Ross Levinsohn is a longstanding American executive in the broadcast communications and media industry. Having earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast communications in 1985, Levinsohn and a friend founded a production company and ran it for four years before parting ways. Through the late 1980s and 1990s, Levinsohn held marketing, production and promoter positions at Time Warner Sports and SportsLine. The entrepreneurial tendencies did not go away, and he founded a digital ad company in the late 1990s, which was purchased by Alta Vista. During this time, the internet was in its rapid growth phase. Alta Vista brought him on as an executive for a few years.
Even though the internet bubble burst in 2000, Levinsohn saw a lot of potential in it. He took a position at Fox Interactive Sports Media as a general manager for its online properties. He gained experience managing the daily operations and expanding the branding of those properties. By 2004, he was promoted to be the division’s CEO. He was also promoted to the position of Fox Interactive Sports CEO, and he served in that position until 2006. Unable to stay away from entrepreneurship for long, Levinsohn and James Heckman founded Scout Productions in the mid-2000s. They sold it, and they each moved on to other projects.
In the late 2000s through 2010s, Ross Levinsohn took a variety of roles, mostly at the executive level. Some of his positions included CEO or president of Guggenheim Digital Media, Tribune Company, Los Angeles Times, Yahoo! Americas, Yahoo! Global and more. He also served as an advisor and board member at a range of organizations, including American University.
Heckman reached out to Levinsohn in 2019. A few years earlier, Heckman had founded Maven Media, a small media company that began to purchase a range of online properties. In 2019, Maven acquired Sports Illustrated Media. James Heckman knew that Levinsohn’s experience made him the right person to lead the new property. Levinsohn quickly took over as Sports Illustrated Media’s CEO. In 2020, Heckman announced his retirement from Maven. Ross Levinsohn became Maven’s new CEO in late August 2020.