Senior Analyst, Subscription Finance

ESPN’s Direct to Consumer (DTC) Finance team oversees the financial performance and strategy of the ESPN streaming business, playing a key role in driving the growth of ESPN Unlimited, ESPN’s premier DTC offering by serving as in-house advisors to ESPN executive leadership and operations.

The Senior Analyst role will be primarily focused on digital content performance—building acquisition models for sports rights available in market and measuring performance of existing deals within the ESPN portfolio. There will be a specific focus on the largest digital deals across the ESPN live sports rights portfolio. Work from this team informs decisions by ESPN leadership on content acquisitions, marketing strategies and programming distribution. This position requires experience in subscription/acquisition modeling, comfort with complex data sets, and familiarity with major American sports leagues and the sports streaming landscape.
 

Primary Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain financial models for content acquisitions for ESPN Unlimited, ESPN’s direct-to-consumer live sports streaming service
• Evaluate performance of existing deals with top leagues within the ESPN rights portfolio
• Drive analyses informing the future of ESPN digital content distribution strategy
• Create detailed demand (sign up) models for top deals, used as the basis for ESPN DTC’s financial FP&A model, and to inform operational spend decisions
• Run content-focused financial sensitivities and ad-hoc requests used to inform both near- and long-term programming decisions
• Serve as a liaison from the ESPN DTC Finance team to Marketing, Programming, Ad Sales, Disney+ & Hulu—aligning on key subscriber assumptions and KPI definitions ahead of major planning cycles
• Develop impactful, compelling presentation materials that effectively communicate financial projections, drivers, business performance, risks and opportunities to leadership
• Maintain a strong understanding of operating metrics (e.g. KPIs, subscribers), major deals and transactions, trends, issues, and challenges facing the streaming business

Basic Qualifications:

• 2+ years of relevant finance/strategy experience in media, direct-to-consumer subscription, management/strategy consulting, investment banking or similar fields
• Advanced Excel and financial modeling skills; experience with tools such as SQL, Looker, or similar a plus; familiarity / openness to adopting AI tools for Finance workflows
• Ability to collaborate with data engineering and analytics teams and work fluently with large, structured datasets
• Excellent communication and PowerPoint skills; ability to distill complex analyses into structured outputs and present to all levels of management
• Deliverable-focused with a strong work ethic; able to prioritize and resolve an array of issues simultaneously

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with subscriber/churn modeling or cohort analysis
• Familiarity with domestic sports rights market or media rights deal structures
• Experience at a direct-to-consumer subscription business within sports or entertainment

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $100,100 to $134,200 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.