Seven West Media (SWM) WA has promoted Chris Pearce to the newly-created role of sport sales director, leading the integrated sport offering to the market across broadcast, streaming, print, and digital.
Pearce has been at SWM WA for over 10 years, most recently as group sales manager for Seven.
The appointment comes at a pivotal time, with Seven’s digital rights to cricket starting in October. Test matches, Women’s Internationals, BBL, and WBBL will run on 7plus for the first time, followed by AFL rights commencing with the Brownlow Medal and the 2024 AFL Grand Final, AFLW (already running on 7plus), and then the full 2025 AFL season.
The role will also be involved in the ongoing development of the in-market proposition for two of SWM’s newest assets in local sports streaming service, Streamer, and news brand, The Nightly.
Pearce said: “Nothing connects Australians like sport does, and at SWM, we have the ability to reach sports fans better than anyone across our extensive suite of platforms and masthead.
“I’m incredibly excited to be taking on this role at such an important time with the upcoming digital rights across cricket and AFL and to help continue to grow our market-leading sport offering.”
Brent Stewart, chief sales officer at SWM WA, added: “It’s incredibly important to us as an organisation to ensure one of our largest, premium offerings in sport is fully integrated across all of our channels.
“This appointment reinforces our commitment to the continued growth of our offering to clients. There’s no better person for the role than Chris, who has been an instrumental figure in our organisation and the wider industry for over 10 years.”
SWM made a raft of new sports appointments in early July, after a round of reportedly 150 redundancies, including chief revenue officer, Kurt Burnette, chief marketing officer, Melissa Hopkins, and head of sport and managing director of Seven Melbourne, Lewis Martin.
The sports appointments included Chris Jones becoming director of network sport.
In further appointments, Seven’s AFL executive producer, Gary O’Keeffe, was elevated to the new role of head of AFL and sport innovation; horse racing executive producer Andrew Hore-Lacy was named head of horse racing; motor sport executive producer Kirsty Bradmore became head of sport digital; and cricket and horse racing producer Joel Starcevic was appointed head of cricket.
See also: Seven appointments: New heads of network sport, AFL, horse racing, cricket, and sport digital