Sports Executive Search

Leadership placements for one of the most public, fastest-evolving executive markets in the world.

Charlie Solorzano | Managing Partner, Alder Koten Mexico & LATAM Hub, IMD International Search Group — Global Sports Practice

The core sports economy is now more than $600 billion. U.S. sports media rights alone reached $30.5 billion in 2025 — up 122 percent since 2015. Private equity deal value in sports hit an eight-year high in the first half of 2025.

Sport is no longer a category adjacent to business. It is a business, with the governance complexity of finance, the media dynamics of entertainment, the technology intensity of consumer tech, the fan-facing stakes of politics, and the reputational asymmetry of no other industry.

The executives who lead in this market operate under conditions most executive search work is not calibrated for. Value-creation windows defined by ownership structure. Public scrutiny that punishes recovery from mistakes. Fan-facing decisions with commercial consequences. Multiple boards with different logics — sponsor, league, sometimes founding owner, sometimes fan-facing governance. Cross-border media, sponsorship, and talent flows that reshape every commercial decision.

The sports executive search practice — delivered by Charlie Solorzano at Alder Koten as the Mexico and LATAM hub of the IMD International Search Group’s global Sports Practice — is built for those conditions.

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About the Practice

The IMD International Search Group’s global Sports Practice is a partner-led, retained executive search practice serving the sports industry across five regional hubs — the United States, Mexico and LATAM, the United Kingdom and Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

Charlie Solorzano leads the Mexico and LATAM hub through Alder Koten. His work covers Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, extending into Brazil and the broader Latin American ecosystem.

The practice’s other regional hubs — the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific — are led by senior partners embedded in each market. Together, the hubs deliver globally coordinated executive search backed by more than 40 IMD partner offices in 26 countries. IMD International Search Group is consistently ranked among Hunt Scanlon’s Top 40 global executive search organizations and is a member of AESC.

Why Now

Three concurrent forces are creating an executive search cycle in sports that has no recent parallel:

Private equity is reshaping ownership. PE-driven sports deal value hit an eight-year high in the first half of 2025 alone. The NFL formally approved institutional PE ownership stakes of up to 10 percent in 2024. The NBA, MLS, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1 have opened similar pathways. Every new ownership group triggers downstream executive searches — often across the entire C-suite.

Media and technology are redefining the executive profile. With more than 90 million U.S. viewers streaming live sports monthly, digital media has become the industry’s primary commercial engine. The sports technology market, at $21.5 billion in 2025, is projected to grow at 20 percent-plus annually through 2035. Sports organizations increasingly need executives who combine sports operational credibility with digital product, data, and platform experience — a profile that is genuinely scarce.

Global expansion is creating leadership demand in markets where experienced talent is thin. The 2026 FIFA World Cup — running from June 11 to July 19, with matches in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey — is the defining near-term catalyst for the LATAM sports market. Saudi Arabia was awarded the 2034 FIFA World Cup in December 2024, locking in a decade-plus commercial and leadership demand horizon across the Middle East. Women’s sports has become the fastest-appreciating segment in the industry, with WNBA expansion franchises reaching $250 million and NWSL entries exceeding $100 million.

The practice is calibrated for these forces — with the local depth to run searches inside each region and the global coordination to execute cross-border mandates without hand-offs.

What This Practice Serves

Sports executive search across the full architecture of the modern sports industry:

Professional sports franchises — leagues including NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, WNBA, Liga MX, LMB, Brasileirão, and the emerging North American and Latin American professional sports properties
Sports leagues and governing bodies — league offices, federations, and the commercial arms that surround them
Motorsport — Formula 1 teams and commercial partners, IndyCar, NASCAR, endurance racing, karting programs, and the growing set of series-adjacent commercial and media operators
Sports media and broadcasting — broadcast, streaming, live-rights holders, sports content studios, and the platform businesses moving deeper into sports (Amazon, Apple, Netflix, YouTube, DAZN, ESPN, and the international equivalents)
Sports technology — analytics platforms, data infrastructure, fan-engagement technology, sports-betting and integrity operators, streaming and OTT technology, wearables and biometrics, ticketing, marketplace, and hospitality tech
Sports agencies — talent representation, sponsorship strategy and activation, event management, and the private-side firms serving athlete IP
Facilities, venues, and hospitality — stadium and arena operators, mixed-use districts, hospitality brands built around sport
Sports-adjacent consumer brands — apparel, equipment, nutrition, recovery, wellness, and the direct-to-fan brands using sport as their commercial anchor
PE-backed sports platforms and roll-ups — including multi-club ownership groups, sports investment platforms, and PE-backed sports-tech consolidators
Women’s sports properties — new franchise builds in the WNBA, NWSL, and international women’s football, plus dedicated women’s sports investment vehicles
Family-owned sports enterprises — legacy franchise ownership groups managing succession, professionalization, or transition
Sports investment funds and LP-backed sports vehicles

What matters is the conditions the leader will operate under — not the label on the org chart.

Roles Placed

C-suite, senior functional, and board leadership:

Chief Executive Officer, President, General Manager, Managing Director
Chief Operating Officer
Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Sponsorship Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Brand Officer
Chief Digital Officer, Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer
Chief Data Officer, VP of Analytics, Head of Fan Insights
VP or SVP of Digital, Head of Content, VP of Media and Broadcast, Head of Media Rights
Head of Partnerships, Head of Sponsorship Sales, Head of Business Development
Head of Fan Experience, Head of Ticketing, Head of Hospitality
Head of International Expansion
Chief People Officer, CHRO
Board directors, non-executive directors, and independent chairs
Motorsport-specific leadership: Team Principal, Team CEO, Sporting Director, Head of Commercial, Head of Marketing and Partnerships, Head of Race Operations
League and federation leadership across commercial, media, and integrity functions
Emerging categories: Women’s sports franchise CEO and COO, PIF portfolio executive roles, sports tech CPO and Head of Product, NIL and revenue-sharing officers, esports and gaming executives, cross-border commercial leaders

Every engagement is a retained search. Contingency work does not fit the depth this market requires.

Four Anchor Differentiators

1. Cross-Border Fluency — U.S., Mexico, Europe, and Beyond

Sport is now a cross-border business. The 2026 FIFA World Cup, the NFL’s international expansion including recurring games in Mexico City, MLB’s continued expansion into Latin America, F1’s rise in the U.S. market, Liga MX’s growing U.S. commercial footprint, the growing U.S. footprint of European soccer, and the pan-continental sports-media rights market are all evidence of a single shift: the executive leaders who succeed in sports increasingly need to operate across borders.

The practice is built for that reality. Twenty years of executive search across the U.S. and Mexico markets gives the practice a level of cross-border operating fluency few sports search firms can match. Through the IMD International Search Group global Sports Practice, that cross-border capability extends into the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific — all coordinated through partner-level relationships rather than fly-in engagement models.

The result: sports executive search that treats cross-border capability as a core evaluation criterion, not a nice-to-have.

2. Formula 1 and Motorsport Specialization

Formula 1 sits at the intersection of technology, media, sponsorship, high-performance culture, and cross-border complexity — the same forces reshaping sport more broadly. The insights that operate in F1 travel to every other sports leadership context.

I have followed F1 as a strategic analyst since the mid-1980s. That is not a resume line; it is a genuine competitive advantage in a market where most executive search firms treat F1 as a metaphor rather than a technical system. When a motorsport organization needs a Team Principal, a Head of Commercial, a Sporting Director, or a CEO calibrated for the specific conditions of modern F1 — cost cap, media era, sponsor-driven governance, driver market dynamics — the practice is built to run that search substantively, not superficially.

Related reading: The Founder Second Act — how Ross Brawn, Ron Dennis, Peter Sauber, and Eddie Jordan navigated life after stepping back from operational leadership.

3. Sports Data, Analytics, and Technology Leadership

The commercial center of gravity in sports has moved. Fan data, media technology, betting infrastructure, streaming platforms, and analytics-driven commercial decisions increasingly define whether a sports asset is winning the executive talent war — or losing it to platforms and sports-tech companies scaling faster than franchises can.

I have written extensively on this shift — including the Chief Data Officer role most franchises still lack, and the growing sports talent export dynamic that is reshaping how franchises retain their strongest commercial leaders. The practice is calibrated to run senior data, analytics, digital, and commercial technology searches inside sports — a capability that is systematically underserved in traditional sports search.

4. PE-Backed Sports Asset Leadership

Private equity ownership of sports assets is one of the fastest-growing categories in institutional capital — with sports deal value hitting an eight-year high in H1 2025 alone. The CEO decision inside a sponsor-backed sports franchise, sports-media asset, or sports-tech platform is not the same as the CEO decision inside a founder-led or family-owned asset — and founder-led search methodology often produces the wrong hire when applied to sponsor conditions.

The practice runs PE-backed sports CEO and C-suite searches with a diagnostic calibrated to the specific realities of sponsor-backed sports operating: value-creation windows, multi-board governance, fan-facing decision architecture, and exit-path optionality.

Related reading: Sports Executive Talent: The Adjacent Talent Map — where the next generation of PE-fluent sports leaders will actually come from.

Considering an Executive Hire in Sports?

Every engagement starts with a diagnosis, not a proposal. Whether it is a CEO, C-suite, or board search in sports, sports media, sports tech, motorsport, women’s sports, or a PE-backed sports asset — the conversation begins here.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation

The Race Conditions Model™ Applied to Sports

Sports executive search follows the Race Conditions Model™ — the proprietary diagnostic framework I use across every engagement, built on the thesis that leadership success is determined by conditions, not credentials.

Applied to sports, that framework asks the questions most sports search work does not:

What is the current condition of this asset — greenfield build, competitive rebuild, commercial expansion, sponsor exit preparation, cultural repair?
What relationships must this leader hold, inherit, or build — with sponsors, league offices, fans, media partners, athletes, and community stakeholders?
How much authority does this leader actually have? Which decisions route through ownership, which through league governance, which through commercial sponsors?
What is the exit path — strategic sale, sponsor-to-sponsor recap, generational transition, or hold?
Which board is the primary decision-maker for this leader, and how does the leader read the others?
What cultural memory does the asset carry, and what does the leader need to honor to preserve it?

A search that skips this diagnosis produces candidates. It rarely produces the right candidate. In sports, where reputational stakes are asymmetric and executive changes cannot be made quietly, the diagnostic upstream is the difference between a placement that endures and one that has to be revisited within eighteen months.

Why This Matters: The 40 Percent Problem

Research consistently places executive failure and early departure rates for senior hires at more than 40 percent within 18 months of placement.

In sports, the cost of that failure is not scattered across a P&L. It shows up in fan sentiment, media coverage, league commentary, sponsor confidence, and the exit multiple. Executive changes in sports cannot be made quietly. The next search has to get it right.

That is why the practice invests disproportionately in the diagnostic phase before candidates are engaged — and why every mandate is led by a senior partner from briefing to placement.

How the Practice Works

Retained search only. Every sports engagement operates on a retained basis. Contingency search does not fit the depth of relationship, discretion, and diagnostic work these placements require.

Partner-led execution. Every engagement is led by a senior partner from briefing to placement. No hand-offs to junior associates managing C-suite searches.

A five-stage process, structured for 4–6 weeks to slate.

Define and calibrate. Deep-dive briefing with your leadership. We define not just the role, but the conditions the leader must perform in.
Map the market. Global candidate mapping across the practice’s five regional hubs and IMD’s 40+ partner offices — including passive candidates competitors cannot reach.
Assess and benchmark. Structured assessment against the mandate. Cultural fit, track record verification, and cross-border capability where required.
Present the slate. Qualified slate in 4–6 weeks — compared with the 8–12 week industry norm at generalist firms. Senior partner presents every candidate personally.
Place and integrate. Offer management, references, and structured onboarding support through the first 90 days and beyond.

Cross-border delivery. Mexico, LATAM, and Brazil led directly by Charlie’s hub and the Brazil hub. USA led through the practice’s U.S. hub. Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific coordinated through IMD partner offices, with the UK/Europe and Middle East hubs launching in 2026. Global searches structured to move fluidly across the regions when the role requires it.

Confidentiality that matches the market. Sports operates in public. Search discretion is not a preference — it is a structural requirement. Every engagement operates under confidentiality protocols calibrated to a market where reputation travels within hours.

Sports-native evaluation. Candidates are evaluated for the specific conditions of sports leadership — not through a generalist executive search lens. That includes sports operating experience, sponsor and league fluency, fan-facing decision judgment, cross-border capability, and the cultural resonance that determines whether a leader will honor the asset they inherit.

Published Perspectives

The practice’s thinking is documented publicly. A selection of recent work:

Sports Executive Talent: The Adjacent Talent Map — sports may need 500 or more senior executives over the next three years across PE franchise reshuffles, women’s sports builds, World Cup legacy organizations, college athletics restructuring, and Middle East expansion. The Adjacent Talent Map™ shows where the next sports leaders are hiding.
Mexico Sports Executive Search: The Legacy Window — the 6-to-18-month period after the 2026 FIFA World Cup when temporary infrastructure, sponsor attention, and global visibility either convert into permanent Mexican sports-economy capability, or disappear. The Legacy Leadership Window™ opens July 19, 2026.
Sports Leadership Assessment: Driver Calibration — the fastest driver doesn’t always win. Applying Driver Calibration™ to sports executive search: assessing leaders for conditions fit, not just credentials.
Sports Media Executive Search: The Hybrid Gap — identifying hybrid leaders at the intersection of broadcast rights and streaming strategy — the profile most in demand and hardest to source.

Additional writing is published regularly at charliesolorzano.me as the practice continues to build out its published perspectives.

Considering an Executive Hire in Sports?

Schedule a Confidential Consultation

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the sports executive search practice? A partner-led, retained executive search practice serving sports franchises, leagues, sports media, sports technology, motorsport, sports agencies, sports-adjacent consumer brands, women’s sports properties, and PE-backed sports assets. Charlie Solórzano leads the Mexico and LATAM hub through Alder Koten, as part of the IMD International Search Group’s globally coordinated Sports Practice — with hubs in the United States, Mexico and LATAM, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

What kinds of roles does the practice place? C-suite roles (CEO, President, GM, COO, CRO, CFO, CMO, CDO, CTO, CPO), senior functional leadership (VP of Digital, Head of Content, Head of Partnerships, Head of Data, VP Analytics, Head of Fan Experience, CHRO), motorsport-specific leadership (Team Principal, Sporting Director, Head of Commercial), emerging categories (women’s sports franchise CEO and COO, NIL and revenue-sharing officers, esports and gaming executives), and board and non-executive director appointments.

What is the geographic scope? Five regional hubs across the United States, Mexico and LATAM, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Mexico, LATAM, and Brazil coverage is led directly by Charlie Solórzano’s hub and the Brazil hub. The USA hub is active. The UK, Europe, and Middle East hubs are launching in 2026. All hubs are backed by IMD’s 40+ partner offices in 26 countries.

Why work with a sports-focused search practice instead of a generalist search firm? Sports operates under conditions most executive search is not calibrated for. Value-creation windows, multi-board governance, fan-facing decision architecture, reputational asymmetry, cross-border complexity, and the specific talent dynamics of a small, relationship-dense market. A sports-focused practice evaluates candidates against those conditions specifically. A generalist practice often evaluates them against conditions that do not apply.

How is this practice different from other sports-specialized firms? Three differences. Global coordination — most sports-specialized boutiques are single-market focused; this practice runs simultaneously across five regional hubs. Partner-led execution — senior partners lead every engagement from briefing to placement, with a typical slate in 4–6 weeks rather than the 8–12 week industry norm at generalist mega-firms. And adjacent-sector depth — the practice draws on candidate access across finance, technology, and industrial sectors, which is precisely the hybrid profile modern sports organizations increasingly demand.

What is different about PE-backed sports CEO search? Sponsor-backed sports CEOs operate under conditions founder-led CEOs do not encounter — a defined value-creation window, sponsor governance and reporting cadence, multi-stakeholder decision architecture, and exit-path optionality. Founder-led search does not test for these capabilities. Sponsor-backed sports search must. The Adjacent Talent Map™ also identifies where PE-fluent sports leaders now come from — increasingly, adjacent PE portfolio operations rather than the traditional sports career pipeline.

What experience does the practice bring to Formula 1 and motorsport? Charlie has followed F1 as a strategic analyst since the mid-1980s — a level of technical and organizational fluency in the sport that is genuinely rare in executive search. The practice runs motorsport searches substantively, not superficially, with an understanding of team structure, cost cap dynamics, commercial rights complexity, and driver market realities.

How does the practice handle sports data, analytics, and technology leadership searches? The commercial center of gravity in sports has moved to data, analytics, and platform technology. The practice runs Chief Data Officer, VP Analytics, Chief Digital Officer, VP of Data Strategy, and similar leadership searches with a specific understanding of how sports data leadership actually functions — including the calibration between technical depth, business acumen, and sports credibility that makes these roles hard to fill.

What role does the U.S.–Mexico cross-border dimension play in the practice? Sport is increasingly cross-border. The 2026 FIFA World Cup, NFL games in Mexico City, MLB’s Latin American expansion, F1’s continued growth in North America, and Liga MX’s expanding U.S. footprint all point to the same reality: sports leaders increasingly need to operate across the U.S.–Mexico corridor. Twenty years of cross-border executive search experience across the two markets gives the practice a level of operating fluency few sports search firms can match.

How does the practice work with women’s sports properties? Women’s sports is the fastest-appreciating segment in the industry. WNBA expansion franchises reached $250 million in 2025. NWSL entry fees have exceeded $100 million. These are executive builds from zero — CEO, COO, CRO, head of commercial partnerships, head of digital — from a standing start. The practice runs those searches with a specific understanding of the growth-stage operating context and the sports credibility required to make the placement stick.

How does the practice work with family-owned sports enterprises? Family enterprise search is a specific practice — different from institutional search in cadence, evaluation criteria, and the depth of governance and succession context required. Sports has some of the most sophisticated family enterprise ownership groups in the U.S. and Mexico, and the practice’s search work reflects that reality — including succession planning, professionalization, and outside CEO placements.

How is confidentiality protected in a market as public as sports? Sports operates in public and reputation travels within hours. Every retained sports engagement runs under strict confidentiality protocols — starting with how candidates are approached, continuing through how internal stakeholders and boards are briefed, and extending through the offer and integration process. Discretion is not optional. It is a structural requirement of this market.

How do I engage the practice? Every engagement starts with a confidential conversation — not a proposal. If you are considering a CEO, C-suite, or board search in sports, sports media, sports tech, motorsport, women’s sports, or any sports-adjacent asset, get in touch to schedule a confidential consultation. If you would like to review the practice’s published market analysis before engaging, download the Sports Executive Search Market Brief above.

Ready to Talk?

Every engagement starts with a diagnosis, not a proposal.

If you are considering an executive hire, a board appointment, or a leadership transition in sports, sports media, sports technology, motorsport, women’s sports, or a PE-backed sports asset — the conversation begins here.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation →

Charlie Solórzano is Managing Partner at Alder Koten, a boutique executive search firm specializing in C-suite and board placements across the U.S. and Mexico markets. He advises founders, investors, and boards on leadership transitions using The Race Conditions Model™, a proprietary diagnostic framework built on the thesis that leadership success is determined by conditions, not credentials. He also leads the Sports Practice at both Alder Koten and IMD International Search Group, a globally coordinated executive search network operating across 26 countries.