As it ramps up ahead of the launch of its flagship ESPN streaming service in the fall, Disney has hired an executive from Meta to lead a newly created product engineering group that brings together multiple teams.
Andre Rohe, who most recently served as vp of engineering at the Facebook and Instagram owner, joined the Burbank-based entertainment giant in January, Disney Entertainment & ESPN’s chief product/tech officer Adam Smith told his team.
Rohe was hired with the evp, product engineering title and will report to Smith. The exec, who will split his time between San Francisco and Los Angeles, earlier served six years at YouTube and eight years at the video platform’s parent Google in engineering roles.
“Andre is an incredibly talented technologist that brings not only a deep background in managing world-class engineering teams and years of expertise in scaled recommendation and product personalization, but also a truly collaborative spirit,” Smith said in a statement on Thursday.
Rohe added, “It’s exciting to be a part of that and to reunite with Adam, and it’s humbling to have the opportunity to lead this great team of engineers as we work to shape the future of how people around the world engage with entertainment and sports.”
Disney has been accelerating its footprint in the paid streaming space — its core Disney+ and Hulu services have 174 million subscribers, while ESPN+ has 25 million subs of its own — while also emphasizing its broad reach across its platforms with ad-supported monthly active users, which total 157 million.
One of the next big streaming bets is the launch of ESPN’s flagship streaming service, which will aim to take the brand fully from linear TV to digital, later this year. As Disney CFO Hugh Johnston described it at a UBS conference in December, the goal will be for increased engagement from users.
“When we finally launch ESPN flagship, which is going to be a much more sophisticated product sometime in early fall of next year, that product is going to be about much more interaction,” Johnston said. “It’s really not going to be just an analog product delivered digitally, but it will be a true digital native type of product. So, if you want to do ESPN — betting through ESPN Bet, you’ll be able to do it on the app.”
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