firm, and is the former president of Turner overseeing the company’s portfolio of networks and businesses, including TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. He left Turner after 33 years there in 2019 following its acquisition by AT&T. He’s been elected to the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame and named by Sports Business Journal as one of the most influential executives of the past 20 years.

HS&E will include a focus on intellectual property creation and monetization, strategic advisory and consulting, media rights, sponsorship, sales and experiential strategy and activation, according to the statement from Horizon.

In the statement, Levy pointed to his experience in building “some of the world’s most esteemed brands by creating and identifying the partnerships, content and value propositions that deliver consistent value to their audiences through sports and entertainment platforms and experiences.” He added that he sees “even more opportunities to develop strong new IP destination events and help existing and emerging sports leagues navigate new distribution platforms, as well as sponsorship and sales.”

Part of Levy's remit will be “looking at opportunities to deploy available capital for strategic acquisitions to extend these capabilities and accelerate HS&E’s impact for our clients,” the statement said; he also will bring Back Nine clients including Top Rank, Learfield and others to HS&E.

Weil’s experience at Momentum includes overseeing the agency’s growth from two offices to approximately 30 globally and ultimately managing more than $5 billion in sponsorship assets, according to Horizon’s statement. That includes working on Super Bowl, Olympics, PGA, Coachella, Wimbledon and other tentpole events, but he said in the statement he also wants to focus heavily on Web3 and metaverse experiences.

“Given fundamental shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviors that are continuing to drive the evolution of brand experience—both physical and digital—I believe that Web3 is going to be the ‘experience Web,’” said Weil. “So we’re creating a company that will be at the forefront of monetizing Web3.”